ReHistory: Warwalker: The Mechoning: The Conversation

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Question about the shoulder slot. Can you store one item on one shoulder and store something else in the other?

Allurand and surrounding world loading, 28%...

A plural word like "shoulders" probably wasn't the best word I could have used, since it's more like "that region above the cockpit where you can probably hold as much stuff a single arm", so just stick to one weapon in that region, except the twin swords. Otherwise every mech would be able to hold 4 weapons and a mod, which is a bit overkill. It can be justified if you figure that while the gun might be outside of the mech, it stores the ammo or capacitors or whatever inside that region.

Also, I noticed you specified 30mm ammo, Stormthorn. If you want to get into specifics, I was thinking that 30mm would be the caliber in the light*

machine gun (Good size for firing at 250/min, and assuming .35Kg per round, 1000-1750 rounds would take up about 800-1400 pounds) while the heavier Gatling gun's ammo would be bigger than 30mm but way less than 76mm, like maybe 50mm (That would make it better for shooting about two per second. Guessing that it's like 1.6 Kg/round, 500 would be like 1800 pounds)

edited 28th May '12 4:24:02 PM by nman

But a 30mm Gatling is the GAU 8 Avenger. The mechs are under 30 feet tall. A 30mm rotary gun is the size of a car, and much much heavier when loaded. Biggest gatling gun in the modern world.

That was what i was thinking, heavy mech wise, but smaller with less barrels. But i removed the size referance for simplicity.

edited 28th May '12 5:23:21 PM by Stormthorn

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

Hmm, guess you're right, we'll use 30mm for the gattling, then. I wasn't really looking at gun size, but rather just counting bullets, hoping to handwave the gun itself (looking at the guns used on 1000-foot long ships probably wasn't the best idea). I don't really know anything about weapons bigger than a rifle or shotgun, so I was just hoping it all worked out.

I was just concerned about giving a light mech the same caliber that I can use in a rifle. I guess that if we let the normal machinegun use something on the size of 7.62mm, we can just crank up the rate of fire to something huge and call it a day. Google says it's 27.59 rounds per pound for the steel FMJ, so even a light load of 1000 pounds of ammo is nearly thirty thousand rounds... does a variable rate between 2000 and 6000 RPM sound good? That's roughly what modern machineguns can fire at, if The Other Wiki is to be believed.

Then for the 30mm, since it's a heavy mech and we say it holds, just guessing here, 5000 pounds of ammo, that's over 6000 rounds... well, even firing 1000 rounds per minute, that's still well below what many modern guns can do.

edited 28th May '12 6:03:13 PM by nman

Well so far we have 3 light mechs. Would it be okay for us to make a second one if nobody does heavy's? Full disclosure, If I make a heavy mech, its name WILL be More Dakka.

Edit: I missed shane entirely.

edited 28th May '12 7:14:02 PM by Exileman

We'll stick to one mech per person, but you could change your mech size between missions in the RP if you ever wanted to. Doing it after every mission would be hard to justify story-wise. But it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that there's plenty of spare mechs of both sizes which you can swap with. Just park your current mech, borrow a generic and previously-used mech, put in the weapons and mods you want, and your old one will be there waiting for you when you're done.

edited 28th May '12 7:34:57 PM by nman

My mech is heavy mortar support. Im the third post in the Sign-up thread.

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

I realized that there's no difference between light and heavy drones. Should the heavy one be six feet and carry maybe five tiny missiles? Or should a heavy just hold two normal drones?

edited 28th May '12 9:44:05 PM by nman

The heavy drone could have a 5mm gun on it. Worthless against mechs and tanks but good against squishy humans. That way the drone wont unbalance mech combat but has more utility in exchange for taking up a slot the Heavy mech could have used for artillery pieces.

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

I was thinking it would use its missiles to shoot incoming missiles aiming for it, but a 5mm gun sounds better.

edited 28th May '12 9:48:47 PM by nman

What kind of role does Hans' mech have in a fight?

Sign on for this After The End Fantasy RP.

Whatever you want it to have. You have a vibroblade and laser, so I'd guess something focusing on close-quarters.

And I hadn't really given to much thought to combining the laser with the capacitor bank. The laser is supposed to fire a deadly pulse of energy, and the capacitor bank doubles firing times, but shooting a pulse that lasts twice as long probably isn't that great of an improvement. So... how about this: You can fire the laser twice (two separate blasts) on "one" charge (the sum of the weapon's built-in capacitors and the bank's). And I guess to make it fair, anyone using the capacitor bank fills it up at the same time as their other weapons systems, so that it doesn't take twice as long to recharge.

edited 29th May '12 7:48:11 AM by nman

So should we wait any longer for players? It's only been about a day and a half since the last person expressed interest, so it's not been very long, but i figure we could easily leave signups open. I am very much looking forward to gettin this party STARTED!!

I don't want to jump the gun - it's a slow week, probably because of all the schools having finals and whatnot - and start without waiting for another player or two. There's still at least 3 people from the old brainstorming thread in addition to the person from the signup who expressed interest, too. So I'd say to wait a little more, and start on Monday or Tuesday?

edited 31st May '12 9:21:56 AM by nman

Im ok with that.

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

Also... it's probably not good to start with just four people, because if anyone decides to drop, this becomes a remarkably small RP.

Well you could look at the capacitor-laser link differently. As providing more power to the pump it could double amplitude, a single pulse twice as energetic.

the two-shot deal might work but you might need a bit of a cooldown time between, are we doing combat in rounds? If not you could just half the refire period.

Also is the difference between light and heavy in function and design approach, or is there a solid line in terms of mass? Any rules on quad models?

edited 1st Jun '12 10:24:56 PM by SOCR

How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?

