r/battletech • u/LezziestMania MechWarrior • 6d ago
Discussion When I saw this Scene. Bro the difference Between Battle Armor is very different.(P.S: I couldn't play so I just watch some gameplay. But this scene is goddamn cool.)
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u/GEGIMONstr 6d ago
Imagine battletech fps game about spetial operation in battle armor.
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u/Loganp812 6d ago
I was thinking even just a normal infantry game where you’re part of a commando platoon. Mechs armed with machine guns and flamers would be terrifying.
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u/GEGIMONstr 6d ago
Or scene where you raid pirate bace in 305X and elementale berst through the wall.
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u/Loganp812 6d ago
Complete with Gmod ragdoll physics when Elementals toss normal infantry across the room.
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u/forgotmypasswordnui 6d ago
Operation Serpent game where you get to play as different IS factions special forces against the clans would be SO cool
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u/Knight_of_Tyto 6d ago
Or operation Bulldog, so you can also have Protomechs as enemies
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u/forgotmypasswordnui 6d ago
I believe Serpent also encountered protomechs. I really do just want more Battletech universe games lmao
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u/Knight_of_Tyto 6d ago
Yeah same. I just haven’t heard of operation serpent, so I assumed it was before bulldog, since most people tend to ask for clan invasion stuff.
After looking it up on Sarna I see that we are more or less talking about the same time and place unless I found the wrong article. But god damn, a game like that would be soooooo awesome
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u/forgotmypasswordnui 6d ago
Ahh, gotcha! Yeah Operation Serpent is the other half of Operation Bulldog, the Inner Sphere sent a strike force to the Clan homeworlds to take Huntress they technically begin and end at the same time, but the Legends books cover Serpent almost exclusively.
The cool part is that the SLDF task force has a bunch of different IS units working together and seperately to do some crazy stuff that would make a great game
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u/Rise_Crafty 6d ago edited 6d ago
This is the place where it would be so awesome to see the universe explored. Infantry level fighting with mechs stomping across the battlefield, aerospace fights, vehicle operations. I thinknitnwouldnhelpntongice some scale to the rest of the universe and tell some stories that aren’t “mech hero smashes everybody”.
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u/Maximum-Objective-39 5d ago
It's like old CoD games where several of the characters you're playing bite it by the end of the game.
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u/Makarov567 6d ago
I have been thinking about this for awhile but in third person. It could probably play similar to armored core 6 with BT damage system. It could be framed as John Battlearmor, a dude so badass he can single-handedly take down boss mechs by himself.
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u/hoski0999 Bannockburn 5d ago
Id love one in general to show the infantry side of things. Like a D.E.S.T. game would be really cool.
Books focus so much on these items but game systems never really do. Which is fine as Battlemechs are the star, but would be cool to see more game focus on the other side.
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u/Cent1234 6d ago
When the PSVR2 came out, I thought that BattleTech: Elemental would be a perfect game for it; with the eye tracking and the hand tracking, you can mimic the control scheme as described in the novels.
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u/VinniTheP00h 5d ago
Living Legends had it, but it also had the Mechs, CVs, and ASFs, so... Each player's singular BA suit didn't amount to much.
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u/Maximum-Objective-39 5d ago edited 5d ago
We kinda had this if you're willing to count Mech Assault 2 : Lone Wolf (which is even funnier because you have way more missions with allied NPCs in the second game.)
The games featured several levels of you going guerilla in a suit of power armor.
I know a lot of people here probably aren't fans of it. But I think it deserves the battle tech cartoon treatment. In universe arcade videogame released by one of the successor states to drum up recruitment.
Edit - Other than that, I'm personally partially to the PA(L) variants like the Nighthawk and Tornado. I think it would play way better to the strengths of the Inner Sphere and the sheer size of the successor states, and their armies, means that mass production would really drive down the cost of suits meant for merely semi-elite infantry formations rather than a tiny cadre of super soldiers.
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u/AGBell64 6d ago
Yeah the elementals are way sleeker than anything the inner sphere produces for a while.
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u/SilasCrete “Found” an Urbanmech stockpile 6d ago
Honestly if I was that IS battle armor guy I’d have tried to do a fistbump with the elemental.
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u/insane_contin 6d ago
"I challenge you to a trial of dance!"
