One question has been bugging me all day.

Lets say that in the Battletech universe during the Clan invasion a Smoke Jaguar jumpship misjumps. Finding themselves in what appears to the the Solar System with no opposition they attempt to take the planet that they believe to be Terra.

Long story short, a Galaxy lands near Lofwyr's tropical vacation home where he is entertaining a ladyfriend. This interruption of his draconic leisure rituals greatly pisses him off.

How wins and how badly is the other side trounced?

Dunno, but Best Ever - An Eight World Adventure might tell you.

with lofwyr anything is possible. its stated that dragons dont really use formulae as we know them for spells. so he could probably invent a demolish mech spell on the fly.

When someone can drop a force 24 spell without overcasting, the target is about to have a bad day.

A Galaxy of Smoke Jaguars?

Man, that shouldn't take much. A Great Dragon could probably swat the DropShips out of the sky before they become a problem.

Can he cast Mob Control?

my money is on lofwyr. in the first 0.666666 seconds, he will have summoned a high force spirit of man. since the mechs have no magical defense whatsoever, the influence power will win the day. all lofwyr has to do is not be seen while the spirit walks all over the pilots, and influences them all to surrender to lofwyr. i suppose lofwyr would probably also need to jam communications so they can't discuss the fact that it's a bad idea to surrender... don't want them to build up enough cumulative successes after all.

I dunno, guys. I think he's going to get shot with a lot of large missiles from mechs/oter platforms that he doesn't have LOS to, either because they're so far away or they're behind something. Indirect fire is a bitch.

Yeah, but this Lofwyr we're talking about. That's a threat anyways.

When dealing with a dragon, keep their magic, their intelligence, and their experience in mind.

1) Is that really the dragon you're shooting at? Between spells to see in the distance and illusions, I wouldn't expect him to just go blundering out of his house without scouting safely first.

2) And even without the magic, he's got the resources of Saeder-Krupp at his beck and call. He knew about the dropship coming before it got anywhere near Earth.

3) Spirits. Lots of spirits.

4) And even assuming he's cocky enough to just go wandering out blithely, he's got so many countermeasures in place, anchored spells at stupid high forces. Detect Bullet, Detect Missile, and Detect Laser spells, plus Barrier ratings of incredible levels.

If you teleported a bunch of mechs and Lofwyr in the middle of an open arena, and Lofwyr had nothing prepped in advance? I'd go Mechs, though they'd take losses.

Likewise, if the Mechs knew what they were up against, had the chance to prep well in advance, and Lofwyr didn't know they were coming? Sure, I'll give it to the mechs.

But in the above sitch? Lowfyr, all the way.

He is probably more intelligent than all of clan Smoke Jaguar put together. They're nice tacticians, for metahumans, but it's like they're playing checkers and he's playing chess.

I agree that, teleported into an open area with no warning (or better yet, with Smoke Jaguar having warning) Lofwyr would go down. What I want is to see the fight scene!

A battlemech would be a good match for a dragon. A great dragon would require a 100-ton lance with master pilots to be a match.

orbital bombardment anyone?

Both parties surprised, but on Lofwyr's turf. Mech has little magical protection (except a sky-high OR). Lofwyr does have some experience with super-nice tech, but his island will be made to resist both tanks and jets and just about everything else. I don't know how fast the mech could deploy, but regardless, I'd probably put my money on the home team.

It's a Tie/Draw.
Lofwyr Destroys Mech or whatever, and Mech or whatever stackpoles killing Lofwyr.

hi hi

This is really like comparing apples to oranges. Thematically speaking, battlemechs are awesome and thus should be a match for Lofwyr, who while powerful is not entirely awesome.

Mechanically speaking, battletech was designed to have big lumbering war machines brawling it out at close range and just isn't compatible with the more realistic vehicle speeds and weapon ranges used in shadowrun. Mechanically speaking, battlemechs wouldn't be a match for regular shadowrun military vehicles. One thing battletech did make rather straight forward was its mechanics for spaceflight though, so they really could destroy the entire planet from space if they wanted, but that has nothing to do with the thematic awesomeness of battlemechs.

Lofwyr would turn the 'Mech to goo. He would turn the freakin' 'Mech to goo!

Sorry. Had to be said.

Jason H.

Know what I find funny about that spell? It's functionally identical to turning the Mech into stone. That's right, check out the SR4 rules, both spells grant the subject the same barrier rating!

In a stand up brawl, I'd put money on the Mechs. If anywhere NEAR that number of front-line machines, piloted by aggressive Smoke Jaguar pilots, got magically teleported into an arena alongside a startled Lofwyr, you'd see a heck of a brawl, but a Jaguar win and a few lines in their Remembrance.

