Tonnage Puns

This is part 4 of a Heroes of the Inner Sphere DLC series of missions and suddenly the tonnage limit has dropped to 50? Previous mission in this string were 240 tons and such. The smallest mechs I have at the moment are two 50 ton mechs. I so confused 😐

Edit: thanks for the advice everyone. I should’ve read the whole mission briefing, not just the contract, before posting this but everyone is really helpful here. Thanks!

I randomly came across a map that depicts tonnage by means of transportation in the US and by far the two fattest lines for railways start in north eastern Wyoming; just google "us railway tonnage map" to see what I mean.

Having never visited the US, let alone your wonderful state, this surprised me quite a bit. As I understand, this has something to do with coal extraction, is that correct? What I find even more puzzling is that it's really hard to find articles or any kind of resource that even so much as references this statistic. Am I misinterpreting these maps?

Edit: Thanks for the answers!!

It seems like tonnage of vehicle doesn't make sense compared to tonnage of Mechs. The equivalent tonnage vehicle seems to have much less weapons and armor. Is there another way to balance the game? Or perhaps I'm not thinking clearly.

I'm sure people do this already, but I just tried it for the first time a couple weeks ago and I've been having so much fun, I thought I'd share.

So my main career save was getting a little boring. I hit Level 15 months ago, had all the biggest, baddest, shiniest, assault mechs brandishing the biggest, baddest, boomiest guns. Huge stockpiles of money, equipment, and random rare and hero mechs. None of the missions were particularly challenging anymore, even in Level 15 space, and I was considering starting a new save just to shake things up.

I was looking forward to it, because I actually really like early-game MW5. I like faster, smaller mechs, and I like a challenge. The main thing I hate about early game is not having access to the high-tech upgrades and Lostech weapons that you get later in the game. What I really wanted, was a late-game save with only early-game mechs.

So I sent all of my big bois to cold storage and decided to only use mechs 60 tons or less going forward. I already had lots of smaller mechs collecting dust in my locker, so I pulled out all my favorites and decked them out with double heat sinks, top-tier LB 10-Xs, Pulse Lasers, UAC-5s, ART-IV Missiles, you name it, and I'm having SO MUCH FUN.

This change has really breathed new life into the game for me. Missions are much more challenging now, much more rewarding. Individual engagements last longer, I'm no longer ending fights in two or three salvos, I actually have to dance a little bit, disengage, re-engage, use cover. I'm relying on my AI allies a lot more, paying much closer attention to my lance composition, and even getting some good use out of airstrikes which is not something I ever had a use for previously. I'm discovering a lot of cool variants of smaller mechs that I never tried before because they come out late enough in the timeline for me to already have much bigger mechs. Did you know there's a Centurion that can run at 96kph?! I do now, and she's a BEAST with an LB 10-X SLD and MP Lasers. Shadow Hawks are the ultimate AI mech in that weight-class imo. TAGs are actually really really useful if one or two of your teammates has one.

If you feel like your max level playthrough is getting boring, I highly recommend this. I chose 60T pretty arbitrarily, but you could go much lower if you want a real challenge.

A well-maintained ancient ship may be built purely for naval operations, while a 40K era Space Marine ship is built specifically for transport and deployment, and their equipment is a tier lower compared to their tonnage. Was there ever a time when the CSM had the advantage of superior ship performance in space over the normal chapter, thus avoiding the disadvantage of having fewer CSMs? Did most of the older CSM groups have an advantage in terms of ship performance?

edit:
Sorry, perhaps I should have said that the 40K Space Marines usually had a deployment vessel with a little less equipment than the tonnage.The CSM could have gotten a more powerful (equal in tonnage and equipment) ship from the 30K era.

I've been playing around with super battleships but I've been running into issues with running into the maximum weight. Is there a way to increase this

Just an FYI.. there are some techs that will increase the tonnage of your ships even though you are unable to refit ships to add new techs.. Examples being new radar techs (increases tower tonnage), new barbette techs (increases gun tonnage), and new torpedo belt techs (increases hull tonnage). Its fairly annoying when you design a ship which takes you right to the limit then you research a tech and all of a sudden you have to redesign the ship since the old design is now over tonnage.

Is there a way to make those two compatible ? I just wanna deploy max tonnage while using yet another Mechlab mod

I asked my coworkers they said a ton per 400sqft and another guy gave me this formula

>Sqft*25/12000

Or basically 25btu per sqft

And then some guy said I have to account for windows, insulation, siding, condenser location, attic space and more...

How do you do it?

Mine are mostly just based on tonnage, I feel like they run big but I don't know how anyone else does it:

I'll throw some more specifics in there too, like heavy and light, if I feel like the armor/speed/gun ratio is more appropriate than what it's tonnage suggests. In general "heavy" to me means more armor and "light" means faster speed or more range.

I'm only just over 100 years in so maybe these aren't as big as they feel once we hit more Shipyard Operations techs.

I feel like this is pretty obviously inspired by WW2 designations (though it's moreso inspired by Star Wars, which itself was based on WW2)

I have been playing campaign for some time and got the Highlander mech with a gauss in the story mission. This has been my headshot machine since then. I have found another gauss in the store, so I tried to make another similar mech because two are better than one. However I do not have another highlander, but I do have a Battlemaster.