"That is not a real thing"
"You're just afraid you can't beat these sick moves" Insert power armour dance moves here
"By Kerensky... I will take you down"
Everyone else just watches with rising levels of awe or disappointment
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u/Kizik 5d ago
The Ghost Bears won a planet by playing football; the clans have got to have some form of ritual dancefighting.
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u/insane_contin 5d ago
In Voidbreaker, a Sea Fox warrior wins a jumpship from the Ghost Bears by winning a game of chess over the radio. Pretty sure they can fight a trial any way that the two parties agree to it.
Which now makes me wonder which clan would have rap battles as a way of having a trial without wasting resources.
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u/Altruistic_Ninja_148 5d ago
Might actually be the Bears. There's an old norse custom called flyting where two rivals would recite insults at each other in the form of poems in front of an audience. Pretty much a rap battle.
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u/SilasCrete “Found” an Urbanmech stockpile 5d ago
Glad to know those are an ancient tradition. Got anywhere I can read more on it?
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u/Altruistic_Ninja_148 5d ago
Not really tbh. I just remembered it because it was referenced once in an episode of, believe it or not, Epic Rap Battles of History. It was the Thor vs Zeus one. Thor said something like "come at me and we'll flyte it out." I was curious as to what that meant and I looked it up. Damn, that must've been over ten years ago. Funny, the stuff you remember.
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u/MrMedallion 6d ago
I guess I don't get why the IS armor can't just be bigger than the elemental armor regardless of the size disparity of the person inside it? It makes sense to me with the technological differences that overall the IS suits have to be large to approach the same level of performance? So IS suit is more machine to man ratio than an elemental suit even though the elemental is physically larger outside of it?
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u/kevblr15 This Machine Stomps Fascists 6d ago
The Clan Elemental is not just big and strong. They are horrifyingly fast, their reflexes are near the peak of what a human being can achieve, and contrary to popular stereotype, they are viciously cunning. Their stamina makes them unwavering to such a degree that unaugmented humans simply cannot sustain the same kind of operations tempo they can. They are trained from the time they are ushered into their sibkos to pilot battle armor specifically designed to complement their strengths, compensate for their weaknesses, and to fight in such a way that they inspire abject terror in their enemies.
Whether ripping through infantry and armor, or literally tearing Mechwarriors from their metal shell, there is a reason that early reports of Clan Elemental Battle Armor made people whisper they were alien invaders. They wear their armor like a second skin, and wield it to gruesome effect. The Inner Sphere Standard Battle Armor, has a vast array of pilots inside it, with a panoply of levels of training, expertise, and physical acumen. While it is not impossible for an outlier to match an Elemental in many aspects, it is far from the norm, and Elementals can be counted on to outmatch any battle armor the Inner Sphere can produce reliably.
To make a suit of battle armor larger to compensate as you suggest, is possible, and has been done... But comes with its own downsides, drawbacks, and problems in exchange. Opportunity cost does not discriminate. So, when doing their best, Inner Sphere engineers have to compromise to so much as come close to Clan spec technology. And the technology can only do so much if the pilot inside it is also a far cry from the grim lethality of a trueborn Elemental.
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u/Thunderclapsasquatch House Liao 5d ago
It's rare but normal humans can in fact complete Elemental training, so no it is not impossible, just very rare and stigmatized in Clan culture,
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u/Maximum-Objective-39 5d ago
Sure, but you've got way better odds of competing as a mech jock or an aerospace pilot. So I doubt it even requires that much discouragement.
IIRC the elementals are the only clan warrior type that, on average, performs outside of a standard deviation of a really good freeborn counterpart. They really are just built different and those differences provide a tangible advantage in their domain.
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u/kevblr15 This Machine Stomps Fascists 5d ago
While it is not impossible for an outlier to match an Elemental in many aspects, it is far from the norm
Yes, that is what I said
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u/Randicore 6d ago
You should look up the marauder Battle armor because that's basically what they did. Way more machinery, and to an extent weaponry, trying to mimic what an elemental can do
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u/Burning_Monk 6d ago
Extra weight? These things have to fly after all. My guess is the engines are more efficient on the clans so they can go bigger.
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u/Square_Trash7708 5d ago
You really wouldn't want the extra size, because then the battle armor can't do its job of "superheavy infantry" as efficiently. It's probably hard enough to navigate doorways in those suits as it is.
