On 2005-08-23 13:26, Warhammer: 3025 wrote:
For some time, I've been trying to comprehend some people's fascination with ultralight 'mechs.

So, I decided to compare an ultralight with a vehicle.

First, I decided on the exact weight. I chose the lightest 'mech available: 10 tons. I created a default bipedal 'mech and tracked vehicle weighing 10 tons each.

Next, speed. Since the ultralight 'mech cannot mount much armor, it must have a high speed to survive. I decided on a speed of 10/15, to be used by both the 'mech and vehicle.

I next decided on the use of XL engines, as normal fusion would be impractical on such small machines.

When the 'mech has maxed-out armor, it has .5 tons of space left over for weaponry, without Endo-Steel (1 ton with). When the vehicle has the same amount of armor (3 tons), it has 2.5 tons available.

The 'mech has a pricetag of just over 1 mil. C-Bills (1,004,869 C-Bills, to be exact). The Vehicle costs 445,958 C-Bills; I could buy two vehicles, each with an additional 2 tons to mount weapons with, for the price of one ultralight 'mech.

On 2005-08-23 17:28, Vagabond wrote:

Quote:

On 2005-08-23 16:34, Karagin wrote: And as Chihawk said, vehicles have ALWAYS been cheaper then mechs, not matter what type or weight that is compared.

Well, i see his post's intetion not being about cost but instead about efficency. Note the title "Cost-Benifit" which openly implies a 2 part comparision. His first comparision is how much each unit costs when compared to a similarly design counterpart. The second comparision is how much benifit each unit gains when compared to a similarly designed counterpart.

So yes, Vehicles will always be cheeper then Mechs; however, only focusing on this one aspect of the post is to do the post injustic as your ignoring the second part, which is benifit.

Even if we factor in a 50 percent decrease in efficency do to vehicle weaknessess by the the rules the results are as thus:

1 ultra light mech as described costs: 1,004,869 C-Bills
2 ultra light treaded vehicles as described costs: 891916 C-Bills [445,958 C-Bills each]

1 ultra light mech as described carries: 0.5t of equipment.
2 ultra light treaded vehicles as described carries: 5t of equipment [2.5t each], but i will use 4t to account for a turret [2t each].

When we add in the half effectiveness modifier for the vehicles, they would combined carry 2t of equipment. I will have you note that this is 4x the amount that the mech unit can carry.

If we use Endo-Steel on the UL Mech: cost 1,005,649 C-Bills with 1t of equipment.

Even with this near negligable cost increase, we still can get vehicles that each carry 2t and offer use a 2t comparision tonnage that is still 2x the tonnage of the Mech.

Overall, the whole post implies that UL Mechs when compared to equivalent vehicles are both more costly and less efficent. However, in order to truely make this conclusion, we would need to make a breakdown annalysis of the 10t and 15t UL Mechs compared to both equally equiped and similarly equiped 10t and 15t treaded vehicles.