[OOC] モバイルフレーム MOBILE FRAME - To the Stars!

[Krayzikk]

I'm still here, just been a little busy.

[pugbutter]

@Aristo Cool! If it's any consolation there were 11 video games released in the BattleTech canon during the nineties; including MechWarrior 2 which is widely considered to be the best one.

I plan on signing up for this. I just don't know how long it will take to catch up in replying to my current RPs.

[Slamurai]

@pugbutterI played the heck out of Mechwarrior IV long ago. Good times!
I've read a little bit of the Battletech novels, but most of my experience has been absorbing the lore in the sourcebooks. Never got into the tabletop game, as the only things popular around me are 40k and MtG.

[Foster]

@pugbutterI played the heck out of Mechwarrior IV long ago. Good times!
I've read a little bit of the Battletech novels, but most of my experience has been absorbing the lore in the sourcebooks. Never got into the tabletop game, as the only things popular around me are 40k and MtG.

@Aristo

Aside from, a few RPs... I was mostly the anti-mech antagonist.
-But for reasons...

So, um... if you need ideas for how not to die horribly if you have to eject while surrounded by mechs with adaptiv-camo and thermals in a dark alleyway...

[pugbutter]

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（ バンディット・トロイ Ｂａｎｄｉｔｔｏ Ｔｏｒｏｉ ）

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Troy Bandit Ｎａｍｅ：
His cockpit callsign is "Rooster." Ａｌｉａｓｅｓ：
24 Ａｇｅ：
July 31 Ｂｉｒｔｈｄａｙ：
Male Ｇｅｎｄｅｒ：

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Ｈｅｉｇｈｔ： 178cm
Ｗｅｉｇｈｔ： 84kg
Ｂｕｉｌｄ： Lean and toned
Ｅｙｅｓ： Br
Ｈａｉｒ： Br
Ｓｋｉｎ Ｔｏｎｅ： White with a slight tan
Ｔａｔｔｏｏｓ／Ｓｃａｒｓ／Ｐｉｅｒｃｉｎｇｓ： Tribal tattoos on forearms; piercings in both ear lobes.
Ｐｅｒｓｏｎａｌ Ｓｔｙｌｅ： Brown leather bomber jackets with shearling collars. Distressed, sometimes acid-washed jeans. Cowboy boots or white sneakers. Obnoxiously large sunglasses. Baseball caps turned the wrong way.

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Heterosexual Ｓｅｘｕａｌｉｔｙ：
Single Ｒｅｌａｔｉｏｎｓｈｉｐ Ｓｔａｔｕｓ：
Hotheaded, Loyal, Vain, Dutiful Ｐｅｒｓｏｎａｌｉｔｙ：
Unable to decide whether he wants his hair tucked behind his ears; lacing his shoes only halfway up; drinking on duty; swearing like a sailor. Singing in the shower and talking to his mech while he works on it. Ｈａｂｉｔｓ：
Lifting, cars, machinery in general Ｈｏｂｂｉｅｓ：
Selling out Ｆｅａｒｓ：

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Ｇｅｎｅｒａｌ Ｓｋｉｌｌｓ： Proficiency with small arms (pistols) and blade weapons; mechanical know-how; athletics, especially sprinting and pole-vaulting; an excellent pilot, but one who is hindered by obsolete technology. Demolitions expert, with a special talent in mech-on-mech operations.

Ｉｎｖｅｎｔｏｒｙ／Ｐｏｓｓｅｓｓｉｏｎｓ：

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He's been with the Ghosts for 7 years and going on missions for 2. (Hey; training ain't free.) Ｙｅａｒｓ ｏｆ Ｃｏｍｂａｔ Ｅｘｐｅｒｉｅｎｃｅ：
Ｂａｃｋｇｒｏｕｎｄ：
Troy is a martian, whose love for the mechanical and the technological was instilled in him at a very young age, as the garage was filled with old, expensive landcars which the males of the family loved to work on. Unfortunately, in his attempts to keep Troy motivated to do well in school, the boy's father found only resistance, rebellion, and the wrath of raging teenage hormones. The boy dropped out of school at 16 and lied about his age in an attempt join the space fleet as an engineer; after being rejected, he tried mercenary work with the Chimera Corps, the elites of the Venetian ring-sector, but they weren't interested in a lad who couldn't even fight yet. (Psh. He didn't really want to join anyway, he'd tell you; they'd have made him cut his hair.) He was getting desperate then; too unskilled to be a soldier but too proud to return to his disappointed father, finally, as he was spending the last of his credits on ginger beer and noodles, a derelict in the rainy streets of Ganymede, the Ghosts took him in, probably out of pity, as a repairman.