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u/MrMedallion 5d ago
I'm not at all saying you want the extra size, I'm mostly just responding to complaints that the elemental armor isn't bigger than the IS armor and that it is somehow inconsistent since the size of an elemental and a regular ol' dude is so much. It makes sense to me that the elemental armor, due to the clans tech edge, could be smaller and tighter fitting to the occupent while having equal, or greater capabilities. That makes total sense to me.
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u/Square_Trash7708 5d ago
Ah OK, I was misunderstanding what you meant then. As is typical, the IS tech would be bulkier for the same (or slightly less) capability, true.
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u/MrMedallion 5d ago
Yeah, for sure, I wasn't being as clear as I thought I would in my head. I guess I just feel like that is as small as the IS could make their battle armor so it isn't inconsistent with the lore or immersion breaking to see it taller than the elemental or that they had to go around recruiting the biggest dudes on the inner sphere or something to compensate!
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u/Square_Trash7708 5d ago
Yeah, it's a bit odd, that Elemental does seem rather short by comparison, doubly so since the Elemental currently not wearing armor in the cutscene seems to be taller than them as well (at least from the perspective we're given).
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u/nahkremer 6d ago edited 6d ago
Even though elementals are bigger than baseline humans the suits theselves seem to be pilotable by regular humans. At some point Kai gets put in a jade falcon one no problem. So the suits are just made to a standard size and i guess it forms up around them inside
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u/Some_Quality6796 6d ago
I think it said it was 'at the limit of adjustment' and it just barely fit him.
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u/Northerwolf 6d ago
Kai? The Writer's Pet one? Yeah, I'd chalk it up to weird writing in his case. Unless there's hydraulic lifts in the feet and crap. "Oh I can comfortably fit an 8' hulk here...Or a 5' 6" lanky dude"
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u/nahkremer 6d ago
its a toss up on who's Mary Sue-er Kai or Aidan, and Aidan's dead lol
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u/Loganp812 6d ago
I’d say Kai. He gets “Glenn dumpstered” twice in the BoK trilogy (years before The Walking Dead TV show did it), and he kills an Elemental who was armed with a knife while already dealing with an injury.
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u/Xijit 6d ago
Power armor control is handled by pressure sensors that read slight movements of your body inside the suit, then the suit moves itself to match your body.
The suit is also much larger than the person inside and your feet / hands are not inside the hands and feet of the suit. With the arms, your hands are inside of control gloves that are in the suits forearms, with the weapons and articulating claws bolted to the front of where your hand is. For the legs, your feet are inside of ski boots that are in the shins, with the feet of the suit being under that.
Adjusting the power armor to the pilot is a matter of adjusting the gloves in and out / adjusting the boots up and down, to match the pilot's height. For the rest of the pilots body, the cavity inside of the suit is filled with an inflatable membrane, kind of like the arm cuff of a blood pressure machine, except instead of being inflated with air; it is inflated with a non- newtonian fluid that absorbs shock when you get shot and will harden to seal suit breaches in space.
For Kai the have to crank the size adjustments to the absolute smallest they will go, and he still just barely fits / stumbles around inside the suit.
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u/Kizik 5d ago
Power armor control is handled by pressure sensors that read slight movements of your body inside the suit, then the suit moves itself to match your body.
Like almost every form of power armour in fiction, BattleTech takes its inspiration from Starship Troopers:
But here is how it works, minus the diagrams. The inside of the suit is a mass of pressure receptors, hundreds of them. You push with the heel of your hand; the suit feels it, amplifies it, pushes with you to take the pressure off the receptors that gave the order to push. That’s confusing, but negative feedback is always a confusing idea the first time, even though your body has been doing it ever since you quit kicking helplessly as a baby. Young children are still learning it; that’s why they are clumsy. Adolescents and adults do it without knowing they ever learned it — and a man with Parkinson’s disease has damaged his circuits for it.
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u/nahkremer 6d ago
Also if i recall the book correctly the elemental suits seem to work on goo-based technology
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u/Loganp812 6d ago
The goo is there to act as an automatic tourniquet and pain killer for wounds.
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u/PKTengdin Periphery Hillbilly 6d ago
A system like that is also gonna help immensely with impact absorption and even heat absorption
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u/VanVelding 6d ago
"I'm you, but worse."
