Other than Battletech are there any settings that focus more on practical vehicles oriented around cheap production costs and logistics?

>>96155329 (OP)
If battletech already does that then why do you need another setting that does the exact same thing?

>>96155372
if theres setting with cool spaceship, why would you want other setting that also have cool space ship?

>>96155380
I wouldn't, I would be satisfied with that setting and it's cool spaceships

>>96155372
Battletech doesn’t do that, though.

Not that there aren’t plenty of settings that do.

>>96155329 (OP)
>Battletech
>settings that focus more on practical vehicles oriented around cheap production costs and logistics?
What? For real? I know about BV and shit, what else is there?

>>96155459
>>96155440
Battletech definitely does that, the titular battlemechs are used in part because they’re the cheapest vehicles to actually field (conventional vehicles like tanks are cheaper to produce in planet, but MUCH more expensive to transport, so they’re only used for garrisons, and while ASF’s are powerful, they’re more expensive than battlemechs, and can’t be repaired or scavenged as easily after a battle)

>>96155479
>Battletech definitely does that, the titular battlemechs are used in part because they’re the cheapest vehicles to actually field (conventional vehicles like tanks are cheaper to produce in planet, but MUCH more expensive to transport, so they’re only used for garrisons,

You're the only person who ever says that, and it goes counter to enormous amounts of lore.

>>96156408
You can transport 1 mech or 2 medium vehicles for the same cost. The mech can deal with more terrain, is environmentally sealed, and less vulnerable to critical or motive hits. Logistics being the main bottleneck for military operations has always been part of battletech.
>>96155459
Campaign operations is a whole rulebook based around logistics for the game, it's great if you love the crunch.

>>96155329 (OP)
>Battletech
>practical vehicles

the Dropzone Commander setting was this kind of thing. all the vehicles are designed to be super light (and a lot of them essentially fold flat when not in use) for ease of transport. since true to the name most of the combat is dropping forces in to a zone, hitting an objective and then rapidly extracting.
some of the factions have mechs but they're also light and fold flat. except for the obligatory one race of advanced aliens that have teleportation.

>>96156681
The battlemechs are used because they're cheaper to transport than conventional vehicles, and cheaper to produce than ASFs, and they can be easily salvaged if they're damaged

>>96155329 (OP)
Unironically Star Wars

>>96156832
people being retarded, never think through how hard it is to transport 200 dudes and their afv's, the food, air and water they need. THROUGH SPACE.
they literally cannot understand how much cheaper it is to bring only four-12 guys and their big stompy robots.

>>96159219
Wouldn't it be just as cheap, if not more so, to bring 4-12 dudes and their far-more-effective-than-mechs tanks?

>>96156832
Also because they're really strong and powerful, and can handily defeat different forces and capture territory in many different environments.

>>96159237
lolno. the tank is useless once its tracks are torched. meanwhile the mech can still be combat effective with an arm and a leg shot off.

also, those tanks have multiple crew, so again, now you're schlepping air, food and water for 50 guys again. still horrifically costly.

to bring the expeditionary force projection of ONE union with 12 mechs, in conventionals, you need multiple fortress class / overlord class, modified to carry infantry bays and vehicle bays. and you'll be running those droppers at like, 1/3 capacity in order to fit enough food, air and water in them.

which is when One plucky union from a merc outfit with mechs, and a few powered armour infantry wipe out your whole force and capture themselves some primo big droppers to sell off for billions of Cbills.

you would effectively just be GIVING the droppers away.

now if your planet has a vee manufacturer and a fusion engine plant, you can EASILY build a few million tanks to make your world a fortress. but to actually go offworld and do shit, you need mechs.

>>96159219
>they literally cannot understand how much cheaper it is to bring only four-12 guys and their big stompy robots.
I agree, however you are well out with those numbers.
For running at peak efficiency, each mech needs:
A team of approx 6 astechs
1 mech tech
1 pilot
Add to that the flight and maintenance crew for your transport (9 for a leopard)
Officers (probably just 1 for a lance in a leopard)
Then approx 1 admin (logistics, medical, etc) per 10 other staff
Now, you would have the same requirement per combat vehicle as well (plus vehicle crew).
But the limit is how many combat units you can transport and how effective they are, not the number of personnel.

>>96159238
Yep, it's cheaper to bring a mech than it is to bring specialized vehicles

>>96159614
For some reason, it warms my heart to see the rules from Field Manual: Mercenaries.

>>96155479
>conventional vehicles like tanks are cheaper to produce in planet, but MUCH more expensive to transport,
why would that be true? mechs are gigantic and require enormous maintenance gantries. anything capable of carrying mechs needs to feature gigantic doors and roomy interiors.

>>96159614
Which is still not the thousands for the equivalent force in conventionals.

>>96159614
and transporting more people needs vastly more space. food, air and water.

