Ach, Good Grief!

[foeofthelance]

Alright, time for the good folks on the forum (though I use the term 'good" loosely) to lend me some advice.

I am currently working on a crossover fic amongst my other projects. In this case, it Star Wars (no explanation need I hope) with Mechwarrior (Big giant robots of mass destruction). As expected, I've gotten a review criticizing the "errors" in the fic. Evidence A follows:

This seems like a very well written story and i have only read the first chapter but i find a few innacuracies. For one the TIE fighter is only 1/4 the side and over twice as fast as an aerospace fighter from mechwarrior. the aerospace fighter has more weapons and armor and the TIE has such thin armor that just one shot would take it. There would be no jockying for position in that firht it would be more like gun ships vs fighters, the fighters flitting about and the gunships blasting away. that fight would come down to numberswhoever could place more firepower in the field would win. as for the capital ships, while the star destroyers would take damadge from gauss rifles, the dropships would never get more than one volley off. either they would be blown out of the sky, due to a lack of sheilds, or they would be rendered immobile from ion cannons. as to the ion cannons not working on the dropships, ion cannons short out electrical systems of which there are a lot of on a dropship. the gauss rifles are shot using electro-magnetic coils to speed up a nickel-iron ferrus slug up to supersonic speeds. without the electrical systems they would never shoot. missles use electrical systems to ignite their fuel and to guide them selves and the PPC also needs electricity to shoot. i am a large fan of both Mechwarrior and Star Wars and i have read almost all of the books and seen the movies, and played all the games (exept for the star wars games they get things wrong too often.) so forgive me if i seen condescending i just know altogether too much about this stuff.

So, here's the problem. How to respond to this? I know I could always use the "Its my story" excuse, but thats rather crass. Some of it, for example the frailness of the TIE fighters, is already included in the story. They're fast and fire more quickly, but they're also one shot KOs. They do score kills, but thats the advantage numbers and speed offers.

The big problem I have is with the criticisms of the combats between the capitol ships. Some of it I want to ignore outright, such as the comments about the ion cannons and the dropships. To begin with, not a single dropship was fired upon. The combat in the first chapter was between two Star Destroyers, two Mechwarrior Battleships, and a Jumpship, which did order it's dropships to evac. There was combat between fighters as well, and several fighters did attack a Star Destroyer, but that was it.

Then there is the questioning of the shields. The critic was quite right. Dropships don't have shields. They have armor. Thick, heavy, combat durable armor. Which while it can be slagged off, is also quite efficient against weapons. For a while at any rate. It would also provide them protection against the ion weapons. The armor isn't tied to any systems, save for possibly damage control sensors. Hitting solid metal with ionic weapons shouldn't harm the rest of the ship, especially since there are no systems connected to it. The Mechwarrior ships are built much like the warships of the 17th and 18th centuries. All their weapons are fired from external ports, but thee weapons are fixed inside the ship. The engines are exposed, but the battle was head on, so the engines were tucked behind the ships. The Star Destroyers do use shields, and do have exposed systems on their surfaces, so are slightly more vulnerable then the Mechwarrior ships. Finally, these are war ships. It would be rather silly if they didn't have built in redundants, back ups, and back up redundants.

Ok, my side over. The real question is how do I present this? Should I post a FAQ chapter explaining my ideas? Ignore it entirely? Post it at the bottom of an A/N? I would reply by email, but unfortunately none was left.

[Guest Alien Pirate Pixagi]

Well, if you really want to relply to this reviewer, I sggest making an A/N requesting that they leave an e-mail address where you can contact them and respond to their review in full. If they don't, assume they're just a know-it-all asshat who's afraid of being shown up or what-not. As for the response itself, I think what you just told us would make a rather valid response.

[Guest Evil_Labs]

The problem here lies with Battletech/Mechwarrior's armor system in general. First of all, Battletech weapon ranges are laughably short. There is a pseudo-canon explanation for this involving two things: accuracy of target systems and armor penetration capability.

Star Wars utilizes shields much more than armor, but armor in Battletech is... Well, it's very, very tough to penetrate enough to even cause damage. A fusion power plant of exteremly high performance and 1,200 to 1,400 pounds of equipment is necessary to create a particle cannon that can damage the armor efficiently. Thus, the basic problem is that there's no real efficient way to compare the damage capacity of weapons in Star Wars to those in Battletech. A particle cannon's closest equivilant per description is an ion cannon, but the effects are totally different in the two universes. Ion weapons have to conduct through the metal in Star Wars to damage electronics; Battletech units, therefore, could be seen as having inherent dampening effects on the ion weapons built into the ferro-diamond armor they use (a combination that has never been all that well described or detailed).

Of consideration:

An AT-ST can be smashed by two large logs. A Battlemech would take about 8-10 points of damage and be unaffected, for the most part. Star Wars armor is frail by comparison.

So, the thing you need to work out is just how well shields protect ships from Battletech weapons. I should point out that in Aerotech, the ranges of weapons are considerably longer; measured in kilometers kinda long range. Star Wars never depicted combat from more than point blank range. Aerotech fighters would be firing from 25-30 km with long range weapons like particle cannons and missiles.

I can go on about this, but that's it for now, because I have to work. x_x

[foeofthelance]

Well, when it did come down to the ground combat, the Imperials got their asses hadned to them in a hat by a star of mechs.

In space, I'm willing to at least give them a fighting chance, because when it comes down to it, most of the weapons are pretty much for overkill purposes. Their shields are based off an idea in a Star Gate episode, where the shields being used compensated based on energy. Low energy got no response, high energy got deflected. Makes sense as well as a prevention measure for having a piece of space dust smashing a ship the long way while in hyperspace.

[Guest Evil_Labs]

Now, this is reaching back really far in my brain and to years ago, but I recall Star Wars shields having dual layers: the shields for combat, which are military and often used in combat ships or upper grade cargo ships and fighters, and less strong shields to deflect random bits of dust and pebbles in space, which are more or less form-fitted to the ship. However... Like I said, it's hard to get really technical on these things, because while you can say 'Turbolasers use x kilowatts of energy,' you can't compare really compare just what that means in each universe well. I'd say your benchmarks are just fine, really. You can not go through something like this without offending a fanboy on one side or the other.