He's been training ever since. He excels at hand-to-hand and at small arms marksmanship. However, his synch ratings are very poor in standard Frames, due to his rash and foolhardy disposition; so for his first real mission (having become a competent mechanic on the mothership in that time), he was trained with a more old-fashioned, outdated model, which they had found for cheap, equipped in its large and clunky cockpit with a multitude of manual buttons, levers, and joysticks. Troy is in love with his steel woman; he's spent much of his adult life cleaning it up and outfitting it to his precise specs, and proving that he can be just as useful on the battlefield as the poseurs taking baths in their liquid oxygen tanks with their fancy neural links and synch ratios.

Of course, the number of missions he can go on is limited by his rig's terrestrial design, but that won't stop him. He needs time between missions to perform maintenance on the company's machines anyway.

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[+]

[pugbutter]

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Technical Data

Model Number: MB-P08-A/Sc ("Missile Boat" model derived from Prototype #8; custom designations in the areas of auxiliary and support roles)
Code Name: "Odin"
Manufacturer: LaCroix Industries
Dimensions: 6.0 meters outstretched
Weight: 22.14 metric tons dry

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Armaments

Fixed Armaments:

• (x2) LRM-6 missile pods; 21 missiles per pod, one pod per shoulder.
• (x2) (x1,350rnds ea.) 14.5mm Surtur blowback-powered machine guns, located on either side of the nose/cockpit region. With alternating fire between the two barrels, together these guns shoot at a modest 760 rounds per minute.

Hand Armaments:

• Right arm
  • 22mm grenade launcher
  • 16mm grenade launcher
• Left arm
  • 22mm grenade launcher
  • 16mm grenade launcher

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Miscellaneous

Technical & Historical Notes: It comes as no surprise that the Odin's commission was so short-lived. Besides the obvious disadvantages of bipedal Frames with little or no slope-climbing capabilities, this particular model suffers from many more: quite simply, the designers didn't know what they wanted it to be. It sports an enormous number of long-range missiles, but its armor is impractically heavy for rear duty, instead implying more personal and close-range deployment against other mechs. The number of heat sinks it sports is similarly ludicrous; although these helps with long-range bombardment, they drastically affect the machine's fuel efficiency, and of course serve to slow it down by adding more mass to the design. It already demands an enormously powerful engine, but then even more power allows it to move extremely quickly for its size, burning a simply exorbitant amount of fuel. On top of all this the thing (in its original specs) sports not two, not four, but six antipersonnel machine guns, three on either side of the cockpit, for blowing away literal legions of ground troops. The overall result is that in the designers' attempt to create a jack-of-all-trades machine, they created a master of nothing; in their desire to create an end-all-be-all super-mech, they created an inefficient, pricey vehicle with an identity crisis.

In the secondary market these outdated, clunky mechs are pieces of junk, and their price tag reflects this fact.

That of course is before Troy got his hands on one, at which point it gradually was modified to become a dedicated long-range artillery unit. His specialty is demolitions: things which go "boom" at medium and long ranges, often behind a hilltop or outside of a city where a conflict has broken out. Slab by slab he has lightened the enormous armor loadout, replacing heavy alloys with lighter, thinner ferro-fibers. He has also cut his antipersonnel weaponry by two thirds, sporting only two automatic guns. This has allowed him then to equip a smaller engine, which spends less fuel, which allows him in turn to stay in the field longer. Only the heat sinks have received minimal streamlining, as Troy's payload is intended as a single, enormous blitzkrieg strike; cracking the enemy's shell before the girls have moved in to initiate full contact with the enemy.
Color Scheme: Standard is unpainted gun-metal grey with black-tinted windows. Troy's is olive drab with a sneering fanged mouth painted at the "beak."
Anything Else: He calls it the Iron Chicken.

[Krayzikk]

my e y e s

[pugbutter]

@Krayzikk I didn't choose the ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ life. The ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ life chose me.

[Foster]

@Krayzikk I didn't choose the ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ life. The ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃ life chose me.

@pugbutter

Just so y'know, you're so far the only guy on an anime-inspired team of mech-pilots.

[pugbutter]

@Foster And of course half of them are gay. That'd be just Troy's luck. 😞

[pugbutter]

k, frame app is now up too. I know you said to be 6-9 tons heavy, but even after scaling the thing down to 18ft tall or so, I don't think I can justify it being so light. Its design looks pretty dense.

Other than that, everything should be in order.

[Krayzikk]

(x2) NCPa coilgun, chambered for 22mm rounds of monocrystalline copper-coated tungsten. Clearing the gun at 5% the speed of light (≈15,000 km/s), the projectile vaporizes into a highly concentrated cloud of ionized plasma with special AP capabilities. Colloquially referred to as the "Nincompoop" by affectionate soldiers.

@pugbutter

[pugbutter]

I mean

I tried to think of something cooler and edgier to be the nickname for something with the acronym "NCPa," but

it's hard okay pls stop bullying me :'(

[Foster]

"N***a imma CapPa yo ass" <--- edgy enough?