To be honest, I'm not that capable - I can't conceive of a way to differentiate a powerful laser blast from one twice as powerful, so being able to fire twice seemed like a quick way to fix sacrificing a slot for the capacitors. Since this isn't going to use some sort of calculation system, increasing the damage wouldn't be as effective. I figured this also gives players more creative license with their posts, since it lets them use the weapon more flexibly. I mean, I wasn't going to be keeping track of reload times - as long as players keep their weapon usage somewhat in line with the weapon specs, then those details are mostly just for flavoring your posts - but by letting it fire twice instead of twice as often, it seems like that aspect might also be easier to manage. Then again, if you're not playing the RP to "win", then you wouldn't have to worry about that anyway.

As for the mech sizes, the specifics are in the signup, at the bottom of the first post, but basically I just made the heavy mech slightly bigger than 1.41*

times the size of the light mech, and used that value cubed for the mass. Since its mass is much bigger, that would affect the role.

Though, what did you mean by quad model?

edited 1st Jun '12 11:02:56 PM by nman

Well since you mentioned Mechwarrior in the original interest check post, and I'm going to be using Battletech as my guideline when I make my unit, I'll pull an example from there◊

Something more funcitonal/walking tank than, say, a Zoid, though I imagine a Zoid would be a useful light-counterpart to the Battletech models which function as 'heavy' in here.

Though I really like the claws on Battletech's Jade Hawk model, so I might stay bipedal anyway. If this setting has mech melee combat it'd make sense for even a heavy to at least have some melee defense mechanism.

edited 1st Jun '12 11:48:20 PM by SOCR

How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?

Mechwarrior was more for the aesthetics than sizes and weapons. We were trying to have everyone be in bipedal mechs within one of those two weight/height classes, armed with only what could fit in the four slots, so the Jade Hawk would work, but the claws would only be as effective as a normal punch. Hell, you don't have to keep it as a heavy mech, either, you can just have a light/heavy mech of the appropriate size/weight with whatever weapons you want as say it "looks" like that one.

Modification proposal:

Dampening Field Grid: As you can upgrade an Energy Shield into the Hunker Shield, similarly you can downgrade an energy shield to a Field Grid. the Field Gird combines the Hunker Shield's near-unbreakable power with the Shield Generator's flexibility and mobility. The drawback is it only covers a very limited area of the machine. An arm-mounted Field Grid acts as a sort of buckler, quickly deploying an impenetrable energy disk on command over the outer surface of the forearm to stop oncoming attacks. Devices mounted on the shoulder or back can deploy a small directional shield over the cockpit and core of the machine to protect its most critical components, but leave the rest exposed.

And a Robot Wars classic, if we're looking to the little guys for inspiration:

Hydraulic Claw: Replaces the machine's hand with a large, powerful hydraulic-driven crushing claw. Cannot immediately perform an attack on a mobile enemy (though you can slash with it in the open position), if an enemy is stationary or pinned the claw can slowly close around the target, able to penetrate most any armor with immense crushing power.

Also, If the GAU-8, a 30mm gatling, can fire at 4K rounds a minute and the M61, a 20mm gatling can fire 6K, while the M2 and the M1919 (.50 HMG and 7.62 MG respectively) can only fire <1200, why does it say the gatling fires slower? It looks like you got their rates of fire reversed.

edited 2nd Jun '12 10:38:50 AM by SOCR

How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?

Those look interesting, I'll add them in a bit.

As for the guns, the idea was just that the normal machinegun fires a crapload of bullets, while the heavy gun fires much larger rounds at a slower rate. A 50-year-old GE Minigun goes up to 6000 rpm, so that's not unrealistic for the 7.62. But if those guns can match that rate with a 30mm round, I don't know how to make those two weapons even out. Here's two quick thoughts I had, though:

• Increase the fire rate to something crazy for the 7.62mm, like 30,000 per minute, and make the 30mm 6,000. That would make each one able to chew through their entire ammo supply in a minute at the maximum rate.
• Just make both go up to 6000. That would let the 7.62mm fire 5-10 times as long as the 30mm at the same rate.

Part of my objection was misunderstanding; I thought you have meant a single-barrel machine gun, which would literally melt at that operation (Even the M134 which you mention does overheat after continued firing, the barrels heat to the point of incandescence)

Along with the second of the two thoughts you had; Ammo management is where the M134 will be balanced against the GAU-8. The latter isn't going to be fired constantly, merely for very short bursts. Furthermore I don't think the two SHOULD be balanced against each other; the GAU-8 is in the heavy class for a reason and is pretty much built specifically for the armor-busting purpose, whereas the M134 is an anti-infantry weapon.

What you have now is more representative of a single-barrel revolving autocannon, and for the amount of size the Gatling would be taken up, you could easily have a much more powerful ammo type, like 40mm, and have room for more ammo, so you could go that route as well

edited 2nd Jun '12 5:15:54 PM by SOCR

How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?

It's less that I want the GAU-8 and M134 balanced, and more that I want to balance the mech guns that shoot 7.62mm bullets and 30mm shells, while using ammo weight as my limiting variable. Since this is an alternate reality, I used the modern guns as a springboard to guess what a practical firerate is, but as long as its not crazy, then whatever works is fine.

Hell, there's no reason couldn't just have both a 30mm and 40mm gun as a heavy mech weapon. Keep the 30mm pretty quick, make the 40mm pack a bigger punch? Do you happen to know how much a 40mm shell weighs? Just to see how long it could fire at, just guessing here, 240 rounds per minute *

with a 5000 pound ammo limit.

And remember, this is really all just for flavor, since the precise numbers aren't going to drastically affect gameplay as much as the sorta-general damage/range/rate information. They serve more to change how you use your mech with different combinations of weapons.

edited 2nd Jun '12 5:34:55 PM by nman