30 replies to this topic

[Stomp]

Tyrnea Smurf, on 14 January 2014 - 06:20 PM, said:

Well to shorten Jump travel times I have used a couple of different methods in my campaigns. (all of the campaigns I've GM'ed have been Fed Com civil war or before that as to eras)

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Awesome stuff here to think about! I'm going to help them roll their characters this weekend, and if they're gung ho maybe introduce them to a bit of the universe and carry out their first incursion. I've got three missions I've dubbed "Operations", so I've got a workload built for them.

In regards to drops, I was willing to overlook the jump times to an extent, while still explaining to them the limitations of craft in case we do a more in depth approach later on. They don't even know about heat neutral mechs and movement yet, so steady as she goes First it'll be character building, immersion, and my attempts at creating a really cool universe for them. I HAVE though made it clear they'll be doing shopping for weapons and salvaging actions through the game, so they understand that they'll be taking care of themselve and not just having full wallets all the time. They're starting in a ****** conventional fighter and a 8C Marco for Pete's sake, so I think they'll be pitted against infantry and vehicle assets until I can fit additional mechs and fighters into small lances for them, so they'll be restricted to piggybacking on somebody else's DropShip for a while haha. I think I'll keep it that way, or maybe look into them stealing a nice one of their own.

Thom Frankfurt, on 14 January 2014 - 09:57 PM, said:

Oh yeah. I was thinking today about this, and I do believe that in one of the old sourcebooks (Kell Hounds, Tales of the Black Widow, or Snord's Irregulars, not sure which) they had I think it was a Warhammer with Rifleman legs or something silly like that. I'm not sure how that would work with proper BT rules, but whatever works right?

Also in the 1st Somerset Strikers book, (I think it was in that one) there were rules for mechs being glitch from not having proper maintenance. That should be something to consider looking into with your PCs being a band of pirates. I'd also suggest simple mods for the mechs to reflect their piratical nature.

I was think about using a couple restrictors on the Frankenmechs, such as a modified walk/run MP if it's mounting bigger things. Like a Hunchy with a Shadowhawk arm would be slower. A 55 tonner's arm on a 50? I'd even go so far as to keep the armor values on the arm and equipment, in exchange for a slower movement, if I remember it's a 4/6, but I'd change it to like a 4/5, since walking wouldn't be much more trouble, but running with a heavier arm will throw off your pilot's balance a bit, and strain the gyro I imagine. Any other suggestions balancing these Frankenmechs would be cool, and thanks so much this thread has gotten a lot more attention already!

[Alaskan Nobody]

Tyrnea Smurf, on 14 January 2014 - 06:20 PM, said:

Method 3: Understand that the lore generally understates just how much jump traffic should be flowing throughout the Inner Sphere. And when I say understate I mean UNDERSTATES! in general the lore provides for the Inner Sphere to have roughly 2000 in habited systems, with a population in the hundreds of billions range. To provide for all those souls the lore hints strongly at between 3 to 5 k jumpships operating with about 10 to 15k dropships. If you see what the cargo carry capabilities and do the averages, the population of the Inner Sphere are serviced by less shipping than 17th century England on a per capita basis. So method 3 is simple, theres a lot more ships running around than you or the lore ever considered. The IS really should have closer to 25k jumpships and 150k dropships running around to service that large of a population at a minimum (you could double those numbers if you wanted to). Thus by the numbers a random average star system in the Inner Sphere should have 12 jumpships sitting at its 2 jump points at any given time. That provides you plenty of opportunities for pirates to hitch a ride where ever they want to go quickly.

I always figured that most planets didn't take much interstellar trade or what have you.
I for one would not want to land (let alone live!) on any world that could not sustain it's population itself....
While there are always worlds like Coruscant, (by which I mean a world that has reason to exist but requires external aid to survive) I would imagine them to be more the exception than the rule.

