Why? I find them to be awesome, everything one could want from an AI driven combat robot. Loyal, smart, inventive, yeah, love the little bots.
General Battledress: Suits or Mecha?
- Thread starter Tobias
- Start date
One of the vehicle design books, I want to say one of the MgTs, has a walker design sequence.
spYke
SOC-12
Yes, but had anyone ever done that? I’d be interested to see examples and approaches.
MgT1ed Vehicles 5/6.
I've toyed with it, but in general since most of my games are non-military in nature, that's about it.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Interesting vid:
I have done exactly that, IMTU they form the Marines' Special Ops groups. The raw stats are in a hard to read excel sheet currently, so I will explain in prose, but the overall approach is (In Mg1): TL15 Cost: 1,059,535 Cr per unit, mass 1509kg (no second floors for these units without using the grav belt)
2.5 cubic meter walker, Bonded SuperDense hull/armor , box config, advanced sealed, rugged. Fusion-15 power with a bit over 24 hours endurance.
Walker propulsion gets you a top speed of 7.5kph/5mph, but equipped with a grav belt. Unit has basic life support, which complements the 24 hr endurance, and a 10km radio, with the assumption that any longer comms will be handled by a dedicated unit.
Main weapon is traditionally an FGMP, but the Anti-Materiel Rifle with APDS ammo does nearly as much damage to heavily armored targets at a tiny fraction of the cost.
60 points of armor (or armour for our UK people) which is actually 68 (+8 for the hull material) minus some for the box configuration. This is intended to absorb an average hit from an FGMP. You could bump up the armor well into unhurtable range, but then there's no way to fight really and you have to shoot these with battleship guns to hurt them. An even hit means a tactical approach can win if forces are otherwise evenly matched.
Since a grav belt's not a super fast way to travel, I mounted them on grav speeder bikes (a bit like Hammer's Slammers and in some of the Star Wars scout troopers). These bikes are specially built for a 2.5 cubic meter/1500kg passenger, so they'd be pretty hard to ride for a normal person, but at 3.5 cubic meters and about 750kg plus the armored trooper. WIth TL15 Fusion drives taking up almost all the space not occupied by the pilot, it can reach over 1000kph/650mph, at an additional cost of about 550,000 Cr.
spYke
SOC-12
Why does everyone want to build Imperial Battle Dress at TL-15? It appears at TL-12, and while it may be greatly improved at TL-15 it would be all but impossible for repairs on most planets. Even Imperial naval ships would need at probably two tons of support equipment. A donning cradle, spares, tools, and diagnostics. Another thing, why is a fusion power plant limited to 24 hours? Even a modestly efficient fusion power plant should last weeks not hours. None of this makes sense.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Overheating?
Going by Forty Kay, there is a ritual involved in donning it, so in that sense, you'll need space.
And the Astartes Project does demonstrate the need for large corridors.
Going by Forty Kay, there is a ritual involved in donning it, so in that sense, you'll need space.
And the Astartes Project does demonstrate the need for large corridors.
If this is about the powered armor, at TL12 it doesn't work that small. I did do a TL12 version with mostly the same build, but could not bring it in under 3 cubic meters, and it had 1 hull and 2 structure, where the TL15 had 2 hull and 3 structure. That's substantial when you're doing 1 hit at a time. Also, you cannot equip an FGMP at TL12. The anti-materiel rifle is king of the hill until TL14, pretty much.
Power plant is limited to 24 hours because why not? If you've got to be in a suit more than 24 hours, you've had a very bad day. May as well take it off and take a rest. It's refueled with water, so it's not like it's hard to refuel, If you're on an airless asteroid, bring a can with you. It needs like 15 liters a day. The TL15 needs 12.5 liters/day.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Every Imperial Army base and waystation, every Imperial naval base and depot, every megacorp shipyard and manufacturing plant that makes military equipment for the Imperium is TL15, and has been for several centuries.
So TL15 BD is the norm in Imperial service, in much the same way the US Army no longer buys Sherman tanks or B17s.
As to pp duration, this is edition specific. later editions of the game have fusion plants only needing fuel once per year.
Canon, for what it's worth, seems to have Imperial BD at TL-14, along with quite a lot of other military hardware (grav tanks, APCs, etc.). The Imperial Navy buys at TL-15, with some TL-14 equipment still in service (close escorts and other minor units), but the Marines seem to use TL-14 a lot more.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Canon has Imperial Army units as TL15 not 14.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
As I recall, a lot of troops are still equipped at technological level fourteen.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
You recall wrong, the order of battle for the FFW shows otherwise.
Imperial Marine grav tanks and APCs are TL-14 (according to MT and TNE). So is the top-end BD of CT and MT. So, while they may be TL-15 overall, a good chunk of their gear is TL-14.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
And yet their unit counters in FFW are TL15 not TL14.
Why the TL15 Imperium would keep using TL14 equipment is beyond me, especially since they have been TL15 for a couple of hundred years militarily.
Why the TL15 Imperium would keep using TL14 equipment is beyond me, especially since they have been TL15 for a couple of hundred years militarily.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Only because there is no higher TL item that is better, and modern artillery barrels are much higher tolerance than WWII era ones.
A10s and B52s are not WWII technology.
A10s and B52s are not WWII technology.
My recollection is that the TL14-15 transition was during and just after the Solomani Rim War, so a century and change ago. Given the glacial rate of change and tech adoption in the 3I, a century to replace all that stuff and get new contracts out, etc. seems about right. I don't have any other explanation, given how much better TL-15 fusion plants are than TL-14 ones, and that alone would make for smaller or more capable combat vehicles, not even considering TL-15 weapon options (though upgrading the gun will eat up a fair bit of the weight/volume savings from the TL-15 power plant - TL15 fusion guns are very power hungry).
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