Motiuncula SSM-15 MK 1

[Zerbula]

My second mech, and probibly smallest mech I will make...

The Motiuncula SSM-15 MK 1

Weapon Loadout:

(NOTE: Not concrete, though what I set the bace for, as the huge gaps in the Guide.   )

Weapons loadout:           12X ER-PC-5's
                                   - Increse ROF Capacators
                                   - Gattling Option (below)
                                   Battle Fists
                                   - Spiked knuckles (don't know if it counts as an attachment... Meh.)

This is a support supressive-fire mech ment to take on personell, vehicles, and light mechs (really more of a suit-mech hybrid, too bulky for pure of either) with a special little design.

First off, it has a rather oversized (for it's size) power plant to supply it with a huge amount of power. The large miniguns under the arms are each a Plasma Cannon (well, one that shoots balls of plasma instead of discs.) They both have the ROF capacators, but use the recoil to spin the barrel as well as cool down the barrel much faster, allowing a higher safe ROF to be achived. The rails on the back are recoil-buffers, allowing it to fire without fear of becoming unstable, as well as allowing the guns to retract to allow the use of the hands completely unimpeded. Also on the heels of the foot are extendable supports to give it a more stable platform.

It has a rather slow walk though, but more than likely could catch a ride on a very large mech with a flat surface... living turret...  

In any case, I would love suggestions.  

[Spleenslitta]

A brave entry into the flea weight class Zulls. Love the way you made the picture spin. Now for my dreaded attempt at constructive critique  

i like everything about the hands. And the rails for retracting the guns is something i would think of too. The battlepack with batteries/power plant is good as well.
The PDF doesn't mention any recoil on the PC's and energy weapons don't have any gatling options. Yeah i know the gatling stuff was just for the fluff right?

Are the arms and legs of the pilot inside the limbs so that it is worn like a fullplate armor? Is it that small? it sounds like an exciting mech to bring into battle.

if it is small enough that the hands of the pilot are inside the hands then you might wanna exchange the battlefists with a powered close combat weapon, since punching a big mech sounds a little insufficient to do much damage when you take the size difference into account.
Try putting on a steel gauntlet and punching into the side of a tank with all you have. i'll bet you will be more hurt than the tank.
But with a powered close combat weapon you will melt the armor into molten slag 

Attaching something to the side of the head will make it seem like the pilot is relying on more than just his eyes. Maybe you could use a
type of kinetic weapon on one arm you could make it snubnosed and therefore the retraction rails wouldn't have to be so long.
Relying on energy weapons alone might get you in a jam since mechs have Screens that probably are barrely affected by an energy weapon of this caliber.

Also the guns look a little too large for the arms. hmm....i know a way you can mount a big gun that doesn't get so much in the way of the hands.
Look at the Senka Taipan's shoulder mounted guns. Imagine a big gun with one/two handholds to handle the recoil that is attached to the shoulder like that.
There is even a way to mount it so that the barrel doesn't get in the way when it gets up close and it will have a good angle to be feed ammo/energy from the battlepack.

it can be stowed away on the back like a big rifle that is part of the main body without the barrell towering over the mech as it points towards the sky.
it also uses rails to compensate for the recoil and it works as part of the stowing away mechanism. Don't worry- if you do it correctly it won't get in the way of your battlepack either when it's stowed away.

Would you like me to put up a picture for how you could do this?

[Zerbula]

Attaching something to the side of the head will make it seem like the pilot is relying on more than just his eyes.

Good idea. On either side there are four lenses. Bottom largest one is just a normal zoom optics for long-distance. The three top-small ones are (top to bottom) Infa-red, Night vision, Ultra-violet. These are layed over the main zoom optic in the display if used.


And yay, twin-shoulder mounted guns. I decided to go Lukron with this thing ( Because 24 guns on any mech sounds pretty gun-heavy, even if there just machine guns ), but yeah. Another note is that you may see the battle-pack was enlarged a bit... I wanted to ( If possible ) make a tandem-engine set. The main for movement and systems, the secondary to supply the magority of the power to the weaponrey, or at least if a second one couldn't fit to pack a bigger beast in there. =p

Also, gattlings are externally powered to increse the ROF by reducing heat buildup ( spinning fast = air cooled ) as well as the increse ROF capacators. Lastly, I finally got around to those waist boxes. it be a shotgun ( though technically shotguns don't exist, let's go with mini chaff-cannon.   ) So yeah. Lukron flea mech.