>>96162034
Mechs only require a crew of one, tanks require a crew of three or four. Metal is easy to transport, it doesn’t require oxygen or food or water, you can leave it in a cold vacuum of space and it will be fine, but people are not so easy.

>>96155329 (OP)
I will answer you this question only if you tell me first how the hell it is even affecting your games at fucking all.
Because it's 3rd time this thread was made since early June and you still didn't answer that basic question.

>>96162108
>Mechs only require a crew of one, tanks require a crew of three or four.
why would a tank need more crew members than a mech? tanks are simpler.

>>96156845
nothing in star wars is practical

>>96162168
Yeah, feels like every film in the setting is a puzzle piece that does't fit with the rest particularly well, and then all the EU, Legends, whatever shit is there just to fill in holes left by the ill-fitting pieces.

>>96155329 (OP)
Dropzone commander attempts that some times.

>>96162157
Same reason jets don't need four guys in them.

>>96162108
>Metal is easy to transport, it doesn’t require oxygen or food or water,
for one year of survival, humans require:
> ~250kg of food
> ~146,000L of oxygen (208 kg)
> ~1,450L of water (1,450 kg)
presumably, a spaceship has low-loss recycling systems for oxygen and water, so these numbers might be more than 10 times higher than what is actually necessary - but between these three items, personal effects, overhead, and the weight of the human itself, the whole package might weigh 2 metric tons.

if we assume that an Atlas' mechbay is 20m*10m*10m, that's 2,000m3, or 2,000,000 liters. That volume, at regular room pressure, could hold enough pure oxygen and water and food for ~13 man-years with no recycling.

But: that's at 15 PSI. Oxygen tanks are filled at around 2,200 PSI. So, crew members only need 1,000L of compressed O2 / year.
>2,000,000 liters
>divided by (1,000L O2 + 1450L water)
The single mechbay can contain water and air for 816 man-years, at a ballpark weight of 2,000 tons.

>>96162262
>tanks need more crew members than mechs because jets only need 1 guy
??? that doesn't even come close to answering the question

>>96162157
A mech moves like a human body, which means that a human can control it with their mind, while the human mind cannot comprehend the form of a tank.

>>96162412
Well that's not how it works in Battletech, to transport a human costs much more than transporting a mech.

>>96162592
you could control a tank with a headtracker and a joystick. there's nothing spectacularly complicated about it, it's just not something that we've ever needed to do, since adding more crew members is easier than building complex automated systems.

>>96162631
well that just doesn't make any sense at all. I think if you folded up the entire ISS it would occupy less volume and mass than a single loaded mechbay

Battletech goes a mile or so to establish why mechs are actually used and considered practical in the setting, and establish just enough outlandish technologies necessary for them to be a thing: high-strength material that tenses and relaxes depending on current ran through it much like muscles, compact and safe fusion engines and primitive neural interface that aids in piloting a mech even though most of the legwork is still done with, well, legs and arms. At the same time none of these things are some sort of magic, and the whole thing is still deep in hard sci-fi and retrofuturism territory.
Aside from the technological base and logistics of the setting with limited space travel (with largely decimated space fleets) it also establishes cultural reasons for mech combat being the standard: Aside from the fact that mech is vastly more durable than a tank or even whole division of tanks, and can carry huge guns, a lot heat radiators on a mobile chassis. In Battletech prior to invention of mecha setting got a taste of what unrestricted interstellar warfare is like with centuriyes of meatgrinder total war and glassing worlds left and right and that has resulted in limited, primarily mech-based warfare becoming a standard. On top of that mecha industry has immediately become enormously profitable, so it sort of perpetuated itself.

Historicals WW2 til modern day?

>>96162047
It's really not that big a difference, the limit is bays the dropship has. I know you're talking from a real world perspective, but as per game rules and lore it is bays. In fact there are mercenary units who use conventional forces, they're just more specialised.
>>96162042
Lol, nowhere close. If you check, most vehicles use only 1-5 crew which doesn't take up that much space at all. It really is transport bays for the units which are the limiting factor.
>>96161435
It's mainly campaign ops now, but I use the field manual for stuff not covered in campaign ops. I've been running a time of war campaign for about 4 years now (picrel)

>>96159614
>9 for a leopard
Leopard my beloved

>>96159614
Most forces are woefully understaffed in the astech department. You'll get one mechtech per unit and maybe half the astechs they'd need to run at peak performance who are pooled together and assigned to work with the mechtech based on priorities.

>>96155329 (OP)
>battletech
>practical vehicles

>>96172604
A single battlemech can easily take on around three times its equivalent in conventional vehicles.

>>96172612
>we have ftl
>and weapons in space
>we've got a gentleman's agreement to not put weapons in orbit
>oh wait. except when we do

>>96172619
If they used weapons in space then they would destroy the factories that they're fighting over in the first place, and dropships are too valuable to risk fighting over in space