Given the accident misjump/arrival, though, I'd have to vote Lofwyr. Not because it's who I'd like to win, but because the Battletech tech level is built wholly around the rule of cool, and less-so around the rules of actual efficiency (and because it's established canon, for better or worse, what someone like Ghostwalker can do).

Also, as was pointed out, for all that it's sci-fi versus cyberpunk, in many ways Shadowrun has better technology than Battletech...so given Saeder-Krupp's resources to throw into the mix, I think any OmniMechs on the ground would get pasted (then salvaged for parts, so that SK could be spitting out ten-meter battle armor tanks by the end of the fiscal year).

I imagine right afterwards, though, the ristar Trueblood in charge of the Smoke Jaguar force would just growl out, "Fine. We will handle them like we did Edo, on Turtle Bay." Then comes the lances of fire from the sky that make Thor shots look like someone playing marbles.

I vote Lofwyr - mind manipulations on the dropship pilots, turn the mechs to goo, spot them coming with satellites, and use Sadeer-Krupp's weaponery to stall them until the mages take them apart. Surprise has less effect, at least in the given scenario, on the dragon, becuse he can spot them coming, at least to a point. I still don't really get where this is coming from, though...

This is like asking who wins against Wolverine in comic books. The Lawyers do when they sue your ass for messing with their cash cow!

First: I own a copy of BattleDroids somewhere, so take it as good coin that I go way WAY back, OK?

Second: My money is safely on Lowfyr. Here's why:

BATTLETECH ARMOR IS ABLATIVE. Mystic Armor and Spells are not. Shadowrun weapons have armor penetration abilities. BattleTech weapons don't. Lightning Bolt = PPC.

It's as simple as that. Even assuming Lofwyr said to his defenses "I've got this...", he'd still tea them up like it was going out of style. He'd just stay at 850 meters, beyond the maximum range of ELRMs and cast F24 Lightning Bolts at them until crispy. Game over.

*Evil Grin*

This was essentially a topic of a huge debate after no sleep and too much Holy Caffiene at a convention. Much fun was had by all, but that was the final conclusion.

hi hi

Because magic doesn't work in space, Lofwyr is toast if the dropships decide to use bombardment.

My aerotech book is in a box hidden away somewhere, so I can't get specific details, but dropships in battletech have been noted for burning at 1g for 9 days straight. A standard transit time from jump point to planet.

1: At full burn, they could do a flyby of the planet at 7,620,479 m/s (at least)
2: They have (at least) 100 tons of cargo capacity, which is about 90,718 kgs

M= Mass of projectile (kg)
V= Velocity of projectile relative to target (m/s)
K= Kinetic energy (Joules)

K=0.5 x M x V^2

Roughly 2.63 x 10^18 Joules (which is over 600 megatons of TNT)

Galaxy = 120 to 375 Battlemechs

So that is somewhere between 72000 and 225000 megatons of TNT

I'm just sayin' s'all.

It is really a pity that mass drivers are not a more readily accepted form of destroying horrendous magical monstrosities. I tried to argue my case to a GM once that an asteroid knocked out of it's orbit would be a perfectly reasonable way to deal with an ultra powerful evil spirit that was poised to take over the world.

Does anyone have stats on what kind of Delta V budgets space ships in the shadowrun world have? I know the moon is colonized by 2072.

Only one problem: that's just a piece of fast moving rock (or whatever) - He can shield an area (remember in SR1&2, Barriers could be domes).

But I THINK the OP mentioned coming down to land.

hi hi

I'm sure the dinosaurs appreciated the distinction.
Seriously though, its a fast moving rock that (on impact) releases more energy than 6 Krakatoa eruptions, and they've got somewhere between 120 and 375 of these things. What force is that shield rated at?

Yeah, once they land they're pretty much toast.

A clan force probably wouldn't attack an undefended world without scouting/scanning it first and finding said dragon.

Magic has a hard time affecting dropships in orbit no?

The entire Clan force would only arrive on Lofwyr's island if he is the objective.

In that case, I believe they could probably take him out through sheer mass of numbers.

If the Clan forces only wanted to conquer Earth, I think they would stay in orbit, to negotiate a trial. If nuking a city can't close a deal, then they have a major problem. They would be trying to take and hold a planet with fewer forces than the US has in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Harry Turtledove wrote a series about a similar subject, the Worldwar series. In that setting, a force about the size and tech of the Gulf War 1 coalition forces arrive to invade earth in 1941.