...Though I should probibly re-work the arm guns, make em a bit smaller ...  


and yeah, again, support unit for dealing with infantry, vehicles, and other flea mechs. Mainly things without energy screens. On a side note, wouldn't it be fun to get a few of these standing on something the size of a mastiff and acting as turrets? best mech-mech simbiotic relationship evah.  

[Spleenslitta]

Looks on the new additions for a long moment completly stunned. i think we got a major problem with the mech. How heavy is it without weapons?
Since a man is wearing the Motiuncula like a full plate armor instead of sitting inside a cockpit it can't weigh as much as an average full sized car which is 1.2-2 tons depending on wether your in Europe or America.

When you look at the PDF data sheet of the different mechs and at how much they weigh without the weapons- they never increase more than 20-25% after weapons/ammunition/fuel has been loaded.

The Lukrons are supposed to go heavy on the guns but i doubt even they can stretch it that far. You see even a single caliber 1 Plasma cannon weighs 265 kgs.
Which means that each gatling would weigh over 1,536 tons. That's 6,144 tons! Way too much.
Even the Big Foot which packs really heavy duty firepower weighs 61.55 tons clean and 81.8 tons after weapons/ammunition/fuel has been loaded.
i think i pushed my Flat Crab too far as well- too much firepower even if it did become a Lukron mech.

You could swap the plasma cannons with lasers/pulse lasers within the energy weapons category. But i think you would be restricted to the 0.1/0.2 calibers.
The bonus is that i think you will be saving a bit on the energy consumption when firing with lasers/pulse lasers.
But i don't think you will be able to mount 24x0.1 lasers since that would weigh 840 kgs grand total.

i have to go to work now, but i'll keep reading the mech system PDF for a solution to the weight problem and post it up during working hours.

Edit: The numbers in the PDF and the probable weight of the Motiuncula is depressing  
if it weighs 0.5 tons clean you can probably only mount 130-170 kgs of weaponry/ammo/fuel. And then i'm being generous because it's a Lukron.
it kinda ruins my hopes for the flea class mechs.

i wish the dev's would put up some official guide on how much weaponry/fuel/ammo you can add per ton of clean mech. As a matter of fact i'll put that in the wish list thread because i want to get the Motiuncula to be an ingame mech someday.

But if you put in a reflexive or better control system and increase the weight/size by 1-1.5 tons you could still make this thing a potential mech to be used in the game.
it would still be flea class but it would have the capacity to actually hurt something.

[Zerbula]

Yup. I thought that would be waaay overkill for the weight and firepower issue, not the only one. Meh.

No, just put up four guns for a joke, really only mounted one over the right shoulder, but when I finished mounting out the shoulder, I thought "Wouldn't it be funny If I could put four on it..." so I taylored up the arms a bit and poof. It does look cool in any case.   

Here's the real pic I was planning to put up ( before I went all weapon-crazy  ) :



And yeah, diddn't expect them to be that heavy... hmm...

I guess I will go with six .1 Lasers b/c of the unannounced weaponrey caps. meh. We need those figures.  It's still gunna spin to cool it down, should be a cool effect in-game. a spinning mini gun spewing red streaks at tanks from a quarter-mile.

Oh, and of course those two shotguns at the hips. I know it's not on the weaponrey table, but if we get any chance for personell weaponrey, monting those shouldn't add any more than sixty pounds to the mech at the most. I'm guessing that it will just add a bit of dirty weight, nothing too detremental to weight.


Oh yeah, on the weight thing, this thing is exteremely dense ( Mini Nuclear power plant, heavy super-dense armour, weaponrey, exoskeleton ) it might not push past flea or even only go to power armour, but it does weigh a bit more than a car. I'm hoping to push the weight factor as far as I can for this thing to increse overall power.

