38 replies to this topic

[Moonreign]

Why are the mechs such pieces of garbage technologically? This isn't a criticism of PGI or anything more of the setting itself. Is this ever explained more completely in the books or is it kind of set aside as too complicated to explain realistically?

[Lord Perversor]

Moonreign, on 23 August 2013 - 09:47 AM, said:

Why are the mechs such pieces of garbage technologically? This isn't a criticism of PGI or anything more of the setting itself. Is this ever explained more completely in the books or is it kind of set aside as too complicated to explain realistically?

Pretty much because it's a they know how to keep them running.

FTL ships aren't built but mostly they are repatched again and again from the original ones (maybe there is a couple of authomated factories producing them but it's very rare and very slow) like the way most mech who are built come from automated factories.

In fact the decay of tech is so big that fight near industrial areas, or even using nukes it's Heavily prohibited due any side loss of tech can be invaluable.

In fact there is cases of mechs going extinct for centuries until some guy found how to fix one of those automated factories.

Edited by Lord Perversor, 23 August 2013 - 09:53 AM.

[Xeren KelDar]

It's because of the Succession Wars. If the Star League had remained and the Amaris Coup had not happened, the technology would have continued to advance and probably mirror the Clan Tech at least.

Once Kerensky ditched the Inner Sphere, taking a lot of the advanced tech with him, the Succession Wars began. These were brutal atrocities utilizing every weapon of mass destruction available. The houses started killing enemy scientists and facilities so that they wouldn't develop an advantage. Jumpships were a prime target. Eventually the Houses realized how bad a blunder this was as no one left alive new how FTL worked or even the basic premises of the Battlemech technology.

Recently this had begun to change with things like NAIS (New Avalon Institue of Science) and the Helm Memory Core offering boosts to progression, but I don't think anyone can make jump ships yet so everyone reuses the old ones and hope they don't break.

[Ngamok]

Yea, no one targetted each others jumpships because they could not be replaced.

[Moonreign]

I think you guys misunderstand me. Even clan tech seems to me like childsplay compared to traveling faster than light. The mechs all have so many physical limitations that seem silly considering humans at one time figured out how to break fundamental laws of physics.

[Lord Perversor]

Moonreign, on 23 August 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

I think you guys misunderstand me. Even clan tech seems to me like childsplay compared to traveling faster than light. The mechs all have so many physical limitations that seem silly considering humans at one time figured out how to break fundamental laws of physics.

Well the clans is the top tech right now and they can hardly understand most of the FTL concepts right now.

As example the FTl communications are ruled by Comstar, even when the Clans returned with all their knowledge and advancess, they was heavily reliant on Comstar due lack of knowledge in FTl technology. And Comstar it's a kind of religious order that can barely maintain the FTl comms much less create brand new ones.

[WildeKarde]

Moonreign, on 23 August 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

I think you guys misunderstand me. Even clan tech seems to me like childsplay compared to traveling faster than light. The mechs all have so many physical limitations that seem silly considering humans at one time figured out how to break fundamental laws of physics.

I can see what you mean. Building a bipedal vehicle that run on a nuclear reactor taking neural inputs for balance, movement and sensors plus mimicking muscle in limbs. Along with generating high powered lasers, particle cannons and gauss based weapons. Sounds pretty basic all in.

If they can do that then FTL is a possible discovery.

[L1f3H4ck]

Yes, its explained in the books.

The tl;dr is: The knowledge of building jumpships has been lost in centuries of perpetual war, and that kind of tech is therefore labeled "Lostech".

[Moonreign]

that all sounds advanced compared to todays technology but to travel faster than light requires breaking the laws of physics. The ammount of energy required to move an object at a given speed increases exponentially as that speed increases to the point where the ammount of energy required is infinite. Lowering an objects mass to 0 somehow through technology will let that object move AT the speed of light. Considering it takes years for light to reach the nearest star outside our solor system the ships in battletech would have to move thousands of times faster than the speed of light, which is impossible according to einsteins theory of relativity.

The things you mentioned are nearly possible with current technology with the main hurdles being miniaturization and efficiency to fit a nuclear reactor inside something the size of a mech. We can already control computers with our thoughts (very basicly but we can do it) and we already have lasers (not nearly as powerful, but we have them), and we have gauss type equipment that just needs miniaturization to be weaponized. I'm not saying building a mech would be easy, because it certainly would not and we certainly won't be able to do it IRL for hundreds of years, but it is thousands of times simpler than traveling faster than light.

