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 Mmmpi wrote:

Not that I'm defending the Gear Strider Craze, but at least the weapons are in proportion to the hull, and have ammo boxes/mags that obviously hold enough rounds for "some" sustained fire.

Proportional it might be, but it was also supposed to be a Heavy Bazooka... and each of its ammo rounds was literally as big as a regular HBZ. You could fit a Gear's torso in the hole, ffs. And it was still a heavy bazooka.

As to the purpose of the thread, to me a heavy gear is, above all, meant to be utilitarian. They are, after all, weaponized power lifters. They are also rugged, and mostly (barring ONNets, obviously, and even then...) at a tech level that could be achieved today, had we found a need. Where other "mechas" have advanced myomers, unobtanium particles, gundamium armor and nuclear powered engines, Gears get by with hydraulics, computers and internal combustion engines. They are meant to be used, abused, broken, refitted and remade all over again. They are... well, tools.

As with all tools, they can be very generic (most work Gears) or quite a bit more specialized (every Heavy Gear combat vehicle is specialized, but there are degrees ^_^), but even the most specialized of them are very modular, in the same way the ASCOD Pizarro/Ulan/SV weapons system is (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCOD#ASCOD_Pizarro). They are also as small as possible for the job and payload they are meant to have, and no bigger than needed.

Controls-wise, I've never thought of them as big power armors, and to me they don't feel at all as they're "worn" rather than "piloted". Every image, every technical drawing, every snippet of setting material paints them as combat vehicles being piloted, IMHO, not as worn armor, even with the head in head design.

In action, they are by no means the end-all-be-all of combat, contrary to what combat walkers usually are in most settings. They have a niche (one-man IFV, built up terrain armored combatant, highly mobile weapons plattform) where they fit, and don't overshadow any other branch of a modern army. They go unassisted, they die.

Those are the main concerns Heavy Gears revolve around, IMHO.

Now aesthetically, to me they must look as workmanlike as possible. These are "real" machines, and in those compromises are made. They need to "see", so they have a multitude of sensors all over their surface. They need to spread the pressure their vertical posture imposes, so they have big stompy feet. They need to be armored but still retain as much maneuverability and nimbleness as possible, so you get bulky extremities with boxy over armor backed up by ballistic cloth where you just can't put a plate. you get the idea. They are, at the same time, nimble machines and ponderous machines, and somewhat it fits. They are nimble, but with somewhat weird proportions. They feel ungainly due to that, but when you see them move, you do it with a sense of awe. Like looking at a giant gorilla (and a skating one, at that). I don't know if I'm making any sense at all.

So yeah, not contradictions at all from me

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
OK, the new Frames are exclusively piloted by FLAILS (i.e. GREL "brains in jars"), and as such the torsos are slimmer (or have a significant space taken up by weaponry and other equipment)

Well, yes and no, as you say. The main models (BF2-21, BF2-19 and BF2-25) are designed to be piloted exclusively by FLAILs, but all the F6-16 line is piloted by human pilots (exclusively, in theory).

That said (and as you say, too), given the volumes of the FLAIL models compared with the human piloted ones, it shouldn't be all that difficult to modify them to be piloted by human pilots (as their torsos are bigger than the F6-16's, with the possible exception of the BF2-25).

Mind you, while the physical design and construction of the Frames may be in advance of Terranovan Gears, the latter have better control hardware/software. the neural net computers in Gears are more advanced than the systems used in CEF Battle Frames. Also, the extreme optimisation for mobility and light weight means that Frames aren't quite a srugged and resilient as Gears.

If I recall my setting info correctly, Frames were made from better alloys (hence tougher and lighter at the same volume) and had a much better power to weight ratio (due to much better energy-related tech). They were also armed with much more advanced weaponry as a matter of fact, keeping with the CEF's doctrine. That said, they were much behind in the fields of actuators (Gears were nimbler to much, much nimbler) and had worse controlling software (as the CEF's equivalents to ONNETs don't "think" the same way).

To me, the "Gear" is a humanoid war vehicle that is "driven" rather than worn, and is only mid-way up the "power level" of the setting. Unlike Gundams or Jovian Chronicles Exo-Suits, Gears are "troopers", still outclassed by the heavier ground vehicles. They're iconic, but not dominant, in the setting.

I would mainly agree on that, with the only caveat that I'd calle them iconic in TN and the powers influenced by them, and not all that iconic in the rest of the setting (but then again, we don't know much about the rest).

As a CEF player, I find it somewhat annoying that the high-tech styling of the CEF Frames means that they're not as interesting to paint as the Terranovan Gears with all their armour panel lines, overlapping plates, rivets, screw heads, access ports, etc, etc. I did liven things up a bit by basing my colour schemes on the artwork from the Art of Heavy Gear ebooks; the old Type 55 and Type 2-07 Frames with bright yellow and red details liven things up a bit, and the converted Type 81-12 Alpine Warfare Frame and Type 99 Space Frame in Magenta are quite eye-catching. Doesn't help with concealment much, though.

