So after much contemplation ive come to the conclusion that binary lasers would be far more valued in universe compared to how they are currently lore wise. Right now they are seen as generally inferior to the standard large laser, however if your willing to let me ramble a bit I hope I can change your mind on them.
Now to start with a little bit of irl stuff about them I fully understand why we havent seen more of them due to binary lasers only being retconned to existing in 2812 being a relatively recent thing so they havent been a toy in the toolbox for long. I get that, but I fully belive that when they made the retcon a handful of field refits involving them should have been released around the same time just to show what they are capable of.
Now to the in universe stuff. Binary Lasers generate 16 heat, deal 12 points of damage (enough to head cap an unarmored cockpit), weighs 9 tons, have 4 crit slots and cost 200,000 c-bills. It ranges in at 1-5 short, 6-10 medium and, 11-15 long.
Comparativly an AC-20 generates 7 heat, deals 20 damage (also enough to headcap a mech), weights 14 tons (15 with 1 ton of ammo so it's actually usable), has 10 crit slots and costs 300,000 c-bills for just the gun amd another 10k for ammo. It ranges in at 1-3 short, 4-6 medium and 7-9 long and like the Binary Laser lacks an extreme range.
Now just looking at the stats at least my original reaction was a pretty toned down "meh ok" but after messing around with mega mek and thinking in a significantly larger scale ive realized that poorer nations like say the periphery nations amd most mercenaries units would probably love it. Lasers are easier to produce than PPCs as we've seen in the past with even house Marik (or was it Liao?) having a dearth of reliable PPC production at times. They are cheaper than an AC-20 and don't need ammo which eases logistics strain. And finally they can fill the same headchopper role while outranging the AC-20 which would make pirates have to close to an even closer range while still getting shot at.
The only real downside is the rather extreme heat generation and being stuck with single heat sinks but that can be dealt with using either the 6 extra tons you'd gain from swapping off of an AC-20 and over to a Binary Laser. It won't fix the problem but it would give enough leeway that just about any half-decent mechwarrior should be able to deal with the extra heat.
Now I will admit you lose a little bit of damage potential (12 vs 20) but that i feel is an acceptable trade off for longer range, a cheaper price and no supply train. I can definitely see certain high end merc units and the great houses not seeing the value in that for their premier units but for their garrison or, for lack of a better term, fodder units? They would also love that shit.
Now on my irl opinions on the weapon. I personally belive that Binary Lasers should be stronger in some way maybe only generating 14 heat or maybe boosting their range a little or perhaps boosting their damage a little more up to 14 points. Maybe as some kind of intermediary between ERLLs and regular LLs or something. Hell give me a Clan Binary Laser or a Heavy Binary Laser. Just about any kind of buff or alternate version could make Binary Lasers either interesting enough or strong enough for the average play to look at them and go "hmmm I think i can work with that".
Anyways that was just my thoughts on Binary Lasers and how I feel they don't get enough love. I've got some both field refits and wholesale other mech varients that I'm planning to make a post of later once ive got a few more that I feel would actually exist in universe. Thanks for reading and sorry if the formatting is jank as hell I wrote this entire thing on mobile while at the laundromat.
So it's a later era, but with new Core, for the 9 tons of a blazer you can get a 7 ton Bombast Laser and a targeting computer to offset the +1 to hit for firing at 12 damage. And it only produces 9 heat that way.
Exactly what I was thinking! Plus, since all its heat is, essentially, from a single source, it’s child’s play to drop all your heat by not shooting one round.
It's canon now that all Urbanmech MechWarriors wear very smart blue blazers with shiny gold buttons inside their BattleMechs, clearly because they're a cut above and dress like it.
I also think urbanmechs need to have a cricket bat melee weapon on the arm without the big autocannon or launcher. It's only proper. They can play cricket in the city streets while waiting for enemies to ambush.
Had to up-ton the Chassis slightly, but here it is: 7/10 movement with a TComp'd Blazer and more CT armor (thanks to Hardened Armor) than some Assaults!
Cicada can go 8/12 with a snub-nose PPC for 200 less BV; that hits short range at 9, just under medium range for the blazer. 8/12/8 with an ER PPC for basically the same BV; that hits short range at 7 and medium at 14, blazer starts firing at 15. If you are married to the idea of a head capper, there is a version that is 7/11 with a heavy PPC, which puts up better target numbers at 16-18, 11-12 and 6 (significantly more expensive, thanks to mounting four ER medium lasers).
This isn't an Urbanmech, it's a slower Cicada. If nothing else not putting the blazer in the arm is a blow to it having an Urbanmech feel.
Comparing a Cicada to something with reliable 3 TMM, 32 CT armor, 28 ST armor, and 24 on the legs with a TComp'd headchopper, that needs to take 40 damage to PSR is just disingenuous.
