I adore Super Heavies&LAM, all the crazy mech designs really. If they could just get some proper weapons on them, they would be the kings of the battlefield they are supposed too be! A super heavy is more like a mobile fortress. So many tactical&strategic possibilities!
I honestly think, the Ares could be a really effective weapons platform, but there are some serious flaws with its construction. For one, there is the eclectic mix of fixed components: Clan ER-lasers Inner Sphere ballistics and no less than *6* of the extremely situational A-Pods, filling slots and tonnage, and adding explosive ammunition that has to be CASE II protected. The other problem is the very strange Republic of the Sphere quirk to not fully commit to something (except for the Malice MAL-YZ, they were fully committed to throw everything on that one, to make it an overpriced piece of trash). In case of the Ares, which is already an extremely expensive machine, the use of Clan double heat sinks could have freed a lot of internal space, allowing it to mount Ferro-Fibrous armour which in turn could free several tons of pod space. I experimented with the ‘mech for a bit, and by redesigning it from the Eando-Steel frame up, got something that mounted 5 Clan ER-PPC’ slaved to a targeting computer, a clan Laser Anti-Missile System, an Angel ECM to create a protective bubble a C³ slave for networking with others and 40 double heat sinks wrapped 24,5 tons of Clan grade FF. This resulted in a pretty darn premium ‘mech v ‘mech combatant. Translated into Omni-Pods that machine would hold 70 tons at 43 slots (47 by removing lower arm and hand-actuators) allowing even for several usually very bulky weapons, since they only take up half the space on a Superheavy.
Hello Grim, Another good video. I am not a great fan of the super heavy Battlemechs, but I can see that someone put some real life thought into their design, function, and alternate load outs. As for the 3-person cockpit. Some say that such a thing is 'inefficient', whereas I feel it is quite the opposite. Dedicating one person to pilot the Mech and maintain unit cohesion is a good idea. Allowing the other two persons to concentrate on the weaponry and target selection on a moment by moment basis. They could easily split the Mech's weaponry between them efficiently, and target multiple Mechs easily. So, although I am not a 'fan' of the Mech type, I can see the advantages of it's design and usage on the Battlefields in the Battletech Universe. Just my thoughts, Speaking, Frank-ly
Sorry for the necromancing of an 11 month old comment, this can be proven by issues experienced by French tanks in WW2. WHereas the Germans used 3 crewmen in a Panzer 2 and four in the later Panzer 4, the French tanks had one person doing the loading, gunnery and aiming and one driver. It proved simply too much for one person to handle all that without any computer support.
I love that last story, it is a re-telling of a battle from the American Civil War [And I believe the Roman Civil Wars that ended in Caesar gaining control of the soon to be Empire]. In both cases a vastly outnumbered general [Stonewall Jackson and I believe Scipio] fooled the enemy general [MacLellan and one of Caesar's underlings] into thinking the defending army [the outnumbered one] was vastly larger by sending patrols out with different soldiers and false regimental standards making a couple hundred soldiers look like several thousand.
There's a story I remember hearing from the Six-Day-War of a tank that was left to patrol alone. It peered over the dunes or knolls, fired a shot, then quickly retreated where it changed position, climbed and fired from another dune. This way it made the approaching force think there was a regiment of tanks and they ultimately backed off. Heard this story from an IDF officer, so...
I have the standard Zeus variant and the hephaestus variant miniatures. They are actually rather undergunned, I thought... But despite their slow speed they are deviously maneuverable and they are tougher then damn near anything. Give me five hells horses quad Er ppc assault mechs over these anyway though.
The Hera is the only battlemech able to equip a heavy gauss rifle in the arm. A normal mech would have the arm damaged beyond use or flat ripped off due to the significant recoil. Same for tank turrets, the gun has to be hull or casemate mounted for vehicles.
That's not quite the case, it's the only one that can fit a heavy gauss rifle in the arm, any mech with the crit space can fit one in a torso. The Fafnir 5X even carries two.
I need to know if one of the tripods, either the Poseidon or the Ares, can take on a Titan (Warhammer 40k universe) -- No, not an Imperator or a Warlord, we know they outmass even the superheavies. But a Warhound Scout Titan? That should be a good match. I am fairly certain that TS-EMP weapon will take down its void shields, so it will be armor to armor, weapon to weapon. Can Battletech take this for all Urbanmechs everywhere?
The voidshield is the only thing that is giving the Warhound a hope in Hell if the mech is built out in the way suggested by Boseeinteinshake suggests above. If it can hold out against the PPC barrage long enough to get one or two hits in though, the Warhound will probably win. Honestly, a smaller but faster mech toting less PPCs has a much better chance. I doubt the Ares is fast enough to stay behind the Warhound, but something like an Executioner would be more than capable of keeping behind the beast. The shielding would still go down eventually, and once that happened, the pilot of the Battletech mech is free to start mauling anything exposed that looks important.
I would love to have those in MW5 and compare with engine swaps in unlocked mechbay... I think Poseidon is a better variant from Ares though ...reading from SARNA alone. Playing around with weapons and taking to consideration already 23km/h more, double heatsink number and only 4 tons of armour less while having 10t less weight overall it crush what i could squezze from Ares. Also who really would prefer to pilot 35km/h vs 58km/h ...?!