Edited by Moonreign, 23 August 2013 - 10:49 AM.

[Xeren KelDar]

Moonreign, on 23 August 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

that all sounds advanced compared to todays technology but to travel faster than light requires breaking the laws of physics. The ammount of energy required to move an object at a given speed increases exponentially as that speed increases to the point where the ammount of energy required is infinite. Lowering an objects mass to 0 somehow through technology will let that object move AT the speed of light. Considering it takes years for light to reach the nearest star outside our solor system the ships in battletech would have to move thousands of times faster than the speed of light, which is impossible according to einsteins theory of relativity.

The things you mentioned are nearly possible with current technology with the main hurdles being miniaturization and efficiency to fit a nuclear reactor inside something the size of a mech. We can already control computers with our thoughts (very basicly but we can do it) and we already have lasers (not nearly as powerful, but we have them), and we have gauss type equipment that just needs miniaturization to be weaponized. I'm not saying building a mech would be easy, because it certainly would not and we certainly won't be able to do it IRL for hundreds of years, but it is thousands of times simpler than traveling faster than light.

Battletech isn't real. It was launched in the 80s so take that into account when examining the validity of the tech.

[Moonreign]

Xeren KelDar, on 23 August 2013 - 10:47 AM, said:

Battletech isn't real. It was launched in the 80s so take that into account when examining the validity of the tech.

I know I was just wondering if any of the Novels since then came up with a cool explanation

[Cardos]

i believe i did read many years ago something that the jumpships fold one place in universe to another, where they get kind of catapultet to and then unfolds it again. there was also said something like thats the reason why its getting more difficult and dangerous thus nearer the jumpship gets to the sun cause of the gravity influeencing it.....thats why there are dropships.....to bring the "freight" into the system and to the planets.

[Xeren KelDar]

Moonreign, on 23 August 2013 - 10:56 AM, said:

I know I was just wondering if any of the Novels since then came up with a cool explanation

Pretty much just the degradation of technology as a whole. Some novels go into minor detail of other technology like people replacing limbs with battlemech type myomer and some even hide weapons in their artificial limbs. The clans grow people with their genetics programs and manufacture warships. Endo-Steel is mixed in a zero g environment for uniformity and then there's the fusion reactors.

All of these may not seem as impressive as FTL (and I think Cardos is right on the folding space thing), but a lot of the tech falls into the "good enough" category. Being able to replace lost limbs with little functionality loss or even improvements is a huge medical feat when looked at on its own. The same could be said of most of the other tech as well.

A major advancement came with the Hyperpulse Generator. It doesn't sound overly impressive at first, but give it a read on Sarna. It basically creates artificial jumppoints (jumpships use natural ones), but requires too much energy to send a ship through so they use it for comms instead.

http://www.sarna.net...pulse_Generator

[Taemien]

Its no so much the degradation of technology. FTL travel in BattleTech is the by product of Fusion power technology. All BattleMechs and OmniMechs have fusion reactors afterall.

To put it very very simply. FTL travel is just ripping a hole in space and going to another point. The hard part is the math (which a computer will do for you) that determines where you go. The hardest part is creating the K-F Drive, which can be done in the near future (compared to the timeline in MWO), but is very very expensive.

[Escef]

Jumpships in the Battletech/Mechwarrior universe take days or even weeks to store up the power for a hyperspace jump. The jump then requires precise calculations. Errors have been known to shred vessels or cause a vessel to become irrevocably lost. Likely destroyed, jumpdrive damaged beyond operation or repair, or marooned in a place where they can't gather enough energy to recharge the drive before their supplies run out. Some in-universe reports have noted that misjumps have occurred that ended up with people merged with the bulkheads.

Also, why should FTL physics be in some way applicable to mechs? What do you want, for them to teleport or something? Jumps with vessels too close to each other have resulted in one or both vessels being shredded or weirdly merged (or both). I don't even want to think about how much could go wrong in a terrestrial environment where local gravity is stronger (your mech arrives wildly off target), there's a thick atmosphere (your mechs skeleton has just been flash-oxidized, i.e., rusted out entirely), and ground (your mech is half bured, upside down) to interfere with such a jump.

