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Storm
Draconis Combine
Chu-i
Joined: 06-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 278
Location: United States
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 Posted: 25-Jun-2009 07:32 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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Firstly, this isn't an attempt to start a "which is better" argument. Truth is, I don't care (because we all know it's Battletech). 
I'm working on a bit of fiction/campaign idea in which a mech unit is assigned to invade the Heavy Gear world of Terranova. I'd like to remain somewhat true to the mechanics of both universes, so after doing some research, here's what I've found:
*Gears are WAY more mobile than mechs.
*Gears weigh on average, about 14-15 tons.
*Gear weapons do not have anything like battlemech weapon ranges (that's right out of a DP9 weapon list).
*Gear weapons do not do the damage a mech weapon does.
So the conclusion is that a mech would waste a gear, IF it could hit it.
Does anyone know of any good Heavy Gear resources where I could find background information, fluff, or some technical aspects of a heavy gear (I mean tonnage, speed, and the things we battletech players use. I don't give a rat's patootie about "Threat factor" or stuff like that)?
And yes, the announcer from the Heavy Gear cartoon will be one of the casualties.
Storm
8)
_________________
Storm  "The More that thou sweatest and swearest in training, the less thou bleedest and diest in combat."--Dick Marcinko
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Merl
Draconis Combine
Gunjin
Joined: 29-Jun-2009 13:43
Posts: 32
Location: United States
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| Posted: 29-Jun-2009 18:40 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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I'll open this can of worms....
The Heavy Gear cartoon was based off of a pen and paper version of the game. I think it was out of print for a few years, but I saw a booth at Gencon that was plugging the game so it's probably back in print in in 1 form or another.
My impression of the gears is they are more in line with battle armour/ protomechs then battlemechs. The gears also use advanced ICE engines.
I don't think the Gears will stand a chance against Battlemechs. The Battletech world has too many units that can counter the gears including battle armour which is just as nimble. Also, if the Gear is going against WOB/Clan, the WOB/Clan force will nuke from orbit first and then invade. I'm pretty sure the Gearverse does not have a space navy to speak of.
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Storm
Draconis Combine
Chu-i
Joined: 06-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 278
Location: United States
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| Posted: 30-Jun-2009 08:50 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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Merl,
Oh I agree. The biggest gear I could find weighed 14 tons or so. Not sure about the striders, mega-gears and such. I'm trying to dig up more fluff and technical aspects for this story. At one point I did find the HG weapons list, along with ranges and damages. If memory serves, the HG railgun weighs only about 500 kilograms (half a metric ton)
I thought "WHOOPEE!! I'm going to cover a mech with these, and make the famous 'Gausszilla' look like a Flea in comparison!"
Then I looked at the range 80!! Meters that is. 8 battletech hexes. So if the range is 1/10 then the damage column would be relatively the same size. . . . Damage of 40 divide by 10 equals . . . 4.
Wow. I am so underwhelmed.
And from playing Heavy Gear II I learned that when a Gear gets hit, it generally falls down, stalls out, staggers, can't shoot back for a second. . .
*BLEEP*ing annoying.
Give me my good ol' asault 'mech and the ability to shrug off a few good hits any day. That's when I came up with the idea of a battlemech unit invading Terra Nova and beating the snot out of them.
Storm
8)
Still piloting a heavily modified Marauder II
_________________
Storm "The More that thou sweatest and swearest in training, the less thou bleedest and diest in combat."--Dick Marcinko
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Sleeping Dragon
Draconis Combine
Tai-i
Joined: 06-Apr-2005 00:00
Posts: 4820
Location: Czech Republic
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| Posted: 30-Jun-2009 14:09 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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Weeeel... You can always say, that it's just anther of those Proto-pests... or Proto whatever rhe claners call it
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The dragon NEVER sleeps!
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Merl
Draconis Combine
Gunjin
Joined: 29-Jun-2009 13:43
Posts: 32
Location: United States
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| Posted: 30-Jun-2009 16:23 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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Also, the normal Battletech weapon scale is wayyyyyyy off from "reality". The best way to scale the weapons for both Gears and Mechs is to use the Solaris Seven rules for weapons and then scale the Gear weapons to that.
From what I remember from the pen and paper game, the Gears were very squishy.
The gears would have problem trying to beat Bandit Kindom cast-offs nevermind front line units
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Storm
Draconis Combine
Chu-i
Joined: 06-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 278
Location: United States
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| Posted: 01-Jul-2009 07:11 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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I think for simplicity's sake, I was just going to use level 2 rules, and the standard ranges. Firstly, I think they're more common, and secondly, I don't have Solaris 7.