Not very impressed by the weapons config. For something that big, it lacks that '1 shot 1 kill ' punch. I know it's an Omni, and can be better configured, but there are Assaults out there with just as much pod space, and you can buy a Assault and a heavy for the price of one of these things ( or a whole company of lights for that matter). Bigger isn't always better; look what happened with the Yamato; biggest, most expensive Battleship in the world, taken out by a bunch of cheap airplanes.
In a universe with ultra light alloys, why not go even bigger? Why not 400 tonne!? Give it Antiaircraft, as Aerospace would bomb the heck out of it and use UltraAC20s to shred it. Have a bridge, 4 or 5 crew.
I like the idea of these things, but as I said before I think they’d suffer the same fate as all giant weapon platforms. But this week got me really thinking about their locomotion, and I’m having a hard time visualizing it from the drawings as designed. The Command and Conquer games had some large tripod units, and the animation on those things was really weird. But they were more organic looking. How does this thing walk?
Never quite understood these. Eith the increased weight of the frame and painfully slow speed, they don't seem to have great advantages. Also, 3 personnel per mech seems inefficient. Cool idea, but I'd rather take an Atlas any day over one of these.
If you look at 40K ( I know, different universe), almost all Titans above the Warhound have a three person crew. And I agree with you, I'd rather take an Assault over one. (In my case it would be a Omni, but that's just my play style).
@@gregdomenico1891 Titans are much bigger than battlemechs, however, and arguably more bulky (even counting the Warhound). These superheavies are probably best suited for base defense or short range patrols.
re: 3 personnel On one hand, I get that having a single pilot can really streamline the process, but there is a reason why so many current military vehicles are crew-operated. The games allow us to control them with a keyboard and mouse but actual machines have a lot of doodads and controls involved in movement operations, to say nothing about operating weaponry and decision making. Watch any MWO video and you can easily see players getting extreme tunnel vision, or getting caught up on terrain.
I would fitt each with 2 medium lasers, at least 4 of 6 could converge at your target at any given time with all 6 under right angle, and all could take out those pesky infantry and helis that force you to waste your time aiming as they harrass your ass rather than focusing on main heavy hitters. Super idea.
Yeah thanks but no thanks, would rather use a Supernova with a radical proto heatsink kit . More bang for my bucket and i can use it . Slap a Light engine on it upgrade it with TSM and you are faster, More mobile and still had c Bills to upgrade Electronics .
Oh boy. Another of the most inefficient war machines BT Lore has to offer. Where to start... Tripod designs by nature are designed to hold a thing entirely stationary. The moment you attempt to move them where the down force of gravity is applied, you're screwed. The mech would essentially have to take short "hops" to move as all of the legs caught up. Observe nature for just a moment before you respond to this. How many naturally existing three legged animals, of any kind, actually exist. I'll wait. Right, now that we've concluded the number is zero, let's go ahead and move on. Legs work in even numbers. Always even numbers. Half of your legs move you forward, the other half provide stability during the movement, unless your gait is a sprint, then different rules apply for bi and quad pedal creatures. More on this at the end. Moving onto the armaments. 43 tons of available weaponry on a 135 ton mech? Absolutely atrocious. Something this size and this heavy should be carrying, at minimum, 65 tons of available armament. A Dire Wolf (Daishi) stripped of armaments but full on armor still alone has 50 tons of available armament tonnage to work with, only requires a single pilot, and moves faster than this monster, without the stability problems. The armament choice by the designers clearly speaks to a lack of firsthand battle knowledge. I get that it's an omni, but when you're stuff LRM 10's, SRM 2's, and small lasers, into something this big, you've not done your homework. The argument will wind up being "but how do you deal with lights that got in close without small arms", the answer to which is going to be sell one of your Ares mechs, and buy, literally, two dozen lights, and call them an escort force. Something this big serves only one purpose. Point defense. Hit hard, from a long way off, and never, ever, under any circumstances, move. In order for anything even over 80 tons, imo, to be effective, you'd strip out the torso gyros in their entirety, and scrap the legs completely, favoring tank treads instead. The tank treads would increase their mobility by a factor of three, not just in forward movement, but the ability to execute leg assisted turns in a rapid motion, leaving them far less defenseless in a combat scenario. Tread legs would also aid in the overall stability of the mech, and if the worst happened and both sets of treads were taken out, you still have a torso that can 360 gyro and act as a turret, rather than collapsing to the ground. In short, the Rhodes Project was clearly siphoning money from the Sphere Republic, over promising and under delivering. Government contracts can be lucrative, but this is clearly a scam, and the entire executive board of the company should have been lined up against a wall and shot for ever conceiving this abomination. The government officials that greenlit the project should probably get the Mussolini treatment.
I didn't read this entire comment, but... I did try to imagine something of this size taking a slow step and it... doesn't work out. It always starts to fall over. That's why when I first envisioned superheavies, I always imagined them with at least 4 legs. I was sort surprised to see tripods being represented. It just doesn't make sense
Bravo! That was a pleasure to read. I'm a mechanical engineer, everything you said echoes how I feel. My friends hate me pointing out design issues in scifi like you've just done 😂.
@@GrimDarkNarrator - Thank you for making the video. I know I'm grognarding on this a bit, it's just a wholly impractical machine. Excellent work as always.
@@venomousgoose5023 Yeah. Pretty much the sum point. Tripods cannot be used effectively in motion. Generally anything with an odd number of legs suffers similar problems, where you have to constantly shift the center of gravity to account for uneven forces applied.