FTL tech is mostly understood by this point in the BT/MW universe, but it is still dangerous. The last real advance in FTL tech was the lithium-fusion battery in the 2500s. Even the clans don't screw with this stuff much.

[TheMadTypist]

The jumpships are built to build a "K-F" field (named for its creators) around the ship, bend space, move the vessel to the emergence point (which suggests they were using the old 80's idea of "Hyperspace", a subreality that doesn't have a speed limit, appearing most notably in Star Wars and to a lesser extent in Star Trek, under the pseudonym "subspace"), and that's about it. They can't do this in a gravity well, as gravity interferes with the formation of the "K-F" field. Even at the height of the star league they never had energy shielding or matter/anti-matter power generation, or tractor beams. there isn't anything terribly marvelous or unconventional about the tech they utilize, beyond the jump itself (or the sort that makes 'mechs possible). They don't even have artificial gravity, utilizing the effects of thrust within a dropship to provide some degree of gravity for the crew, or a large rotating "Grav Deck" on stations that use the effects of centrifugal force. They can only break our understanding of physics a little, they can't use what they can do for much beyond jumping.

Also, Planetary battles happen in realspace, in the midst of the kind of gravity well that prevents FTL travel- and presumably prevents any relativistic projectile chicanery.

[Royalewithcheese]

Keep in mind that the entire Battletech setting is an elaborate excuse to make a universe where this sort of thing happens:

[Scalien]

Moonreign, on 23 August 2013 - 10:41 AM, said:

that all sounds advanced compared to todays technology but to travel faster than light requires breaking the laws of physics. The ammount of energy required to move an object at a given speed increases exponentially as that speed increases to the point where the ammount of energy required is infinite. Lowering an objects mass to 0 somehow through technology will let that object move AT the speed of light. Considering it takes years for light to reach the nearest star outside our solor system the ships in battletech would have to move thousands of times faster than the speed of light, which is impossible according to einsteins theory of relativity.

The things you mentioned are nearly possible with current technology with the main hurdles being miniaturization and efficiency to fit a nuclear reactor inside something the size of a mech. We can already control computers with our thoughts (very basicly but we can do it) and we already have lasers (not nearly as powerful, but we have them), and we have gauss type equipment that just needs miniaturization to be weaponized. I'm not saying building a mech would be easy, because it certainly would not and we certainly won't be able to do it IRL for hundreds of years, but it is thousands of times simpler than traveling faster than light.

The K-F field is not FTL travel. Its a type of space fold/ wormhole creation that allow a ship to skip from one point in spacetime to another point in spacetime. Battletech does not have anything like Star Trek or Star Wars FTL travel. Its surprisingly limited using massive jumpships that can make the hop between systems once every few weeks because it takes so long to build up the juice to make the k-f field wormhole thing.

All in system travel is done at 1-3 Gs of acceleration with a turn around and a nearly equal amount of decelleration and it takes weeks to travel from a system jump point (located above at the nadir or zenith of the star) to a planet.

So your question, while valid in most fake sci-fi worlds doesn't quite work in the btech fake sci-fi world since there really isn't anything that moves faster than light in it.

[Randalf Yorgen]

Moonreign, on 23 August 2013 - 10:00 AM, said:

I think you guys misunderstand me. Even clan tech seems to me like childsplay compared to traveling faster than light. The mechs all have so many physical limitations that seem silly considering humans at one time figured out how to break fundamental laws of physics.

Jumpships are HUGE and you can place al the tech you want into them, Battlemechs are very limited and have to be built to survive in the worst possible situations. Jumpships, although in space, only need to worry about Jumping through space, using station keeping drives, deploying and recovering Solar Sails and launching and recovering spacecraft (Dropships, fighters, shuttles, tugs.) Jumpships are so fragile infact that they can only operate in NULL SPACE, those areas of space where there is no pull of gravety -Zenith and Nadir jump points above and below a star and so far out that the star is just a little flicker or at an in system null point where all the graveties in the system perfectly cancel eachother out, called Pirate Points. These don't last long and are very tiny. Any Jumpship that braves going into a pirate point might not be getting out again but they will be very close to the planets so the Dropships can get to the target in hours or days instead of weeks.

[Sephlock]

Battletech is actually set in a far flung corner of the Warhammer 40k universe. The Mechs pretty much function because the "humans" in Battletech believe that they do.