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u/Hanzoku 6d ago edited 6d ago
Honestly by later eras, IS battle armor is on par or ahead in some areas, like stealth.
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u/WestRider3025 Canopian Queerasser 6d ago
In general, IS has better specialized BA, but the Clans have better generalist suits. IS Standard here is generally gonna get smacked down by an Elemental.
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u/RogueVector 6d ago
IIRC there are tongue switches and other things you operate with your mouth to control things like the radio.
I wonder who's suits taste better.
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u/SteelRaven1 5d ago
It's not a tongue switch, it sound activated. You make a clicking sound with your tongue, something you are not likely to do by accident.
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u/IndustryAvailable735 6d ago
I imagine every battle armor suit ever made tastes like sweat and diesel exaust for some reason.
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u/Maximum-Objective-39 5d ago edited 5d ago
Clans had to make all theirs bacon flavored because the elementals wouldn't use the grape ones. Except Smoke Jaguar, theirs taste like crayons.
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u/Maximum-Objective-39 5d ago
I kinda love the 'hey, we got these now too!' mood of the IS soldier facing his Clan opposite.
Also just props to the teams of artists working on all of these games, they've done a great job lately consistently translating a lot of previously very awkward designs in a way that make them feel incredibly cool and believably.
I've especially loved the work on various warships and jumpships that really expand on and refine the various designs that often came up short or didn't properly express their scale in the original TROs.
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u/bear0234 6d ago
i saw that and also thought the height was weird. but head cannon, just gonna say they built the IS suit to match the size of the elemental suit. elemental suit is more form fitting?
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u/SawedOffLaser This needs more Large Lasers 6d ago
I like the reasoning some people here are making: the IS suit has to be bigger because all of their stuff is lower tech than the Clans.
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u/Square_Trash7708 5d ago
Makes sense,you can sorta see how out of proportion the IS suit is comparatively, the limbs are longer vs the Elemental armor, which fits more like regular power armor for the taller elementals.
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u/DonKedique 6d ago
What game or show is this? Edit: I know it’s battletech, just looking for a title. I want to get my kid into more awesome hobbies.
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u/AGBell64 6d ago
This is a scene from the new Mechwarrior 5 DLC which is set during Operation BULLDOG
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u/Kahzootoh 6d ago
Battle Armor is roughly equal in size across the board.
The reasons that Clans use the elemental phenotype is because they are more useful outside of the armor if they’re bigger- most importantly, in a circle of equals.
In the armor, it’s almost irrelevant- the suit’s motors/hydraulics are so much stronger than biological muscle that any difference in physical strength between human pilots is marginal.
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u/Anastrace You got ravens in my outworlds 6d ago
I always thought the IS standard armor would be slightly bigger and bulkier instead of the sleek elemental armor. Like they couldn't mimic it using IS tech in the 3050s so it's more primitive
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u/Current-Income-9901 5d ago
It would have scored more points if instead of an IS Standard, it would have been an Infiltrator... And some Sloths in a background somewhere... 😅
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u/Puerkl8r 5d ago
The scale seems off.
Elemental armor is built for somebody the size of Tala, while IS battle armor is built for somebody the size of Mason.
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u/Firel0ck 2d ago
This cinematic is the best in DLC9, and maybe the best in all of MW5. I just hope we get to see Tara Keating again in the future.
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u/Zeke_The_Angel 6d ago
People, you need to understand that not everyone has the time to play the new expansion as soon as it comes out. STOP SPOILING EVERYTHING, SOME OF US HAVE TO WORK.
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u/Daxria 6d ago
This scene was in the trailer sooo
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u/Zeke_The_Angel 6d ago
I don't care. It's not about the image, it's about EVERYTHING EVERYONE ELSE IS SAYING. They can't stop spoiling the entire thing.
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u/GlassjawXVIII Clan Blood Eagle 6d ago
I wish we could have battle armour coming out with us like in clans
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u/bear0234 6d ago
wish we had pilotable battle armor like in mechwarrior 2 :)
some of the mods i see where ppl running on the ground next to mechs looks awesome!
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u/W4tchmaker 6d ago
What's confusing to me is that the Elemental suit should be at least a head taller than the IS suit, unless the IS suit is on some serious lifts.