44 replies to this topic

[Threat Doc]

I'm digging through my old magazines, again, and I intend to share some things from them. This article fragment is from 1987, though the article refers to it as August of 3027...

"It has been said of the 31st Century that human life is cheap, while the combat machines they pilot are not.

Certainly this is true in military terms. In the brutal, blood and steel accounting system of modern combat, regimental commanders would gladly sacrifice a battalion of infantry in order to bring down a single BattleMech. Those ponderous machines which have been termed Kings of the Battlefield are virtually irreplaceable, priceless in any real sense of the word. one study suggests that new 'Mechs are being assembled in the various surviving industrial complexes of the Inner Sphere at a rate which only just barely surpasses their attrition rate in combat. The majority of 'Mechs encountered on the battlefield are centuries old, literally heirlooms which have been passed down from generation to generation within single families or, in many cases, within particular regimental companies.

And of course, the humans who take these machines into battle can always be replaced.

Or can they?

There are aspects of flesh and blood and spirit which can never be assumed by the purely mechanical frames of combat machines, however sophisticated. The brotherhood which binds fighting men and women together, the belonging, the training and experience, the esprit de corps which makes a company more than an armed mob - these are intangibles which can go beyond the statistics of 'Mech tonnage and combat firepower. These comprise the human element of spirit and tradition and fighting will which make it possible for a David to triumph over a Goliath ... or a pair of Wasps to take on a Rifleman and win.

Even today, the human element cannot be lightly dismissed.

When such qualities cease to make any difference in the balance of life -or death- then Man as a species will be ready for the scrap heap, replaced by the machines which were previously his servants." ~ BattleTechnology Magazine 0101, Opening Shots: Welcome to BattleTechnology Magazine, William H. Keith, Jr., August 1987/3027, Pacific Rim Publishing Company

Again, as I read through these, I'll pull out certain gems, most of which will concern the reason I began my journey through time and space in the BattleTech universe in the first place. Perhaps others will benefit from the nostalgia, as well.

Edited by Kay Wolf, 12 April 2016 - 05:05 PM.

[Threat Doc]

As I have worked, from September/October 1997 until September 2013, through several iterations of my mercenary unit, Armageddon Unlimited, I have often heard from fellow players that the rules of the battlefield change all the time, and we have to change with them, for which an answer was given a full decade before Jerry Stewart and I began AU. Many, including Jerry, believe there is no room for honor. It's odd to read this, again, after all of this time, but not unwelcome...

"Today's MechWarriors are the heirs of six hundred years of experience in the Art of War; this is one of the longest periods in Mankind's history in which innovations in hardware have nor forced a complete re-thinking of strategic and tactical principles. Probably the only comparable period of stability is the era of Terra's Roman Empire, and even there several notable reforms were required to keep pace with the shifting nature of the Empire's enemies. From the invention of gunpowder in the Middle Ages, militechnics, and hence strategic and tactical thought, began changing at an ever-increasing rate. By the 20th Century this change was so rapid that the lessons of one war couldn't even be applied to the battlefields of the next, and the training of soldiers could be rendered obsolete over a matter of months because of new breakthroughs that made the old style of combat completely useless.

. . .

The last major innovations in war as we know it came about between 2300 and 2500 A.S., when the dawning of the 'Age of War' made interstellar conflicts common and the development of [myomer] and [neural-link] technologies made possible the creation of the BattleMech. Although the tools of combat improved steadily thereafter, new developments were almost invariably refinements of existing systems rather than major breakthroughs. The BattleMech was and is the ultimate fighting machine, capable of translating an individual soldier's abilities into a force more than equal to an entire company of pre-'Mech troops. With the coming of the BattleMech, warfare had finally 'come of age' and military science could begin to concentrate on understanding the established principles of combat rather than searching for new ones."~ BattleTechnology Magazine 0101, MechWarrior: Mind and Machine, Kieth Douglas, MechWarrior and Colonel Kuan-Li Po (Ret.) (both fictional), August 1987/3027, Pacific Rim Publishing Company

Edited by Kay Wolf, 12 April 2016 - 08:15 PM.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

Battletechnology magazine was awesome, and had some great "house rules" sections.

It was in this magazine, that rules for "fighting in mud" and "Barrel clogging" showed up.

[ShadowWolf Kell]

Yep. Even though it was unofficial, there was a ton of good stuff in there. Still have mine boxed away.