[Spleenslitta]

That's a lot better and you had me kinda worried there. i was thinking of suggesting that you move the backpack to the left so that you could put the gatling directly onto the shoulder to save internal space in the arm.
Another advantage you'll gain is that the energy supply cable won't have to move so much. That's less work for the dev's when it's time to make the mech move or aim with anything mounted in it's right arm.
But that would mean you might have to remove the sensors on the right side of the head for the gatling to be aimed straight forwards. You'll figure out something i'm sure.
How about adding a small gun camera to the gatling so that it would be easier to aim?

Next subject. 6X0.1 caliber lasers would weigh 210 kgs. it might be possible if you're aiming for a hyperdense mech.
Anyways i assume you went for lasers rather than pulse lasers to give it better armor penetration ability and i couldn't agree more with that decision.
But how about decreasing the number to 3 lasers instead in order to save weight for some smaller weapons? You might even increase the caliber to 0.2 that way (55 kgs per 0.2 laser X 3=165 kgs).
There is a cool looking 20mm triple barreled gatling cannon mounted on the RAH-66 Comanche that would do well for inspiration.
Here are a couple of triple barreled gatlings of smaller caliber- M197(old) and GAU-19/A.

A shoulder mounted weapon is good for longer range but how about some short range weaponry? A caliber 1 heat ray or mini flamer to make crispy critters out of infantry perhaps.
Since it has two hands you can use kinetic pistols/rifles and reload them without problems. Problem with making rifles is the way Taipan holds it's rifle in the picture.
It's a big task to make the mech move with a rifle and making it look balanced/natural. Pistols are way easier.

i would go for an antimissile weapon next- heat guided Mini missiles(don't know the weight on those), small caliber auto cannons or pulse lasers are best for that job.

Another thing you could add to make the Motiuncula somewhat more deadly to small mechs/tanks are Boosters in the legs and maybe even a small ECM array to help avoid detection.
i mean think about it- A damaged enemy scout mech is trying to limp it's way back to base when this little bugger ambushes it in a place with lots of cover.
As soon as it pops out of cover to fire it's gatling laser it's jumped to another spot before the bigger scout mech can properly respond.
it will be like a flea that bites a cat to death
But then again the boosters probably uses huge amounts of fuel and you're on a tight weight budget already. i really want those weight numbers now.

Enough with my meddling in your design


PS: Why do i always writte down a whole wall of text when i barelly speak a word to people because i'm so shy in real life?

[Zerbula]

Hmmm... I'm not exactly sure there is enough space on the shoulder to mount it between keeping the head in line and impeding the right arms movement, and it might be bad for it if a foot soldier got a lucky shot in and the weapon went critical... with the head an inch or two away... at least on the shoulder theres a chance if it does go critical, it doesn't kill the pilot. I should add a piece of armor there to defend the head against that. Also on the arm it has a larger vertical targeting ability, allowing it to shoot targets shorter than itself or at aircraft in the air, and on the fixed shoulder it doesn't quite get as much swing.

I do have an idea of reducing the number of guns while keeping the look very similar... I was thinking of taking every other barrel and turning it into a mini-cooling system to keep it under control, like sealing off the barrel and adding cooling hoses to each one, while still retaining the gattling shape. Because six barrels look cool.  

And on the close-range, on the torso are pretty much shotguns, those boxes on either waist with the barrels at the bottom (if they are capable of being mounted on mechs). A few shots from either one should keep them far enough away to use that laser. For the Missile defense system... not sure yet. Ideally, that gattling would actually be the best (mounted on a mech), If possible to give it a dual-purpose, that could serve, though this thing should be grouped with mechs that can defend it for it, if it can.


And agreed, I would love to see an in-game cutscene of twenty of these things just running around wearing bunny suits and trashing light mechs with some up-beat music in the background.  


Edit:

Enough with my meddling in your design


PS: Why do i always writte down a whole wall of text when i barelly speak a word to people because i'm so shy in real life?

Meddle away, it helps me come up with ideas and keeps the forum alive.  

and also, it's much easier to type to someone you don't know and (probibly) will never meet than someone you will see the next day.