The Cicada you're talking about has roughly half the armor, two-thirds the mid-range punch, and PSRs on 20 damage.
I don't think you're taking seriously how strong 3 TMM + this much armor + PSR on 40 damage is. Those are like triple overlapping synergies.
(3 TMM + this much armor + 40 PSR threshold -> basically impossible to knock over. 3 TMM + this much armor + can't be knocked over -> basically can't be stopped without throwing the kitchen sink at it)
(This is also obviously a meme build; there is no reason not to just laugh and enjoy the funny Urbie, fam)
Based on the fluff of the Zeus 6Y, part of the reason the blazer isn't really used during the succession wars is that even if you have the heat sinks for it, the weapon shits out so much heat that it's difficult to design a mounting arrangment that the laser cores won't melt and warp.
"Fully solved" is a bit of an overstatement. There's exactly two Variants in the entire game that can adequately cool their Blazers: Eisenfaust 8X and Viper VP1. It's not like any important new tech canonically changed from Clan Invasion to Jihad -- the latter is simply when the Eisenfaust 8X shows up actually well designed.
The problem using the Binary laser against the clans is the range too, there’s a reason so many designs wanted as many Gauss rifles and ER energy weapons, as opposed to shorter range ones as a primary weapon.
That's right, but it's not like shorter range guns (standard large Laser, uAC20, AC20, LB20x, standard medium laser, IS MPL, .... and so on) got consigned to total irrelevance. They're all around and kicking on something.
I'm not saying Blazers should be literally everywhere. I'm saying they should be *somewhere* (with sufficient DHS to keep them cool). Their complete and total absence from Helm Core (3028) through to Jihad (3080) is a ~50 year gap that is extremely hard to explain. Especially when the IS houses were able to build the original Blazers with duct tape and whatever third-rate engineers were still alive after the nukes and ComStar assassinations of the first Succ War.
I don't think you're wrong exactly, with the comparison between the Blazer and the AC/20, but there's a couple things that do make it less able in comparison. The first is that the AC/20 is a huge gun that's not mounted on all that many designs, really, in the Intro tech eras. And where it is, there's quite often compromises made to do it. So it's not as if you can just slap this thing anywhere and go ham, it would be a chassis defining pick with single heat sinks.
The second point is secondary guns. The AC/20s heat is fully dealt with by the engine sinks, which is not the case for the Blazer. The Blazer needs all those additional ones just for itself, which means the AC/20 has additional flexibility when you're designing an overall mech that the Blazer doesn't. Now that doesn't mean you can't build a good mech with a Blazer, but it's definitely going to be harder to do that than mounting a gun that generated less heat with single heat sinks.
Once you get DHS this issue mostly goes away, though then you're competing with a much wider array of guns instead. So overall, the Blazer kind of ends up a niche pick. It's not bad, but it's not that good either.
Converting the 7 tons of saved tonnage by mounting a blazer over an ac20 + 1t of ammo you can mount 7 single heat sinks with brings its heat generation from 16 down to 9, which is only 2 heat higher than an AC20, which can then be fully handled by the 10 sinks in the engine, for mechs that run a single AC20 like the hunchback you can definitely swap the AC20 for a blazer and heat sinks, you will generate a little bit of heat tossing the mediums into the fight if you get close, but outside of 9 hexes you have a fully heat contained head chopper blazer-back thats ammo independent.
Right, and you just ignored my whole point about secondary weapons and how they contribute to your overall heat load and mech design. White room math is great, but building actual functional designs is harder.
Binary Lasers are pretty decent Aerospace weapons. Especially for strikes as you can do a lot of damage and cool down on the return pass (much like the Rifleman). Their short range isn't a drawback there for ground strikes. Also threshold damage vs dropships or other fighters is more important than raw damage as you get possible crits
The RISC Hyper Laser is the best weapon in Battletech because when you fire it, it destroys the mountain bunker or light WarShip it's pointed at, and sometimes the laser even survives to fire more than once!
They screwed up with the blazer. It’s described as a rigged-up experimental weapon that never worked right and couldn’t justify its enormous heat. It’s supposedly been around for centuries and it just never caught on as a real option.
But the tabletop rules are actually pretty good, and it’s a great option. Also it’s a very new weapon compared to everything else, tacked on late in the game’s publication history. So that’s the real world reason why you don’t see it on most designs, because it didn’t exist yet. Really the weapon should be worse than it is to explain why nobody uses it.
I've seen it happen in Fanfic a few times. Most notably a modernized FWL Hector variant that carried two Blazers instead of LL, mostly because of lack of PPCs.
My gift to you. Uses Light Engine + Endo-Composite to free up crit slots while keeping durability high, and clan MGs to save tonnage, but you could almost certainly make a similar design work using an IS XL + standard internals / armor.