Ultimately, attrition became the biggest enemy, and I think the Clans will find the same thing happens to them.

Then there is magic... Clan forces will be totally unprepared for magic. It would be like fighting a war today if your side had never even heard of the airplane. Clan omnimechs will fall right and left from the spirits manifesting inside them. Even worse would be the higher force spirits that are smart enough to go straight for the pilots without damaging the mech much

The Clan fleet's only real option is ultimatum. "Play a game with us with your planet as the prize, or we bombard your planet from orbit." That is a terrible plan for a force interested in conquest, because you might end up spending trillions to buy a cinder.

Oh, that depends on the size of the rock, now doesn't it? The best any dropship can manage is (IIRC) a Killer Whale, and that's on an anti-warship Dropship version of the Overlord. Those things weigh in around 150 tons. And they weren't designed for cee-fractional bombardment. So from standard orbital re-entry velocity (call it Mach 30 to give them an edge), the total energy is going to be significantly less, and all the great drake is interested in is his property. And given the way great drakes sling mojo, stopping that wouldn't be so hard. Yes, if he just "Deflected" it rather than stopping it entirely, the local real-estate values are going to suffer a mite.

But since we're still in orbit, AND we're talking about Lofwyr, I wonder how many orbital laser satellites he's got available to pick off dropships? Those things would at LEAST be the equivalent of a NL-55 if not better. Dropships aren't made to repel that kind of firepower. And then once the dropships ground, I figure what's goose is good for the gander, neh? So since they tore up HIS neighborhood, he'll give them a couple of his own Thor-er, I mean re-entering defunct communications satellites.

I can see it now as he chews on a locust's leg "Hmmmm, needs ketchup".

Lets not forget that a dropship can be seen from the ground with a sufficiently powerful optical telescope.*

Lofwyr would cast F24 lightning bolts at the ship without needing to go anywhere (and due to the oddities of Background Count and casting into it, the spell hits the target at F12--if Lofwyr were to FLY up there it'd be Force Nothing as he'd have Magic 0 (assuming he has Magic 12 on the ground)).

*Slightly more powerful than an amerature can get their hands on, but certainly not those massive domes we see on mountain tops--those can pick out individual stars at the core of our galaxy (albeit only in the infra red spectrum, IIRC)

or lofwyr could just pay a blood mage to turn a bunch of SINless bums into a force 500+ blood spirit, send that into space, eat every intelligent being in the invading fleet, and come back at an even higher force. at this point, i expect lofwyr would have launched all kinds of spaceships to swipe anything even remotely valuable.

negotiation won't work for the mechs... you give it any time, and the sixth world will offer not to consume the souls of every living being on the ships, provided there is an unconditional surrender.

I know this doesn't include the other Greats but does anyone think for a moment they would stand idly by on the sidelines while this happened?

I don't. Greats are practical creatures. They will set aside their differences to work together if the need is great enough.

A galaxy against Lofwyr? It might win. I doubt it.

A galaxy against all the Greats? LOL, I'll buy tickets to watch the show.

WHy buy tickets? YOu could probably see that show across the planet

hi hi

For every ground unit that a dropship carries, it has at least enough cargo capacity for 100 tons of mass to be driven precisely at the planet's surface. Not counting any other spare cargo capacity they could use to simply push mass out of an airlock.
They don't have to be designed for anything, they could just be inert lumps of metal. Computers with less processor power than my cell phone have and continue to calculate orbital trajectories, though I know at least one rocket scientist that constantly bemoans the fact that they can't get a more powerful onboard computer.
1g for 9 days was quoted as being a standard transfer. Dropships more than enough delta V to pull off a mass driver attack. I already showed my calculations, the projectile will be moving at 7,620,479 meters per second.
At that speed it will pass through the atmosphere in .000015 seconds.

If Lofwyr starts deflecting the projectile as soon as it enters the atmosphere, he would need to change its velocity by 63.5 m/s for every 1 meter laterally that he wanted to deflect it. (assuming he can deflect it perfectly 90 degrees)

Since the attack would be capable of displacing 126 cubic kilometers of earth in the explosion, Lofwyr would need to deflect the projectile by at least 3919 meters (assuming a perfect hemisphere) ((and it would cause an earthquake roughly 9.15 on the richter scale at its epicenter))

So, Lofwyr would need to change the projectile's velocity by 248856.5 m/s between the moment it enters the upper atmosphere and impact. (for each one, no less)

If we assume that magic tranfers energy 100% efficiently, Lofwyr needs to output 2.8 x10^15 Joules of energy without risk of taking drain. Thats about 750 kilotons (1.5 times the power of the Ivy King Device) and that is still only deflecting it just far enough that Lofwyr isn't in the immediate ground zero area of total destruction.