[Steinar Bergstol]

I _loved_ BattleTechnology Magazine. The whole "in-universe publication" style of it was genius and easily made it my favourite system-specific gaming publication. For those who never read it, do try to look it up. It was written "in character" in the style of an actual magazine for professional Mercenaries and soldiers in the 31st century. The early issues in particular are wonderful, IMO. It had articles both for Battletech and the Mechwarrior RPG, like for example gun reviews for the various handguns, rifles, lasers and so on avaliable to the soldiers of the BT universe (should your MechWarrior choose a Mydron Autopistol or perhaps a Nakjima Laser Pistol as his sidearm of Choice? BattleTechnology Magazine will tell you the good, the bad and the ugly concerning them both).

Basically BT Magazine helped immensely to flesh out the BattleTech universe for me.

[dervishx5]

And who can forget the great art?

[SnagaDance]

dervishx5, on 12 April 2016 - 11:52 PM, said:

And who can forget the great art?

Looking at those collar insignia, is this a clanner? That's what you get for breeding with a limited genepool!!

[S 0 L E N Y A]

SnagaDance, on 13 April 2016 - 12:14 AM, said:

Looking at those collar insignia, is this a clanner? That's what you get for breeding with a limited genepool!!

Those are Cameron stars, not the Clan dagger star.
So probably SLDF era

[Dino Might]

This is the stuff that MWO and almost ALL modern games are missing. Good writing that establishes the immersion. We used to play games with poly counts in a teens or hundreds, and we still felt incredibly immersed, in part because of the writing and use of our imaginations. It was engrossing. Now we dumb down our imaginations and are stuck with only what is rendered, always leaving us feeling a bit empty, because nothing is as good as the mind at painting a picture.

Thanks for sharing - sorry for derailing things. Carry on. Please, post more of this! I never read the publication and only got into tabletop in the later years, so I missed out on a lot of the golden era.

Edited by Dino Might, 13 April 2016 - 03:15 AM.

[Threat Doc]

Thanks for the positive responses, everyone. I opened up the first magazine because I was bored and hadn't looked at it for some time, and wound up completely re-opening the universe for me. With the memory problems I have, due to various portions of my life from that time to this, it was amazing to get back in and re-read what I've not seen in so very long. I'm a kid, again, and that's pretty cool.

Listen, those of you who still have copies, if you decide to go back and re-read them, again, post the things you loved, but please don't forget to annotate where it came from? It's always cool for those of us who may not know where it is to be able to find it and read it, in context, for ourselves. I'm going to continue to do this, as well, I think.

[Bongo TauKat]

For those who want to experience that awesome art...

ftp://york.chatterwe...ogy%20Magazine/

[HerrRed]

How about we start a simple magazine for MWO?
Some cool stories, discussing mechs and loadouts, some short fanfic stories and the works? I would be up for that. Write one short story and talk about a mech or try to embelish a match I had. I want that magic back

[Threat Doc]

That's not a bad idea, except for my part I already tried it, on my own, between 2002 and 2004, for MechWarrior IV. Also, back then I wasn't the greatest with Desktop Publishing, so these are hardly my greatest works. I knew I was inspired to do these from somewhere, but I had forgotten about BattleTechnology at that point. Anyway, here's what I tried to do, and what a buddy of mine from BattleTech Universe tried to do with the volume 2 stuff. Granted, he and those working with him did a WHOLE LOT BETTER job than I did, hehe.

Argent Fire Vol. 1, Iss. 1
Argent Fire Vol. 1, Iss. 2
Argent Fire Vol. 1, Iss. 3
Argent Fire Vol. 1, Iss. 4

Argent Fire Vol. 2, Iss. 1
Argent Fire Vol. 2, Iss. 2

Just to clarify... Volume 2 were not written by my, at all; they are much better than my initial works, but then I ran out of time to produce any more issues, and I haven't had time to either re-write the original issues into something I could be more proud of, nor any new issues. Sometimes, I really hate adult life.

Anyway, if you decide to put something together for the BattleTech community, at large, or something solely for the MWO community, I would be alright with writing some stories and/or articles, I just don't have the desire I used to, and I've become something of a really bad procrastinator, lately.

UPDATE: BattleTech Universe is still rockin' and rollin', at http://www.argentfire.com ; isn't that a trip?

Edited by Kay Wolf, 13 April 2016 - 03:39 PM.

[Afuldan McKronik]

Awesome stuff.

[Threat Doc]

Thank you. I hope folks can enjoy these, again.

EDIT: Yes, I remember the MUXs, though I must admit that I never got to play them while they were going, and I didn't have a computer at the time. I also didn't feel like making the time to learn them, because I knew I would become addicted, and then I would never live life as I had known it, again, hehe.