But when I try to make a similar setup, BM is worse by far.

Not that BM has less equip, a lot less armor, one less weapon and no missiles:

https://i.imgur.com/dQ3J5S6.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/cY9hrNh.jpg

And after scratching my head for a while, I stripped both to see if I'm actually insane, but no, for some reason the HL has 65.5 available tonnage while stripped, when BM only has 42.5.

Why is that? They are both assault, and I don't see any reason why instead of being worse by 5 tons (HL is 90 on paper, BM is 85), it's worse by 23.

Pretty straightforward: what has been your most successful patrol?

361,033 GRT was my most recent patrol, dwarfing my prior top number by almost 100,000…my top patrols have all been Drumbeat; lots of tankers and C3/liberty ships upped my GRT too.

My highest non-resupply/non-milk cow patrol in the version-128 days was around 130,000 GRT.

Lots of taking out escorts with torpedos and using the deck gun for the remaining unarmed freighters…

I've been trying to find a fairly straightforward answer on how class 1's rate locomotives according to their horsepower and/or tractive effort. I've heard roads such as Union Pacific use something along the lines of Tons per Axle, but I have no idea how the math works on this...while others use trailing tonnage, usually around 1hp/ton, depending on the ruling grade.

So, how do railroads rate their locomotives, and what formula do they use to determine how much power a given train needs?

Need help with a debate. It’s always been my understanding that the compressor and evap should be the same tonnage. But have heard people argue one can be bigger then the other for different reasons. Thought?

Also, regarding a ship speed, why it is measured in "knots"?

In the original CityTech, FASA gave infantry units an equivalent in tonnage. That's not even remotely similar to their BV as per Master Rules. For example, a Jump SRM platoon is estimated at 33 tons but has a BV of 71 -- about a tenth of its mech equivalent in tonnage!

I'm interested in adding infantry to our games, and I wonder if y'all can help me sort out how best to do it. One Jenner and one Spider should square off against somewhere between two platoons of Jump SRM (65 tons vs. 66 equivalent tons) and 23 platoons (1,627 BV vs. 1,633 BV). On either end of that, I think it's a rout.

I'm still fairly early in the campaign, but have noticed the Deployable Tonnage steadily increasing. Is this a constant? Will I have a use for Light Mechs in the future at all?

Oh boy. Loving the game and hating my pilots and how they need spoon feeding every step of a mission with micro management instructions. I had 2 Atlas and 1 Cyclops ripped to shred by a Hunchback supported by a couple of medium mechs all because my pilots decided to clump together and stand still while they chatted about ol' war stories. Every time the AC cannon hit them they would complain about tinnitus ringing and feeling a bit shaky today from a bit too much tinkiki (spelling?) dark they consumed last night they got from Farhad. Man, no wonder why I cant field enough variety of Mechs. How many creates of the stuff does he have locked away?

I'm going to the Mech Board and Comstar and making the following recommendations before I shutdown to cool off:

1. All pilots enlistment cost to be reduced by 90%

2. All pilots pay for 75% of damage acquired to the mech, obviously based on the commanders fielding 100% of tonnage allowance. It can scale down from there. Along with a performance bonus for less damage than expected.

3. All pilots no longer allowed to glory steal my kills where I landed the killing blow. The glory stealing is something new as the Fourth Succession war started.

4. All pilots must have a certificate of completion on basic principles, such as "keep moving when engaging an enemy", "don't walk in front of the commanders LOS while he/she engages a target", "be fully versed on weapon fire controls and how to aim your weapons for increased fire rate and accuracy while still effectively managing heat".

The result, of implementing these recommendations, would have a remarked improvement on pilots performance.

Other than flushing your pilots out of an airlock, how would you handle this situation?

TL;DR Love the game, hate the AI pilots. I'd gladly pay for DLC which does nothing but dramatically improve AI pilot abilities. And I'm ready for the 'its better to play online with real people' replies. :P

Hope you enjoyed reading the full version.

I've been thinking about the issue that comes with tonnage in late game and got me wondering...wouldn't be better if mission types had their own tonnage rather then their difficulty?

Like for example, in Assassination missions you'd have a infiltration twist to it where you go in the enemy territory with lighter mechs so that you avoid alerting the enemy garrison and making the fight much easier.

Or in Demolition missions you would be allowed to use heavier tonnage mechs to destroy enemy structures and thus have better survivalbility when dealing with the garrsions.

To make it clear I'm not advocating to make these missions even more restrictive in their tonnage where only an x amount of tonnage would be permited, at least not in the Demolition example, but rather to make the missions more dynamic and therefore more exciting then what we have now.

I also think it would be a perfect excuse to give us a 4rth row of mech bays so that we can finally have 4 mechs avaible and consequentialy a dam dropship which I feel we really could have for the sake of progression (rule of cool too).

NOTE: I'm aware the AI is dumb as a door but I think that goes without saying when we can all agree it should be fixed at some point so these changes could be implemented propely.

EDIT: Corrected the mistake on mercenary standing being attached to tonnage.