Re: Neutral Ground
I dunno, i was just thinking about it, a mech like a Rifleman, might have that radar dish on top for seeing stuff, but cause it's guns are direct fire it cant fire through a level 2 buliding effectively.
So... if you had a mech, who has a targeting system use to trajectory combat from LRM weapon systems, being able to 'see' over a level two hill, should make it easier to fire at targets behind them?
ie. A Urbanmech is foot slogging across the terrain and using two light trees as cover. Mechs on the other side of the tree line can obviously see him.
Now... the Rifleman shoots at him, and has to fire through trees to hit the urbanmech. Obviously each and every tree in the way is going to provide cover and be a problem for lasers and auto canons to fire through.
Now... the Crusader standing there, is taking the same shot. He's using LRM fire. Why on earth would he fire THROUGH the woods, when he can indirect fire them 'over' the wood?
The crusaders SEES you... Is there any reason he can't be a spotter for himself, and just fire over the woods to hit you directly? The woods provide visual cover, but the missiles aren't going to have plow through two levels of light trees to hit the urban mech the way the rifleman has to.
So... for normal battletech, i was thinking, that a mech using LRM's could declare indirect fire for 'itself' acting as both fire support and spotter. The penalty '1' spotting penalty can be the difficulty of spotting the target through soft cover to line up the indirect fire.
As noted, this doesnt come into effect if the target is NEXT to the terrain, because then the missiles are arcing 'down' by then and the tree and terrain at that point will be in the way of hitting them, in a manner similar to the rifleman's issues for firing through the trees.
I think this concept makes a lot of sense... is functionally more USEFUL for LRM mechs, is not a 'breaking' concept for play.... ie... LRM's were always a 'meh' weapon that was oversized for what they did.
ie... a LRM 15 and a PPC are both the same weight. The LRM enjoys a slightly better range and requires less heat sinks but... suffers at short range, lesser damage (average of 8 to 10), dispersed damage (two locations as opposed to one), and the issue of requiring ammo... ammo explosion... etc...
Really it has it's moment but a PPC is so much better....
This just provides a logical function they 'SHOULD' have and helps to level the playfield comparison to energy weapons. They're still going to be pretty sucky, just... less so now.
This also only counts for mechs, not vehicles... which are level one, and i'm going to rule can't see 'high enough' to enjoy the same advantage mechs do...
This will help promote that whole myth about mechs being better than vehicles...