Concealment is for stuff that doesn't leave huge ass smoke trails when they move

 Mmmpi wrote:
You say smoke trails, I say Anti-air smoke screens!

...that you happen to leave behind because you. Move. So. Damn. Fast.

Well, I for one am always interested in discussions of the timeline and setting ^_^.

As to the Cat... well, I've said it before, but the problem was never really the Cat.


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 Mmmpi wrote:
I have a problem with Paxton. They're an arms dealer that doesn't sell to anyone. Can't see the badlands buying enough stuff from them to support such a large army, or robust R&D branch, and the fluff says the Polars prefer their own equipment. Now with Nucoal building their own stuff (Including a brand new state of the art gunda...gear strider) taking away at least a third of their badlands market.

AKA: HOW DOES PAXTON STAY IN BUSINESS?!??!?!?!!!1/?

Setting wise, Paxton sells to everyone, and if you went to the old vehicle books you'd see just how many of the polar vehicles carry Paxton weapons (hint: a whole lot ^^). The problem with Paxton has never been the actual weapons. The problem with Paxton is that they are Johnny come-lately's to the Gear manufacturing field by... well, centuries, and they never got an actual foothold on it. But somehow, for some reason... they're the best there are at that nowadays. Because REASONS. And they're manufacturing more Gear chassis designs nowadays than both polar powers combined. Which, taking into account that this is AFTER they got their main manufacturing centers blown up to kingdom come (along, I might say with basically all their air force). But they got around to not only designing but building a whole lot of new Gear chassises. And new abomin- pardon, "gearstriders".

But hey, it's the faction that makes the main playtester's hard, so...

And don't make me talk about NuCoal, now. You won't like it.

mrondeau wrote:
NuCoal is, essentially, self-insert fan fiction. And they don't just "access to the Humanist Alliance stuff", no, the entire Humanist Alliance, with all that made it interesting, was sacrificed to the NuCoal gods.

And that for starters...

As for PRDF, the original version was supposed to be, essentially, on par with the technology of the polars. That's not incredible, BTW. Having centuries of experience is not worth that much.

And I was on board with that (hell, I'm even mentioned in the Shinobi's fluff, FFS). The problems came when they passed the "on par with polar tech" point full speed ahead and into the "bs" level of tech, when they added to that attack (as in, actual direct fire weapon effect) EW equipment, monowheel bikes, honest-to god power armors, a crapload of new super gears (capabilities-wise), another fething gearstrider, and stole the basically only new norther strider design from them. They got too much "we get this instead of you because feth you, that's why" for me to take them seriously anymore.

Peace-River had a good industrial base, which is what take the longest to establish. The idea was that the proportion of "high-tech" was larger in the PRDF than in the polar armies, but not the absolute numbers.

Yeah... and that "had" is the biggest problem. Being optimist, they lost half their industrial base and development teams at Peace River... and they still went on a golden age of discoveries and mass manufacturing, just because.

I always used to describe the difference in number with "Assemble the entire PRDF in a firing line. Then, take all the Jaguars in the northern armies, removes their weapons and tell them to go stomp (literally) the PRDF. The Jaguars win."

Pretty accurate, yeah.

I can't really talk about the current iteration of the PRDF, but from what I heard it is pretty dire.

Well... see above for a tiny bit of that.

Let's just say that I disagree quite a lot with a lot of Jbuckmaster's design decisions, and have some serious issues with his actions during and after the playtest of L&L, but I think he's kilometres ahead of his successors.
At the very least, he was not favouring one faction voluntarily, and the fluff part of the books did not read like self-insert fan-fiction.

Being a setting nerd, that last part is the one that stings me the most.

 warboss wrote:
Just took a peek at the DP9 forums... can someone who remembers their password post the real reason for the first gear strider as quoted by john buckmaster over in the gearsstrider wtf? thread there? It would be eye opening and likely much appreciated (even if we never hear the rest of his story).

Done ^_^

I... really should not get started on the NuCoal, myself ^_^

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Oh yeah, you put "HRP", but the latest calls it a LAR - did the Pod change the weapon stats at some point?

They sure did! The permanent beta edition has an all-new weapons table, and there *RPs have been further divided into *RPs and *ARs.

Funny thing is, of course, that you can't trust that new table too much, give that weapons change depending on who has it, now.

Well, the LGM is Guided, so it would be much more precise when someone is painting the target. Other than that, they are perfectly redundant.

In the old rules, the HRP only had 24 missiles, which basically meant that you would either do some low ROF shots over the game or one or two big Alpha Strikes with it (and as unlike the LGM it did not have a minimum range, you usually waited to b as near as possible. That coupled with the fact that non guided IF weapons failed a lot, you usually just used to point blank work.

That said? Yes. KC/Kodiak's main layouts are stupid ^_^

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
ah, thanks for the clarification. Though it still seems like a somewhat redundant item. But if the philosophy is to load the unit down with all the weapons you can, sure, why not? Probably should toss in a bigger sword, too!