Storm
8)
_________________
Storm "The More that thou sweatest and swearest in training, the less thou bleedest and diest in combat."--Dick Marcinko
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Merl
Draconis Combine
Gunjin
Joined: 29-Jun-2009 13:43
Posts: 32
Location: United States
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| Posted: 01-Jul-2009 16:32 Post subject: Re: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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| Storm wrote: | I think for simplicity's sake, I was just going to use level 2 rules, and the standard ranges. Firstly, I think they're more common, and secondly, I don't have Solaris 7.
Storm
8) |
The Gear weapons will probably scale better with the infantry weapons in the Techmanual. The Gears are way smaller then mechs.
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Storm
Draconis Combine
Chu-i
Joined: 06-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 278
Location: United States
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| Posted: 01-Jul-2009 22:30 Post subject: Re: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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Probably, but I don't have the techmanual, either.
Storm
8)
_________________
Storm "The More that thou sweatest and swearest in training, the less thou bleedest and diest in combat."--Dick Marcinko
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Vagabond
Mercenary
Mr. Referee
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 5788
Location: United States
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| Posted: 02-Jul-2009 05:03 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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i've read the HeavyGear stuff and while it is true that they are no match solo against mechs because of how their weapon damage and armor scale, it is not impossible for the HG weapons to truly hurt mechs.
The HG system gives more focus on how good the shot is over how powerful the weapon itself is. You make your attack roll, they make their defense check, and if you beat their defense check you take you MoS and multiply it by the weapons damage modifier.
After figuring the final weapon damage you compare it to the targets Armor value and determine what bad stuff happens. If you beat the Armor by 1 to 1.99x it takes light damage, 2 to 2.99x heavy, and 3x destroyed. If you do not deal enough damage to equal or beat the Armor, your attack bounces off the armor with no effect.
Example Armor Values
Fighter Jet 8 to 15
Tank 20 to 30
Naval Ships 50 to 150
Example Weapons
LMG x3 Dmg
HMG x4 Dmg
Light AC x8 Dmg
Med AC x10 Dmg
Hvy AC x12 Dmg
Light Rocket x12 Dmg
Anti-Gear Missile x15 Dmg
Light Particle Accelerator x10 Dmg
Hvy Particle Accelerator x15 Dmg
Hvy Railgun x35
Sadly, the HG system does not offer a lot where i can find it on the size or weight of their weapon systems. It seems that cost is more of a factor then weight. They even say that while it is theoretically possible to create a super kick butt gun, it would be so costly as to be impossible to design and build quickly or at all.
Anyway. The best you can get on your MoS under normal situations is 5 [if i read it right, lol.] So most of the weapons listed could hit the likes of say a frigate or destroyer class vessel and do light damage with a very well aimed shot. Many of the Tanks will be taking light or heavy damage.
So if you take this into BT, most Mechs are less armored then main combat Tanks but more maneuverable and resistant to the effects of damage. The suggested Armor for Mecha is 20 to 30 like Tanks which sounds about right when you compare Battlemechs to Tanks and the few Naval support vehicles that you would fit the bill of a Frigate. So many of the HG weapons would hit Battlemechs for light to heavy damage based on how good of a shot they are but unlike Tanks would be less likely to cause critical damage per hit. So one way to figure it is to figure out average damage then figure out how bad that would hurt a generic Battlemech and then assign that weapon a BT Dmg value.
However, HG does have rules for Ablative Armor [which is the style BT uses] which says that you add the Ablative Value to your Armor value when figuring out effects. So if you have 30 Armor and 15 Ablative and an attack hits that direction your Value would be 45. But as the Ablative Armor is in fact ablative it looses 1pt for every 10 dmg your weapon causes to the target. Normally, HG only allows you to have 50 percent of your Armor value in Ablative per defensive arc but as a setting modification you could figure that BT units can have up to 200 percent your Armor value in Ablative but gets less base Armor per unit then HG units. So while a Gear might have 30 Base Armor and 15 Ablative, a BT unit would have 15 Base Armor and 30 Ablative. In this way, BT Internal would be more compared to HG Armor.
In this case, you could say that HG units are in fact more resistant to criticals then BT units but if they suffer one the effect is far more disastrous. So a HG is made up of only Internal but has a sliding scale for criticals. say that HG get an inherent -1 to the number of critical hits but use the vehicle critical hit table to determine effect with a +2. So roll as per Mechs for the # of criticals but then roll on the Vehicle table with +2 to see what happens.
So from what i can tell and what i would personally do, HGs would not be totally devastated by Battlemechs or BT units, but they would be weaker then Mechs and even BT Tanks but would ruin BA and Protomechs. In mass they could drop Mechs but would likely takes two or three to one in losses. Also, HGs have less endurance in how far they can travel but some of their weapons are better [higher RoF on cannons and Anti-Gear Guided Ordnance]. However, HG does have several things that BT doesn't have: Magnetic Repulsion, Guided Missiles, Landships, apparently extensive Space Warships, and Gateships.
