Re: [Epic] Net Epic

From: Michael the Liu <mikethel_at_...>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 08:27:44 -0600 (CST)

>There has been a lot of discussion about infantry should be weaker against
>heavy vehicles & titans. I think we shouldn't change the existing rules and
>stats too much.
>Heavy war machines justify their cost by having superior fire power and
>better armor, and they don't need to be immune (or almost so) to the
>effects of CC.

It's just that they're so ridiculously bad at it right now. Like many other
people on the list, I have a real problem with seeing troops armed with axes
bringing down a Titan which supposedly took centuries to build. That's why
Titans used to all have anti-personnel weapons, like electrified hulls and
bolters. But they seem to have lost that in this edition and I miss them.

>When Soviets occupied Czechoslovakia, they brought their heavy tanks. Here
>is how the natives dealt with them: Ordinary dinner plates were put face
>down on a road that is on a probable path of tanks, and when the tanks
>stopped to investigate the objects (for mines etc), they were finished of
>by molotof cocktails made of ordinary bottles, detergent, gasoline, and
>nails. The guys who destroyed tanks this way were not even trained
>soldiers. You would extrapolate that, well trained soldiers with heavy
>armor (often with some strength amplyfying aids) and futuristic weapons of
>40K universe can do lot more efficient job.

By the same token I can bring out the example of US M1-A2 tanks. From all
accounts those things are nearly indestructable. You could have a bunch of
people throwing molotof cocktails, heck grenades and Teflon bullets, all day
long, and the tank would still get away just fine. In a way its reminiscent
of the megadamage system of the Palladium/Robotech universe. In operation
Desert Storm we had one of these tanks that broke down, so we decided to try
to blow it up so that the enemy wouldn't gain any tech secrets from it. We
even tried firing one of those nifty depleted uranium shells at it and that
didn't even destroy it, with these being the same shells that can be fired
through hills at targets and still impact with enough force to destroy them.
So we ended up taking it and flying it back to the US instead. Weapons on
the scale of infantry weapons run into some real problems when attacking
these things. I don't think that there is any personal/portable weapon
available currently which would pose a real threat to one of these tanks.
And that is just on the scale of person-tank. Titans are these towering
monstrosities with metres thick armour that dwarf people on a scale much
greater then that of mere conventional vehicles. A swarm of people taking
down a Titan just doesn't seem plausible to me, like a swarm of people
taking down a skyscraper that's fighting back or something.

Michael the liu
Received on Wed Feb 19 1997 - 14:27:44 UTC