Marack Drock, on 01 June 2015 - 06:35 PM, said:
Not physically possible. In another thread we did calculations to find out a rough estimate of how many Mechs there would be in 3050 combined (Clan and Inner Sphere). Barely over 500 thousand. There are 2 thousand planets in the Inner Sphere. Even with the Clans there would be a maximum of about 200 mechs per planet... in only the Inner Sphere. Then there are several hundreds of planets in the Periphery, and then there is the deep Periphery. By the time we factor in every faction and its planets, and ever single Clan and everything we are looking at less than 36 mechs per planet at the maximum. Maybe one Regiment per planet would be accurate by the production numbers given in the BattleTech lore. By the Dark Age even if we counted every single destroyed mech there would only be about 750 thousand mechs produced.
Either you made a mathematical error or the creators of BT did because their numbers they have given us do not support the idea of every planet have multiple regiments of mechs. And I wasn't even factoring into account the Mercenary units.
Any place with a mech also would do what to accommodate for it? They'd scale things up. Otherwise it defeats the purpose of having a mech. Either way you look at it people would always HAVE to scale things up to use the mechs.
News to me, Last I recall (hold on goes and finds said thread), every one was telling you that you where dead wrong, and that their was at best 200,000 battlemechs in use at any one time, and that is actually being quite Generous in the numbers department. We could give the Inner sphere 1,200 regiments (factoring in house regiments, militias, minor garrisons and factory defenses, mercenarys and retinues) and the Clans 750 Clusters both of these values are quite Generous, and that comes to about 210,000, However the lore dose not really support the notion that their is roughly a regiment worth of battlemechs per world.
In the Novels one generally dose not see a world sending out it's militia battlemech regiment(s) to stand along side the house regiment stationed their... If any thing their often discribed as having a company or two of rather old mechs, if they have any.
While their have been many times that number built, destroyed or deactivated mechs generally do not count as active.
Few Worlds will have a Regiment of Militia battlemechs (or even Industrials)
On average their going to be lucky to have a battalion in combined total of Industrial and battlemechs, out side of regional capitals and other VIP worlds few worlds would have more than a company or two of battlemechs
As for production you where also told you where dead wrong on that as well. their are fewer factory complexes in active use than you suggest, and their production rates are far less then what you indicate. The only time where we have any real indication of a houses production rates is in 3025, and no house had more than a thousand battlemechs being produced at one time, actually IIRC it was closer to no more than 600. With a fair number of battlemechs being built at single digit rates per year (notably heavy and assault mechs), also Aerospace fighter production was about 2/3rds battlemech production.
The thing is Battletech military's are comparatively tiny for their size, a Single house military in the 3060s had about 80 mech regiments, and around 700 to 1500 other regiments, perhaps has many as 2,000, Thats it. Planetary militias typically only have 3 to 20 Tank and infantry Regiments, The highest known number (by a factor of at lest twice of the next highest) had 80 regiments.
For example here's what the AFFS field Manuel indicates in 3062.
Regular Army is about 53 Regiments of Battlemechs, to that theirs slightly more than five times that in Tank regiments, or about 270 regiments. Infantry regiments makes up 2/3rds of the Regular Army, So at the lest theirs about 650 Infantry Regiments (323 Mech and tank x2), however we have little idea of the total number of Artillery units, fighter Wings and other combat units (not sure if engineers are lumped with the "Infantry" in the AFFs), that could add as many as one or two hundred more regiments to the non infantry totals, so the AFFSs regular army could have about 1,000 Infantry regiments to some 500 B-mech, Tank, Artillery and Fighter regiments.
The March Militia has about 27 mech Regiments and their RCTs, and an unknown number of other units, but out side of listed formations of the Militia RCTs totals are unknown, out side the fact that if the March Militias infantry where added to the Regular army's totals infantry would make up a bit more than 2/3rds of the total military (also note this value also would include planetary militias), and theirs a few mech regiments with the Training command.
Edit: Also by in large Battletech Citys are not strictly built for mech operations, though many probably do have some concessions, like perhaps stronger and wider main roads and bridges, not to mention taller over passes to facilitate them. However I would suspect that many city's that do not see much in the way of mechs do not lay their citys out to facilitate them on a regular basis.
Edited by Nebfer, 04 June 2015 - 10:12 PM.
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