The base Kodiak/King Cobra are absolutely redundant, no ifs or buts. They were meant to be player character rides, and as such they were made to have "one of everything", so to speak. Also, being as they were "Grizzly/Spit plus", they started with the main designs' loadout and basically worked upwards from there. Which yes, for actual combat vehicles look ridiculous.

OTOH, the variant designs tend to be much more sensible (The Hooded Cobra tosses the LAC, the LPA, the LGM and downgrades the MRP to add better HEAT armor, a LLC and swaps the APGL ammo for anti-laser aerosol, whereas the Kodiak Destroyer swaps the LPA for a HBZK, which is an altogether better weapon for their intended prey, even if it makes it a tad slower).

The back HRP had IF with no minimum? So it's actually direct fireable? Just like the shoulder RPs notionally can IF (well, OK, I can kinda imagine the mount elevates)? That's very curious, and probably undesirable... Maybe distinguishing the RPs into DF vs IF is something they should have done at the beginning.

Yeah, that's the funny thing... they could totally have. HG's weapons are just predesigned weapon systems made using their own design rules, so probably the "IF" trait of the RPs should have been added in a case by case basis to diferentiate between vehicles. It was easy to do, too, but...

I think the excess of weaponry is part of what makes a Gear, a Gear, in the HG setting. As opposed to a Frame, which seems to be somewhat more restrained in weapons count.

Up to a point, yes. On the one hand, Gears follow very much the same guidelines in weaponry as infantrymen (main gun, backup/special case gun, knife, grenades), plus APGLs due to them not actually being infantry but vehicles. On the other hand, they also tend to be designed following a very terranovan worldview of "make do": most Gears are multipurpose by default, and carry stuff to be able to do multiple jobs when in the field. Really specialized designs are more the exception than the norm (for example, as you have already seen, basically every trooper gear carries some kind of RP. That's for emergency anti armor work and to be able to do support IF in a pinch).


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 JohnHwangDD wrote:
If the weapons can be clearly distinct and tactically useful, sure, have more of them! Being able to fire multiple weapons would make the multiple weapon system more viable, but it kinda goes against typical single pilot capabilities. Unless all of the additional weapons are "fire&forget" rocket/missile systems, preferably smart seekers.

That's expensive, yo

Also, RPs are not really unguided, just kind of dumb ^_^. Most Gear designs that have multiple weapons have them due to ammo limitations or to use them for different stuff, so that's actually there. It's just that some other designs were made thinking about player characters, as it was an RPG.

Frames make a lot more sense in urban areas, as Gasaraki amply demonstrated. You almost feel bad for the tanks... except that they don't deploy any infantry to screen the armor.

Frames do work very well as HT bodyguards, as they can keep their pace.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Thanks, Albertorius. The historical context is helpful.

I always look at Robotech missile systems as the defininig version...

For Frames, don't they need the Jump Jets to keep up?

Are you thinking about the Hover mode there? Because Frames don't have jump jets by default (they can get them using Mobility Packs, though).

Honestly speaking, HT-only battlegroups will always be faster, but as their operational range is so tiny, particularly when they go fast, from a strategical POV, and even from a tactical one, Frames are able to keep up with the HT advances.

When used properly, and in properly open terrain, HTs go first, top speed. They kill the most valuable/dangerous targets and leave the shattered remains of the enemy as pockets of resistance. Then the Frames and troop carriers mop up those pockets, consolidate, and wait for the HTs to double back to refuel and rearm. Rinse and repeat.

On built up terrain, that it's the bane of that tactics (and of the regular CEF HTs and troop transports), Frame are invaluable as strike teams and as bodyguards for the rest of the CER armor. GRELs still consolidate and mop up, but also storm buildings and the like.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I was actually asking about the Jump Jets option, whether it made them the same speed as a HT.

Also, the CEF "Blitzkrieg" tactics make perfect sense.

Ah, ok, misunderstood the meaning. No, not really. Jump Jets would allow the Frames to be airdropped and to gain a lot of new movement options, but they wouldn't get faster, at least in comparison with HTs.

How about the original creation of the HTs' stats and the threshold hunting they did for them?

ferrous wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
How about the original creation of the HTs' stats and the threshold hunting they did for them?

I wouldn't mind hearing about that. I didn't think armor values were as big of a problem until Blitz, since all armor degraded pre-Blitz, so armor thresholds weren't as big of a deal. Ie 18 armor was actually good to have over 17, not just in the off chance that your opponent might've brought the only 17 damage weapon around. Unless this is a different threshold?

Different kind of thresholds

IIRC, the original stats of Earth's HTs (the ones from the HG2 tie-in, I think) were designed in such a way that the speed, armor, weapons, perks and flaws were added so as to always keep them exactly at the threshold of maximum efficiency for the cost. That way, they were able to design a vehicle with a MTV that was much lower than it would have been had they designed them organically, as they did for example with the polar tanks and armor.

So they ended making them waaay cheaper than they should for their capabilities, and way cheaper than other comparable tanks.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
So Earth HTs are min-maxed designs? Nice.

No wonder the Frames play second fiddle.

They were, back during HG 2nd edition. They were substantially reined in afterwards for Blitz, IIRC.