You Nocappa my ass, I nocappa yours.

Anyways... may wanna check current railgun velocities, I think we're currently redlining at around 5 km/s with single-shot building-sized guns.

Correction, 2.4 km/sec. That, and even currently railguns kinda suck for their size.
Talks of an '18" shell' that wieghs "11 kg" while the typical 5" naval gun acieves similar muzzle-energies with a shell possessing 3x the mass.

The fact that these 18" HVP shells can actually fit down the barrel of a Mk 45 5" gun kinda indicates someone measured something wrong in their tests.

Current, 1km/sec bullets already leave plenty enough of a vapor-trail, if that's the aesthetic you're going for.

Assuming 22mm shell wieghs 1 kg, it's a 25 MJ gun here to get 5 km/sec (assuming no friction). Meanwhile, a WW2 era 57mm anti-tank gun does about 37.5 MJ at the muzzle for probably less mass.

#killjoy of the year

[pugbutter]

Good stuff! So how are the navy's tests on bipedal battle-mechas going?

[Slamurai]

Hand Armaments:

• Right arm
  • (x2) NCPa coilgun, chambered for 22mm rounds of monocrystalline copper-coated tungsten. Clearing the gun at 5% the speed of light (≈15,000 km/s), the projectile vaporizes into a highly concentrated cloud of ionized plasma with special AP capabilities. Colloquially referred to as the "Nincompoop" by affectionate soldiers.

@pugbutter

5% the speed of light (≈15,000 km/s)

@pugbutter

Yeah, I would urge you to reevaluate this one. NASA's tests at the Remote Hypervelocity Test Laboratory simulate the effect of debris on spacecraft using four two-stage light-gas guns. These only reach 8.5 km/s with 0.05 mm to 22.2 mm diameter projectiles. 15,000 km/s is blisteringly, incomprehensibly, bewilderingly fast.

I might also advise folks to gravitate towards conventional ballistics, to keep things simple. I don't want to bog things down in nitty-gritty, so circumventing the fine details in descriptions are a-okay. All that really needs to be said is what it is and what it's used for (see the prebuilt frames section).

Long story short - K.I.S.S. & don't be afraid to skimp on the deets.

[pugbutter]

I think it's rather silly to nitpick some pseudosciences, but not others, while the characters will be controlling fully articulated human-shaped bipeds with "sticks, throttles, and foot pedals¹."

But that's me.

Anyway I'd rather you look at it like a very slow laser than a very fast bullet. That's the practical part coming out the end of the barrel. I just wanted to explain why one laser might be more armor-piercing than another laser, and also why it can only be used at longer distances, so I stole borrowed some technobabble from my favorite series of Japanese science fiction novels.

[Slamurai]

By that logic, if we allowed every pseudoscience possibility under the sun, the setting would be a mess with crazy tech. The mecha genre pretty much assumes some liberties will be taken by virtue of its nature, however there are limits that can be placed on it. Keep in mind this is basically 'future 1993' a-la 80's scifi shows that poorly estimated the near-future of mankind.

Anyways, to avoid disputes, I'm just pointing out what fits my vision for the setting. In the IntCheck, I outlined my general outlook on weaponry: roleplayerguild.com/posts/4051269

<Snipped quote by Krayzikk>

So the aesthetics of the frames are very similar to the mechs of VOTOMS or Heavy Gear. A quick Google search should get the idea across. They typically range from 4 to 6 meters in height, and weigh 5 to 9 metric tons. The majority are humanoid, with wheels or treads on the soles of the feet. The cockpit is located in the chest.

Tech-wise, we're looking at the real robot genre. Frames are machines, military hardware bound by the laws of physics and technology. Wikipedia's Heavy Gears entry pretty much mirrors how frames operate: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Gear#Heavy..

We're also working with conventional ballistic weaponry. We might see a few gauss or rail guns down the line, and energy weapons are so experimental that they haven't been formally issued yet.

I have a much more detailed write-up I've used in the past, but I'll save it for the OOC, as I'm making some changes.

@Aristo

[pugbutter]

So just to be clear: this quote, from the same thread, is obsolete now?

I was thinking it over long and hard; I've decided to follow the rule-of-cool and allow it. Macross is too iconic to pass up the inspiration! However, these will be rare, experimental frames, and require good explanation for possession.

@Aristo

[Slamurai]

So just to be clear: this quote, from the same thread, is obsolete now?

<Snipped quote by Aristo>

@pugbutter

Not at all. That was a different issue - I decided to allow one instance of a transformable Macross-like frame. Remember that I also allowed you to use a Battletech-esque design that deviated from the norm.

One or two examples of rule-of-cool does not automatically mean everything will fly. I still have control over the setting and what is permissible, as GM.