In article <429fa29c$1@news.povray.org>, ele### [at] netscapenet 
says...
> Orchid XP v2 nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2005-06-02 14:54:
> > Just out of curiosity... what *is* a "mech"? Seem to be quite a few 
> > posts on this NG that mention them.
> In the present case, a mech is a shorthand for "Mechwarior" in a game named
Battletech.
> They are gient, piloted, vaguely humanoid battle machines. Most are bipedal, but
some are 
> quadrupedal. They are equiped with a variety of SF weapons like laser and particle
pulse beams. They 
> can also have rockets, some canons and possibly machin guns. One is even equiped
with a mighty axe!
> The original game was played with pen, paper and miniatures. There exist some
computer, real time 
> adaptations.
> 
Some, from the perspective of the original RPG rules 'bad' adaptations. 
Always annoyed us back when I played it that not only did they never 
provide a simulation to 'test' custom designs, but that even if they did 
the simulations would be worthless, since in all the early games all you 
had to do to take out an opponent was blow its legs off. In the RPG this 
would be like rolling twelve dice and getting all sixes. lol The rules of 
the RPG didn't even allow for specifically targeted shots unless it was 
using a special targeting computer *and* you where aiming at the center 
torso.

But, we did have a nice program for making customs. I managed to make one 
that had sufficient heat dissipation and weapons that a targeted shot at 
the center torso of the biggest mech would strip away 95% of the armor in 
one shot, assuming the other mech was even fully armored. The only time I 
got to test it in a sort of arena battle the enemy outnumbered us 15 to 
one. They built a lot of fast light mechs, while we had five each of 
heavy ones and lots of fire power. By the time they came close enough to 
hit them easy they had taken out 6-7 of the 15 we had and there was 
'still' another wave of their side no yet on the map. It was very 
embarrassing. lol But man, if I have 'ever' gotten a decent shot at the 
enemy, I could have taken those light weight 10-20 ton mechs out in 
single shots, even without precise targeting.

-- 
void main () {

    call functional_code()
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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