[Stomp]

Shar Wolf, on 15 January 2014 - 07:25 PM, said:

I always figured that most planets didn't take much interstellar trade or what have you.
I for one would not want to land (let alone live!) on any world that could not sustain it's population itself....
While there are always worlds like Coruscant, (by which I mean a world that has reason to exist but requires external aid to survive) I would imagine them to be more the exception than the rule.

Well some people intentionally terraformed unlivable worlds. One such case is called Miracle or some such, because these pseudo-Zionists terraformed it and introduced species of fish and plant and it thrived, bringing oxygen up to normal levels from the plants and the fish populated its oceans. It was really cool to read. Other worlds simply don't have the means to grow crops, like another one which name fails me. They get all their water from People's Bounty, or something. The names of the planets fail me!!!

EDIT: OH, they used aerial drops to spread flax seed or some such. It was going to be their shelter from the other worlds, it worked out well for them. And others populate worlds based on resources that are plentiful, like planets with lots of metals and ores and stone.

Edited by Stomp, 15 January 2014 - 08:11 PM.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Stomp, on 15 January 2014 - 08:10 PM, said:

Well some people intentionally terraformed unlivable worlds. One such case is called Miracle or some such, because these pseudo-Zionists terraformed it and introduced species of fish and plant and it thrived, bringing oxygen up to normal levels from the plants and the fish populated its oceans. It was really cool to read. Other worlds simply don't have the means to grow crops, like another one which name fails me. They get all their water from People's Bounty, or something. The names of the planets fail me!!!

My big point was - I could not (personally) see colonizing a world that could not support itself (post Terraforming or otherwise)
That may have come from living in Alaska - where it would be far to easy to be cut off from the rest of my home country (sooo glad we are friendly with Canada - we are friendly right? )
Alaska gets cut off, we currently could not support our population - and there isn't gonna be much shipping to us if we do get cut off obviously.
(for a while we had the fastest growing city in the country -so many people who still try to treat Alaska like it is California or Washington Washington may be similar, but the differences can getcha killed)
So I suppose that kinda negates my position doesn't it - people will move somewhere for a variety of reasons - not all of which involve intelligence (exceptions to every rule and all....)


.......though I suppose I could see an arrogant civilization (hiya Star League!) overplaying itself.....

[Skylarr]

When some worlds were colonized they had a trade agreement with another world. then the Succession Wars happened and those supplies stopped coming. The populations on those planets took severe losses or they died off all together.

[Tyrnea Smurf]

2 huge points to consider in why you would have a simply massive interstellar industrial complex and massive amounts of shipping going on.

Point 1: The technology: The Inner Sphere in 3025 is introduced to us as players as being in many day to day technological ways parallel to late 20th early 21st century living conditions. If you take any of the advanced western style countries you would see that massive amounts of trade moves between those countries. From foodstuffs to raw materials, to consumer goods a lot for stuff gets refined, gathered, harvested to be moved to other areas to be further produced, machined, or processed, before finally getting to where its assembled, packaged, built to be moved somewhere else to be sold somewhere else.

This universe doesn't use replicators, so its all gotta be built somewhere, and shipped.

In the US a lot of cargo moves in this dance just for domestic consumption on its own, let alone all the stuff Americans import and export to other places all over the world.

Now imagine each of those worlds as separate yet united states. They will no matter how well rounded there internal economies are will ship a great deal of goods/materials/cargo to neighboring worlds simply because trade is an economic reality, that even if humanity went to the stars as envisioned, some worlds will be short some stuff where other worlds will have other stuff they need and equilibriums of the "want/need" dynamic will solve the issue.

Point 2: The setting. Humanities march into the stars has brought both a return of a feudalism system of government, but also in the post Star League era a highly war torn set of civilizations that are operating on a total war/war economy basis.

Consider in the time of the Star League the lore stated that it included roughly 2500 inhabited star systems. With the Periphery numbering another 1200+. Most of those worlds were terraformed to varying degrees over the course of several hundred years. But since the fall of the Star League over 1000 of the League worlds have been abandoned due to the devastation of the fighting, and the strain of maintaining marginally habitable worlds for people to live on. (in the Star League era massive amounts of free trade would be encouraged for economic growth between the various worlds, member states) Now in a war torn era lots of shipping will occur because of the need to feed war industries to maintain armies/national defense.

