New to the genre and game but LOVING it. Quick question regarding armament… what would the MGs and ACs equate to in current military inventory. I’m assuming MGs would be the equivalent of 20mm. AC2s would be 90mm? What about the rest of the ACs?
Current artillery equivalents?
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I'm mostly familiar with US artillery rounds only from the perspective of participating in their inventories. As far as I know the biggest round used there is the 155, and where that might fall in terms of AC comparisons, I'm not certain. Maybe an AC 10 would fire something near to that size?
The ACs in general range from 25mm to 203mm. The variation is due to the fact that the actual ACs themselves can vary between a single shot cannon and burst fire of the smaller calibers.
MGs would be basically the equivalents of the Bushmasters. As in the chain guns.
MGs would be basically the equivalents of the Bushmasters. As in the chain guns.
It varies depending on interpretation. For example, in most of the Mechwarrior games, an AC/20 is basically a weirdly short-ranged naval artillery piece. A 6-inch gun, maybe? But other sources have ACs of pretty similar calibre, but wildly different fire rates.
According to tabletop "fluff" text, the various types of autocannons in the game (AC/2, AC/5, AC/10, AC/20) are just broad abstract classifications for many different models. So one model of AC/20 might fire, say, a single mammoth 250mm shell or something, whereas another model still considered "AC/20"-class might fire a burst of 105mm shells.
FWIW, About any question you could want is generally answered on Sarna, which is an old BT Wiki that's been around forever, so it's pretty well curated.
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Autocannon
It's... debatable.
Depending on source MGs could be more or less the same as our .50 cals of today, or more like beefed up miniguns. ACs are even more weird since they are classed by damage profile over a ten second period rather than calibre or other metric. Some AC/20s fire one massive shell, others a burst of 20 smaller ones. Sarna is an excellent reference, but you can also look at the mechs themselves (for example compare the hunchback to the atlas, both carry AC/20s that obviously use much different size shells)
Oh, and don't think about how higher power cannons have a shorter range, that path leads to madness.
Depending on source MGs could be more or less the same as our .50 cals of today, or more like beefed up miniguns. ACs are even more weird since they are classed by damage profile over a ten second period rather than calibre or other metric. Some AC/20s fire one massive shell, others a burst of 20 smaller ones. Sarna is an excellent reference, but you can also look at the mechs themselves (for example compare the hunchback to the atlas, both carry AC/20s that obviously use much different size shells)
Oh, and don't think about how higher power cannons have a shorter range, that path leads to madness.
This was actually discussed on the old boards, with regards to why higher power cannons have shorter range. The leap in logic is actually not that big compared to some of the other physic bending topics.
The short answer being the barrels are particularly short for the larger ACs (on an account of trying to keep the weapon inside the Mech so that you can protect it with armor). Shorter barrels in general mean drastically reduced range, because muzzle velocity won't be as high when exiting the barrel (due to having less time to accelerate).