After Krakatoa erupted, global temperatures dropped by 1.2 degrees celsius. Just one of these weapons is six times more powerful and they've got hundreds of them.

As for orbital lasers, if the dropships can burn at 1 g for 9 days (and I'm not even counting the fact that they can then turn around and go back which gives them at least 18 days of burn time) they could simply release their armaments a minute early and never enter the effective range of orbital defenses.

Really, a galaxy of dropships could render a planet uninhabitable pretty easily if they wanted to. That is, if they wanted to. They are absurdly powerful... as absurdly powerful as their mechs are inexplicably underpowered.
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Draco18s: There is a difference between background count and mana void. Spells, spirits and mojo in general dissipate in a mana void, which is what space is. Distant galaxies can be seen with a sufficiently powerful telescope, but mages cant cast detect life on them.
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My apologies, but this thread is relevant to my interests.

mechanically speaking, no there isn't a difference. although you couldn't cast detect life on a distant planet; that would be silly. not only is detect life a touch range spell, but the spell itself actually only grants a sense. what would a planet do with detect life?

regardless, the bombardment with rocks really doesn't fit the proposed scenario... the goal is not to kill everything on the planet. in the given scenario, the dropships have already landed, and have no idea there's an angry great dragon about to rip them a new one.

A highly hypothetical question: what is the Body of a Galaxy or Overlord-class dropship? I posit that given the sizes of vehicles and their body stats in SR4, we could conservatively estimate it at around 300...? Which means it would have 158 health levels, meaning quite a few force 24 spells to break it.

well, you would use a force 24 barrier. the barrier would break, of course, but at the speed we've been told the dropships would be travelling, i think the damage dealt to the dropsip would be fairly significant...

Are we using the Shadowrun "damaging barrier" vs vehicular armor rules? Or logic?

hi hi

I'm pretty sure there's a rule somewhere that prohibits casting spells through a void in way more significant than the -12 modifier, but for the life of me I cant find it. Oh well.

Does a barrier spell have any mass?

This poses significant problems for the Zurich orbital platform, when a amateur mage with a back yard telescope can destroy one of the supposedly most secure installations anywhere.

Hack into, steal/commandeer Sub Orbital or one of the Shuttles doing the supply runs and crash it into the damn thing.
Then there's anti vehicular Lasers. Vehicle Scale Gauss-Cannons means Thor-Shots can now go up too.

if by 'amateur mage' you mean 'a mage with at least a magic of 7, which are quite rare', then i suppose so. provided a force 2 barrier spell is enough... and provided they survive the drain long enough for the station to collide with the barrier.

You know, I had a friend ask me why you couldn't do that, given the fact that there is bound to be at least ONE crackpot who'd want to. And I answered in the same fashion I have determined is best for ANY such question:

"Witches."
'What?' he asked.
"Witches stop you from doing it. Witches are also responsible for why there were so many meltdowns, and why the novels don't agree with the rules. Witches."

It tends to stop lines of inquiry quite fast.

I think what may settle the argument isn't even the magic - Shadowrun weapons, due to teh vagaries of the ruleset, can penetrate armor, given the right power and weaponery. Regardless of logic, the battlemech weaponery (I think) can't. If we're ignoring the ruleset and working off of fluff, then we have to go back to the magic and realize that there are things on the Sixth-World version of Earth that can't really be dealt with by the dropships, like attacking their pilots via spirits and spells, and lightning bolts that can fry the lot of them...
Still, it's my opinion. I guess others can disagree.

With the moronic behaviour rules for clan they can ship there whatever they like and get blasted even by some troll with a bow or somesuch.

I once actually started with a Shadowrun/Battletech Crossover. Some years ago. Had a pretty good writeup in my memories. Then came the big Crash of 2001. Nothing remained, aside from memories. Troll-Elementals. Elves in Mechs and Aerospace Fighter Jets. Dwarves in Proto-Mechs. Orks in Tanks/regular infantry/Battle-Armor. People RIGGING these things. Imagine an Atlas doing some bad ass Close Combat or Dancing Routine or WHATEVER.

hi hi

On armor in battletech:
- February 5, 2439 The First Battlemech Combat Run.

Weapons in battletech need to have some good armor piercing qualities too.