Landships are Terra Novas equal to a wet Navy but for the land. I'd imagine that these would be very dangerous units to face [espacially considering HG has weapons for this class of unit while BT jumps from Mech scale to Sub-Capital and Capital with nothing in between. Facing a ground-effect repulsion Iowa equivalent Landship would hurt any Mech company badly.
Gateships are HGs equivalent to Jumpships but instead of taking only the units docked with it, Gateships open a Singularity that other vessels can pass into in order to travel to other star systems. Evidently this action can only be performed at specific discontinuity nodes but can offer greater distances then Jumpdrives. The result is that you can build your ships without bulky FTL-drives and group them with one or two GateShips as the center of the your fleet. In BT speak, a fleet of Monitors deployed around 1 or 2 Warships. Just for comparison, the example Gateship has a 70 Base Armor [Control Tower] with its biggest direct fire weapon doing x20 and missile doing x30.
So, while HGs air assets are on the thin end due to advances in energy weapon advances that allow ground based units to shoot them down at nearly the speed of light their space assets are on par or larger then most BT factions. Also, most of the HG weapons have effective ranges between 400 and 4000m with most in the 400, 800, 2000 ranges. So 13 to 133 hexes with many at 13, 26, and 66 hexes.
So, that is my feed back. I think that a HG and BT crossover would be interesting and a new twist. I do not, however, think that BT would just push HG right over quickly.
PS. Storm, contact me on AIM at UzielCloud
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one must work hard to cultivate the mind and body. and one must always cultivate the mind.
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Storm
Draconis Combine
Chu-i
Joined: 06-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 278
Location: United States
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| Posted: 02-Jul-2009 07:21 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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Vagabond,
Thanks for the load of info. That will help a lot. I think it would be a boring campaign/story if the Btech forces just walked in and won hands down.
How big is a strider compared to a mech? What's a mega-gear?
How fast do they go?
Storm
8)
_________________
Storm "The More that thou sweatest and swearest in training, the less thou bleedest and diest in combat."--Dick Marcinko
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Vagabond
Mercenary
Mr. Referee
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 5788
Location: United States
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| Posted: 02-Jul-2009 08:10 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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Speed: each ground MP is equal to 6 kph, air 30 kph, and space 0.1g. the Gears i can look at have speeds between 36 and 66 kph with Walking mode and up to 90 kph with Ground mode [their skates in the feet.]
the Mammoth strider [example i can find] has a max speed of 30 kph, weighs 21,880 kg operational, and a height of 6.8m.
Never read anything about a mega-gear. sry. do you know what source?
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one must work hard to cultivate the mind and body. and one must always cultivate the mind.
//^(^_^)^\\
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Storm
Draconis Combine
Chu-i
Joined: 06-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 278
Location: United States
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| Posted: 04-Jul-2009 00:42 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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 Let me get this straight. The Mammoth Strider, the biggest gear around, goes 30kph, and weighs just over 21 tons?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry. It's an assault pilot thing.
BUT the speed info helps a lot. As for the mega gear, there was an obscure line somewhere in the cartoon series calling something or other a "mega-gear", and the inside cover of one of the books shows gears of several different sizes. In the rear were some that were battlemech-sized, but I don't remember where I saw it, only that they were bigger than a Strider.
Thank you for the info, Vagabond. That gives me some idea of how fast they are. Do you know of any sites other than DreamPods that have any info?
Storm
8)
_________________
Storm "The More that thou sweatest and swearest in training, the less thou bleedest and diest in combat."--Dick Marcinko
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Vagabond
Mercenary
Mr. Referee
Joined: 04-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 5788
Location: United States
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| Posted: 06-Jul-2009 23:48 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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low level stuff on various wikis, but i don't know much else.
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one must work hard to cultivate the mind and body. and one must always cultivate the mind.
//^(^_^)^\\
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Storm
Draconis Combine
Chu-i
Joined: 06-Feb-2002 00:00
Posts: 278
Location: United States
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| Posted: 07-Jul-2009 07:19 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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Good Grief! Don't these HG types build sites like we Battletech types do? What's wrong with those TerraNovoids anyway?
Storm
8)
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Storm "The More that thou sweatest and swearest in training, the less thou bleedest and diest in combat."--Dick Marcinko
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Ghost Bear
Clan Ghost Bear
Point Commander
Joined: 29-Jul-2009 13:31
Posts: 10
Location: United States
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| Posted: 30-Jul-2009 15:04 Post subject: Battletech versus Heavy Gear |
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didn't sam have copy of the game that also speks on gear. cors the monster from battle mtn. aka his wife  , may have chucked it. since talkes to still so call him and see what he has.
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