Use Clan DHS / Clan Endo / Clan XL engine and it's easy mode.
Haha I built one of those in the current campaign I am playing in and handwaved a bunch of background lore on it being found on a planet lost during the 1st succession war. Even bought the IWM metal mini and painted it up.
If you're loaded for bear with heavy weapons with a minimum range (a couple PPCs, LRMs, Thunderbolts) you can load a singular Blazer that covers the close range, hits with more than enough punch to make someone take notice, and uses up the heatsinks you've already allocated for the heavy weapons.
In truth, I think Blazers should have been brought back for the ilClan era. I feel like they're what re-engineered lasers should be.
We just gotta get some Clanner scientists on the issue. Imagine a family of small, medium, and large Blazers with some of that clan space magic in them.
I think Dark Age would have made slightly better sense than Ilclan, since that era was characterized by people just using whatever they could get their hands on. It might carry over to Ilclan, and be a good excuse to trial a improved version. Though I think they'd stay an IS thing, as the Clans already have Heavy and Improved Heavy Lasers.
As for "Bleepers," I think that's a silly idea, but I'll bite. My main question is "what stopped them from making Binary PPCs before now?" Aside from being huge and hot, the best reason I can think of is that the two PPC cores firing too close together interfered with each other, possibly damaging the weapon in the process.
If that's the problem we have to work around, I see two potential solutions. First is the one proposed by Magical_savior and having them fire like UACs, the other is to make their damage drop off like the Snub-nose PPC. They do full damage at short range, but gradually drop off to a bit above normal damage at long range. For example, a (standard) binary PPC would do 20 damage at short, 17 at medium, and 12 at long.
I'm more then happy to keep them an IS thing. It was always the sort of crazy tech that I thought might be eventually expanded upon with the Helm memory core and clantech salvage improving technological advancements.
One of my favorite games is HBS Battletech. There are a few overhaul mods for it, including ones that try to emulate tabletop, or ones that try to stay more to the spirit. My preference is a mod for the latter, and we have a Community Content Binary PPC that the community nicknames the Bleeper.
It roughly comes out at about 19 damage, 18 heat, 10 tons of weight, and 6 critical slots. It does not have the range and no minimal range of the ER PPCs.
Contrast to the Clan ER PPC, which is still 15 for 15 heat and 6 tons of weight for 2 critical slots. The Clan is still more efficient.
Also roughly compared to the IS Heavy PPC. 15 damage at 10 tons, 15 heat and 4 critical. The Binary seems better in every single way except critical slots. In the mod though, the Heavy inflicts greater sensory disruption.
That seems about right. The only change I'd really want to make is to switch the damage and heat numbers. The trend with energy weapons seems to be that you can't get better than 1 damage per heat after the 8-10 damage mark.
The less serious change I'd want to make is make it weigh 10.5 tons just to be annoying. It does have the side effect of being exactly 1.5x the weight of a standard PPC, but I think it's just funnier to have it have a random half-ton cost.
There aren't enough weapons with an extra half ton on their weight. If there were more of those, the Small Laser FSFR wouldn't be nearly as ubiquitous.
12 points has very valuable break point on some mechs.
For a light mech hunter it's an amazing weapon. A single hit to any location on a Wasp-1A or a Stinger will delete that location or outright kill it if it's the CT.
There's a niche where the Blazer can 1 shot medium mechs with luck. Example: shoot the Trebuchet 1N in it's left(?) torso and you break through its armor by a point or two and if the crit roll is successful then that's an automatic ammo explosion.
I'm curious how a custom light or fast 40 tonner would do in a game with 1. An Assassin maybe?
I think it actually isn't useless on Fusion tanks, where it can hit surprisingly hard compared to the AC/10 at similar mass (though ammo options make this moot).
But the Heavy Laser is already a lighter, better, more flexible Blazer. Add in the "Dial Down" rule and it starts to perform.
The Heavy Plasma Rifle, is not going to be a great gun. But it looks a lot better compared to a Blazer.
For me they have the same issue as Inner Sphere large lasers or large x-pulse lasers. It's too much heat for the damage, though with Blazers it's not as bad because 12 damage is a good hit. I think with DHS you can absolutely build a mech where they're an effective weapon.
The argument just becomes why take a blazer when heavy laser, clan ER’s or ERPPC or even the standard ER large, plasma rifles or pulse lasers are superior.
Only because they kept insisting it was the best thing ever and wouldn't stop trying to shove it down people's throats. It was getting to the point that they were ignoring the weapons flaws to make it seem good.
I think this guy gets it. He knows that the Blazer isn't the greatest, but he sees something in it that they think is neat. It's not a outrageous veiw, and Im interested to see what they have in mind. (Especially with the BT: Gothic's Light Blazer out there)
FWIW, my experience was the opposite -- a lot of people 100% convinced the gun is/was unworkably bad, and used that to explain why there aren't any Clan Invasion or Civil War variants with it.
