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Insofar as I can tell, in BattleTech’s TT and video game incarnations, the amount of space every mech has in terms of internal slots is the same regardless of the weight of the mech. Given that, it seems to me that there must be a reason. As far as real-world reasons, I assume this was for the sake of simplicity of game design. For in-universe reasons, I cannot seem to find one that explains why this is. I’ve searched, but nothing.
BattleTech, despite being science fiction, does seem to make some effort at working within some of the major confines of reality. As such, I figured there would be some in-universe reason that this would be the case, and then remembered the square-cube law as it relates to engineering/materials science.
I assume it has something to do with the square-cube law. As I figure it, and I’m likely wrong--my education is in literature, my passion in the understanding of science and so is not fully developed--despite an Atlas having around 125x the volume of a Locust, the increased weight of the support structures would take up the same proportionally larger amount of that internal space. Thus, as you make a mech bigger, you spend more of the chasis’ weight capacity on making that chasis able to even stand and support itself. (I imagine this would be in the same way that an iron support beam can only be made so big before it collapses under its own weight, and is able to support no outside weight at all.) It would also stand to reason this has some effect upon 100 tons (usually) being an upper limit upon weight for mechs.
Anyway, I don’t want to make this too much longer than it is, so I’ll let others hop in this discussion and we can go from there. It's entirely possible that the SQL has no relation to the in-universe explanation.
To clarify, the main question I’m asking is: what is the in-universe reason given (if any) that mechs all have the same amount of internal space for loadouts? Is it related to the physical limitations imposed by the square-cube law? Or is there some other reason given?
Addendum: when trying to see if there was a similar post to this, I searched the forums for square-cube law. I found many interesting results, much of it informative, none of it answering directly my question. Much of it centered around how the SQL would make mechs basically impossible, etc. I am willing to suspend my disbelief in this way, because it's science fiction. I am, in the interest of learning, happy to discuss why BT isn't possible, but before it gets that far I'd really, really like an answer to my main question. Please.
Edited by akakiwu490, 07 January 2015 - 04:12 AM.