[Spleenslitta]

You might have a point with the vertical targeting, but i believe you will have occupied all of the internal space in that arm if it's in that location (most likely beyond).
So i doubt you'll be able to mount anything else on that arm. i still believe that mounting it directly onto the shoulder is the best idea.
You could use the stowing away rails to aim it straight upwards if you wanted to.

As for the missile defense system goes- if you use ordinary lasers they probably don't have enough firerate to be good at that kinda job (even with RoF capacitators)
So you might wanna use pulse lasers instead, but if you do that you will most certainly lose that armor penetration edge you get with ordinary lasers.
So i would suggest using flare/chaff/smoke dischargers to take care of the missile problem (why didn't i think of those in the last post?).
But i'll just drop this subject since i really need some precise numbers in the Mech System PDF before i could say anything more.

You have probably seen that i'm the type who will hunt down all the little details and clues the dev's have left here and there to understand as much as i can about mech construction in FoA. 
Yeah i know...i'm way too curious for my own good. Let's just hope that this old saying does not come true: Curiousity killed the cat.

Sleepy. zzz.

[Zerbula]

Unless logic has failed me, you aren't a cat... Are you... Meow? :3


Yeah, I am still thinking on how I can mount that gun... and the AMS too. It would be a lot easier If we had access to the un-Abridged PDF, so I can tell 'This definately cannot go there...' Or 'just enough room for another.'. Meh.

Anyways, I'll see If I can work out a solution to make it fit and work and stuff. For the moment, I think a chaff launcher on the top of the battlepack would be the best idea, as well as a smoke canister underneath, unless both can't be mounted. I have no idea the weights and space needed for them, if they take up too much. 

On a side note, appriciate all the feedback, hopefully it will be tweaked enough to fit in the game when it's all done. 

[Spleenslitta]

I ain't no cat, but being too curious ain't a good thing in some cases.

You can fit all three launchers with no problem. They did in most of the mech PDF data sheets. They don't need to be that big.

i would suggets starting to tweak on the torso next. Those six-packs have been bothering me and making it look more like the other mechs in the crotch area would not be a mistake (without cutting the pilots legs off).
And then adding details all over the mech. Fewer flat surfaces.

[Zerbula]

But the six-pack represents strength and masculinity...  ... yeah, okay, I see what you mean, kinda. I just wanted to put something there for detail, instead of just a flat plane.  

On another note, I have been tweaking with the gun, the head, and the battlepack, and I almost have something working out. I should have a pic up soon. Soon being probibly in the next day, or when I get the next chance to work on it. I have to sleep, and yeah... but it will be here at some point, quote (or mark, w/e floats yer boat) these words. 



Edit: Two things...

1. Agreed w/ curiosity.

2. I just noticed your new siggy. It made me laugh. ^_^.

[Zerbula]

Okay... updated pic's. As you can see, I shifted the battlepack over to the left to accomidate the repositioned Gatling system on the right, which fits in very snugly. I had to remove the right eyes sensors, but came up with an alternative I might introduce later. Anyways, there was just barely enough room to squeese it in there, but it worked. Just barely.  

When the gun is up, the Right arms has almost complete movement as well, cuts off at anything higer than 45 degrees, but still, pretty good.

I'm gunna work on the cooling system for it now, as well as touch-ups for the general mech ( If the whole armourment solution is solved, which I think it is... Do you see any flaws in it? ). Everyone who can, please add some suggestions to this melting pot.  

[Spleenslitta]

This is exactly what i had in mind. it looks natural and balanced with a comfortably better looking angle on the gun when it's stowed away than i imagined.

i just thought of an easy way to improve the arms horizontal targeting. if you take a look at the Taipan's arms and you'll probably spot the possibilities as well.
The Taipans arms are unique among all the FoA mechs in that they can move almost exactly like a human arm would. i've made that joint setup my standard.

Flaws in the armament setup? You might need a small caliber weapon on each arm for anti-infantry purposes.

Edit: i just took a look at the Senka Knight on the FoA frontpage. You could gain huge insight just by taking a look at that picture since the Motiuncula and the Knight has a lot in common.
if you could narrow down the waist on the Motiuncula a bit (just not quite as much as the knight).

[Zerbula]

Yays, feedback AND ideas  . Now to go study on the other mechs, and see what I can pick up for ideas.