A lot of the original setting takes its lore rules from World War II experiences. So when I went to build my version of the Inner Sphere to build and run campaigns in, I took whatever data on the Inner Sphere I could and saw what in terms of WWII parallels I could draw and adjusted the Inner Sphere accordingly to what my research lead me to believe would have been a more likely result than what the lore showed, or I tried to fill in the gaps the lore either only hinted on, or didn't consider at the time (I built mine in the mid 90's).

The really big gap was logistics/shipping. The lore understates it from what I found by about a factor of 10.

[Tyrnea Smurf]

I had to leave before I could add a third point, and that is in the succession war era the House Lords themselves would try and limit just how self sustaining / sufficient a world is simply to keep that local population dependent on other parts of their empires to prevent rebellions, and make taking worlds in a rival Houses offensives a taxing effort at least at first. Hanse Davion points to this in his dismissal of Comstar's Operation Scorpion in may 3052 against the Inner Sphere. He notes that prewarned of it, the Fed Coms conducted clandestine counter operations to take control of the Comstar HPG's & stations/installations on Fed Com worlds in retaliation. He noted they projected to take 80 to 90% of the stations they targeted, and pointedly noted any worlds that their operations failed on and if those populations then "rebelled" in following Comstar orders, they then would have to depend on Comstar to feed them as he no longer would.

I took that to mean that ultimately the House Lords themselves encouraged the system of inter-dependence to help prevent rebellions, and as a bonus you slow down your enemies incursions into your holdings as they have to intergrate any taken worlds shipping needs into their own logistic networks (in real world terms its a problem both Germany ran into in Russia in 41-42, and Japan really had issues with in China in the late 1930's) thus slowing down there offensive operations.

That is also why I've always felt the major short coming of the clan invasion was that logistical plot hole.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Tyrnea Smurf, on 16 January 2014 - 02:16 AM, said:

I had to leave before I could add a third point, and that is in the succession war era the House Lords themselves would try and limit just how self sustaining / sufficient a world is simply to keep that local population dependent on other parts of their empires to prevent rebellions, and make taking worlds in a rival Houses offensives a taxing effort at least at first.

THAT was the bit I was forgetting.
I probably wouldn't run my empire that way, but then I probably wouldn't be able to hold an empire, let alone build one.

[Escef]

Periphery areas are often home to 2nd and 3rd tier mechs that are survivable despite being deeply flawed.

The BNC-3E Banshee would probably be the most common assault due to the heavy armor and decent speed, and I wager there's plenty available as almost no one wants them if they have better options. Even better, it becomes reasonably dangerous if you pull 4 heat sinks for a quartet of medium lasers.

Archers are very survivable due to their heavy armor, and are one of the most produced mechs in history. The cavernous side torsos even makes them relatively easy to customize with whatever parts are convenient.

Mediums are the workhorse mechs of the time period, so bandit/pirate forces will be heavy with them. The classic Wolverine, Griffin, and Shadowhawk trio should be well represented, same for the Phoenix Hawk. As such forces are often desperate for usable mechs, one might even see Chameleon training mechs pressed into front line service; though they likely have a crapton of "quirks" due to years of trainee abuse.

Lights are cheap to maintain and fast, so bandits and pirates adore them. Especially the ones with hands that can be used in literal smash-and-grab raids. Stingers and Wasps are popular for their mix of speed and hand actuators, Javelins if available.

To date my favorite bandit mech was a Jagermech that had its right arm pieced back together with the AC2 from a Blackjack and the PPC from a Panther (the other 2 tons went towards a heat sink and up-armoring the mech).

[darqsyde]

One thing to also consider is that in the Periphery "Primitives" and semi-primitives are also likely to be used. Mostly due to the lack of shipping/hi-tech manufacturing. Also converted Industrials.

[kosmos1214]

im bump so i can read this later