In the world of Shadowrun, without the existence of "witches," a single mage with a telescope could single-handedly bring all space travel to a halt. Any and every space ship is going to necessarily be moving at what would be considered on earth to be extremely fast speeds. (Apollo 8 reached 10,822 m/s, the international space station moves at about 7,7101 m/s) and LoS in space is essentially infinite. I would probably house rule that, but I guess that's not the issue at hand.

well, no, not really. at sufficiently large distances, the mage would be targeting things as they were several seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millenia (or whatever unit of measurement of time is appropriate) in the past. even bouncing a radio signal (effectively light speed) around the earth via satellite starts leading to time delays.

also, this pre-supposes the magician can even spot the target. i expect camoflaging yourself against a backdrop of space is even easier than camoflaging against a backdrop of, say, a street full of moving cars. but with a ruthenium polymer suit, you can make it really hard to see you against a backdrop of a street full of moving cars; the equivalent on ZO would make it danged near impossible to see, and ZO probably has an even better version. that is, assuming they haven't paid to have a magic 10 magician just quicken a high force invisibility spell on it. i mean, if ares has magicians powerful enough to hang around on a space station and make attack runs on the hive metaplane from it, i think it's safe to say the corporate corp has at least 1 magician capable of casting invisibility at a respectable force from the ground into space.

hi hi

Actually, it is next to impossible to camouflage yourself in space. Space is cold, very very cold, space ships are by intensely hot burning torches by comparison. Even if you painted the space craft entirely black, anyone with natural thermographic vision or cyber eyes with thermographic vision (I think this was covered in another recent thread) will be able to see a ship without much trouble. I remember hearing stories from one of my relatives about how he watched the apollo 11 mission from his back yard. Space is about 2.7279 degrees K, which is just barely above absolute zero, and it is also very empty. This makes it quite possibly the hardest environment to hide anything, ever. (anything that is expending useful energy anyway)

Light speed lag is a significant problem if the target is maneuvering to avoid being hit, as dropships might do. But most ships are not going to have the delta V to burn constantly for the entire length of their journey. A realistic space ship is going to burn and coast most of the way. Once a ship goes ballistic, it isn't difficult to figure out where it is going to be. In any case, magic might just adjust its course by itself, are there any penalties for moving targets when magic is concerned? Magic does seem to bend its trajectory as light bends as well, like with mage sight goggles for example.

What force do you need to cast invisibility at to hide an entire facility?

Some stuff to back up IceKatze's claim WARRING!:very heavy science content but a must read for all fans of space combat

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html#nostealth

hmmm... pesky not-naturally-having-thermo-vision...

i hadn't considered the fact that there are valid methods of targeting using thermo. presuming it uses IR-sensing methods, i figure light would still be magnified by the scope as well, wouldn't it? hmmm... might not magnify quite the same, but i'm sure in 2070 there'd be appropriately modified scopes to make it not even blurry...

well, i suppose they could always place a floating barrier in between the station and earth that doesn't radiate heat. for obvious reasons, it would have to not be attached, and would have to be fairly large...

hi hi

I know some space habitats are populous enough to have slightly less horrible background counts, but I have a feeling that ultra secure and highly populated are mutually exclusive. I would suggest having a mage on the ground on counterspelling duty 24/7, but I don't know if it would be humanly possible to detect, acquire a lock and dispel a physical barrier if it appears a split second in front of a rapidly moving target.

A big armor plated shield between the earth and the platform might help, though for radiating heat, it is going to have to have some way of dissipating the heat it picks up from sunlight, not impossible, but it'll take some expensive cooling equipment. And then you have to make sure that the whole array never passes between the earth and the sun or the moon. Those would be small windows of opportunity as it were.

Another option would be to surround the station by a gigantic bubble. If the station comes under attack, the bubble will have to take the hit first and any damage to the bubble could theoretically initiate an automated evasion protocol. But the bubble would have to be very big to give the station enough forewarning.

The physical barrier spell always seems to end chase combat handily under normal conditions.

Does a single great dragon have the power to cause a mass extinction event? Possibly. Magic fingers on some chunks of rock over a long enough period of time could eventually cause its orbit to intersect the earth. Just hope none of them ever get possessed by a shedim, go crazy or something.

A note on hiding in space: Yes, hiding in space is hard. Hiding in orbit - even high orbit - is significantly easier. Heat radiation from celestial bodies, dust in orbit, and the fact that the temperature around the earth is 120K, not ~3K, means that it's much harder to spot anything. Not to mention that a terrestrial observer has huge blind spots (necessarily) due to their position on a planet and the moon, and the sun. Winchell Chung's math is right for interplanetary stuff, but not so accurate for dropships near a planet, because he was talking about SPACE WAR! not PLANET WAR!

Just a small science note.

Y'know, this whole thing just makes me want to really, really, play some fraggin' BattleRun. Jerks.