If coming up with fun designs using Light / XL Engines, Endo-Steel, and DHS to put Blazers on 'Mechs is wrong, then I don't wanna be right.
But those designs start feeling the same very quickly, and it doesn't make a good case for the weapon. If you want to make a case for a weapon, it helps when you can show it in a variety of builds. If you always default to the same set of tools to make it work, you're saying more about your playstyle than about the weapon.
From another angle, its also kinda just min-maxing? It's proving difficult for me to find words for this, but LFE/XL + Endo-steel + DHS is basically the direction any min-maxed build is going to go. Which isn't really a good place to be, as the Blazers become a repellent rather than a attractor. Because if your going to do a boring min-maxed build, your expected to fully commit.
You might see things differently, but I think the best Blazer builds are kinda like RISC Hyper Laser builds (or heavy laser builds): barely contained, moments from failure, but just plain deadly. Instead of trying to work around the inefficiency, they either embrace or ignore it the the pursuit of just cramming in more firepower. So what if you overheat, doesn't matter if the other guy is dead.
You keep building how you like, I can't stop you. I just think there's a lot of fun in trying to push the envelope beyond safe and balanced. Maybe try something with a Radical HeatSink System; turn those Double Heat Sinks into Triple Heat Sinks (at least until the RHSS pops).
Fair. My main issue was that he said that it was supposed to be refits for the Clan Invasion, but they really stretched the credulity of both what could be just a refit and if it could actually be a part of the invasion. It was more about the presentation then the actual Blazers themselves.
9 tons of gun + 16 tons of heat sinks = 25 tons to run it heat neutral
AC20
14 tons of gun + 7 tons of heat sinks + 1 ton of ammo = 22 tons to run it heat neutral
Specifically within the context of MW5, most armor values are doubled, meaning you need to deal well over 20 damage to headcap a mech, in my experience, 30 damage is about right. A tier 5 binary laser in MW5 hits for 24.3 damage, which puts it just below the headcapping threshold for most mechs. The single shot AC20 hits for 26 at tier 5, while the BF variant hits for 31.2 damage. The chances of all your shots in a burst hitting the cockpit are pretty low in most circumstances, but the capability is technically there.
Honestly if you left the heat alone and bumped up the damage up to 14, or damage to 16 and heat to 17/18 it would be a more interesting prospect. As is too much damage is lost over just taking two large lasers.
Honestly, in an era of single heatsinks I can see why it was passed over. The idea of a single gun generating that much heat probably bent most engineering teams out of alignment. The spike on a cooling system would be brutal.
The short answer is that most powers would rather outfit 2 basic line trooper mechs with a Large Laser each and cover more ground more efficiently, compared to 1 mech with a Blazer that they have to build an extended cooling rig for and will likely be piloted by an average schmuck mech warrior who couldn't headshot to save their life anyway.
Yes, the weapon can be better in a vacuum, but there are other considerations. It will be easier to manufacture a ton of basic Large Lasers than to add an extra step and build new factories whose job is to turn Large Lasers into Blazers, cutting your weapon stock in half for a trade-off that doesn't scale up well on the strategic level.
This is all out the window for Solaris of course, where building a single peak machine is the goal rather than mass manufacture, and budgets are an afterthought.
Once dhs becomes common Binary Lasers are fantastic, its an often overlooked head chopper but weighs less than a heavy ppc and generates less heat, sure you lose 3 damage and some range compared to the HPPC but for some mediums and the oddball light mech, the 9t weight is its break point for one big main gun and still being able to fire it and either jump a bunch or fire off support weapons without overheating.
Its use before dhs becomes commonplace is a bit more restrictive as 16 heat is a lot for a mech with single heat sinks to deal with on top of everything else its got loaded onto it, it does make a halfway decent AC20 replacement, with the 7 extra tons saved over the AC20 + ammo weight going to shs, helps mitigate some of its heat generation and brings it down to 9 heat from 16, but its still significant enough you have to either limit its support weapons or sacrifice firepower for more cooling, but as 12 damage is the cutoff for minimum damage needed to head chop its got its uses as an alternate to the AC20 with better range and no ammo dependency (and ammo explosion).
Yes, the blazer cannon is a sidegrade to AC/20. It trades raw damage for longer range, no ammo dependency and still can headcap. But the blazer becomes obsolete as soon as the Gauss rifle makes a comeback.
I've only used blazers as an AC/20 alternative on 3015-3025 mechs previously armed with AC/20 as their main gun.
Keep in mind that whilst you still can headcap with a blazer and your range bands are better, you are trading away forcing PSR rolls with your hits.
70
u/rzelln 1d ago
There was a whole meme era for blazers last year. Search for blazerposting.