Edited by Kay Wolf, 13 April 2016 - 04:32 PM.

[Afuldan McKronik]

So much fun, and in the heyday RP was encouraged by the admins. Hell of a learning curve though. Almost every command was a macro or could be made into a macro. Good times. I've been waiting for someone to notice the siggy haha.

[Ano]

Dino Might, on 13 April 2016 - 03:14 AM, said:

This is the stuff that MWO and almost ALL modern games are missing. Good writing that establishes the immersion. We used to play games with poly counts in a teens or hundreds, and we still felt incredibly immersed, in part because of the writing and use of our imaginations. It was engrossing. Now we dumb down our imaginations and are stuck with only what is rendered, always leaving us feeling a bit empty, because nothing is as good as the mind at painting a picture.

To be fair, part of the reason old games had a million lines of fluff was *because* all they had onscreen was a handful of polys/pixels. The fluff, the writing, was the only way they really *could* tell you about a character/item/whatever -- for the most part, you wouldn't be able to tell by looking, or listening.

Don't get me wrong -- I wish MWO made better use of the fluff ingame (the stuff they're doing with CGL/Randall Bills for the Alpha lance heros is great, but I'd love to see some of that on the FW map etc), but there's a lot of story in the visuals if you look for it.

Also: if you've a hankering for dialog text, check out the HBS Shadowrun games (the folks making a BT game in the same style). Might give you a little nostalgia bump

[Afuldan McKronik]

Great games, those. Was undecided on the BT backing until I played SR:DF

[Afuldan McKronik]

Some of the cool rules that had to be adopted from TT, but didnt loose the flavor.

Heat mode/damage mode for flamers.
UAC/RAC single fire/ultra fire/rotary fire.
Small amount of heat dissapation, slow recycle times. 10 "TICS" were about 30 seconds, and that was the recycle time of a small laser. 30 TICS for LL/GR.
Pilot death and loss of XP/Stats.
RP Jail time for getting captured.
Tech skills and repair/rearm times.
Tow trucks or mechs with hands for towing cargo crates full of supplies or disabled mechs for salvage.

[Threat Doc]

Have any of you ever wondered what it would be like for a MechWarrior during a high-altitude combat drop, the emotions and body stress, the calculations and telemetry running through a brain, and what it would feel like to be pushed out of a DropShip at 1700 km/h at 95 km altitude? The 30m drop from one of the Leopard’s on the various maps that support DropShip runs on MWO maps is nothing; the announcement video for MechWarrior Online, where the Atlas is dropped out of the bay, maybe a few hundred meters above the ground, is nothing, but not 95 kilometers (58 miles) above cold-hard rock. Have you ever wondered if your heart would be in your throat, if your stomach would be pounding in your chest, and what the feel of gravity on your body would be as you were, first, ejected from a DropShip right on the edge between atmosphere and space?

“Drop Into Hell: Combat Drop on Scheat V” from BattleTechnology 0101 gives that perspective, and makes you feel the long seconds of waiting, through the sheer terror of the initial push out, and then the slow but steady acceleration to terminal velocity toward ground you cannot see and only your ‘Mech’s computer can calculate, if it has the right information. Then breaking free from the cocoon your ‘Mech is protected against re-entry forces and heat in and falling toward the ground at an unbelievable rate of 27 meters per second per second... do you feel that lump in your throat? Good, that means you're alive!

Man, you guys that have never read anything about BattleTech, before, and you believe the universe for the game you’re playing starts and stops with BattleMech combat on the same maps again and again... know absolutely nothing. Maybe, by continuing to read this, you can gain an understanding, though and, maybe, you can understand why Russ, Bryan, Paul, and the others wanted to do this game so badly, initially. Or, at least that's what they claimed when they were first starting out; pictures of the books on a desk at PGI, the initial blog posts about the four pillars they wanted to build the game around, that got all of us involved and paying through the nose when, really, some of us couldn't afford to do it: 'Mech Warfare, Community Warfare, Information Warfare, and Role Warfare... ummm, woulda been sweet.

I’m resolved... I intend to contact Randall Bills and see whom I would have to talk with to gain permission from to re-print this story, in it’s entirety, on these forums. Maybe, if we get a concept about what happens in the lead-up to the combat we so readily play again and again, perhaps we’ll gain a better appreciation for it.

______________________________

That finishes up BattleTechnology 0101, at least for now. If I can get permission to enter that story, I’ll do it as quickly as possible.