144 replies to this topic

[El Bandito]

razenWing, on 15 December 2017 - 12:17 AM, said:

even if you have a planet of 5 cities, how do you plan on overtaking them with 100 men? Do they need bathroom breaks? Do they need to administrate? Do they need to step into their new office?

Have you not read BT novels at all? For the vast majority of the population, nothing will change even if a new faction takes over the planet. The populace will still go to the same work place and do the same daily tasks. Only the flag will be changed but the administration will still be the same, just paying taxes to a different noble house. So why should the commoner risk their necks to try to oppose mechs with their fists? Battlemechs are deadly enough that a single one can level a city block. Disobedient planet can have its cities leveled by a single battalion as an example, and due to my aforementioned lack of the victors' intrusion on personal lives, once the defending forces are defeated, submission is the most logical way for an average Joe to behave.

Edited by El Bandito, 15 December 2017 - 07:37 AM.

[process]

I have a difficult time reconciling Battletech's intergalatic travel and space politics with the idea that just a handful of battlemechs can conquer a planet but also are archaic technology that few have access to. Like how populated and isolated is your average BT planet? What is the average battlemech really capable of?

Doesn't hold me back from loving the stompy robits tho.

[Mystere]

Kaeb Odellas, on 15 December 2017 - 03:39 AM, said:

Let's be real here. The BattleTech setting is no less stupid than generic robot anime #5. The technology in BattleTech is no more logical than that of Mobile Suit Gundam. If anything, I find Gundam's Minovsky particles to be a far better justification for why giant fighting robots are a thing than BattleTech's "We know how to make giant fighting robots but forgot how to make cruise missiles."


I wouldn't mind seeing retcons in BattleTech, or even a full franchise reboot. Long-running franchises like these get bloated with nonsense over time, and keeping them healthy requires trimming some of the fat.

I guess you don't like The Foundation series then.

[Bombast]

process, on 15 December 2017 - 07:37 AM, said:

Like how populated and isolated is your average BT planet?

They average out to about 450 million, as per CGL. But keep in mind that there are many worlds with 4+ billion people, so there are a bunch at double or even single digit millions.

So your average planet is actually fairly low population.

As for isolated, even the closest planets require a substantial travel period - Jump ships can go 30 lightyears instantaneously, but it still takes a week or more to get to a jump ship, and then another week or more to leave it and go to a planet.

Quote

What is the average battlemech really capable of?

Destroying pretty much everything not hardened, for starters.

Battletech makes a lot more sense when you realize people aren't fighting as hard as they possibly can. The rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere generally protect the citizenry, so they don't often get involved, and the nature of travel and industry keep the 'war footprint' of most conflicts fairly low. There are three instances of these rules being broken in battletech - The Amaris Civil War, The Early Succession Wars, and the Jihad. They fought more like some people would expect in a 'real' fight, and things got bad. Really bad.

Edited by Bombast, 15 December 2017 - 07:50 AM.

[James Argent]

razenWing, on 15 December 2017 - 12:17 AM, said:

But again, that's just me.

Clearly.

The comparison of BattleMech speed to the distance the entire universe setting covers is completely irrelevant. BattleMechs only cross vast distances due to totally unrelated tech. You're trying to say, 'It makes no sense for Americans to participate in the Tour de France...bicycles are just too slow to get there.' The totally unrelated tech of air freight makes it possible.

Re: LosTech. In almost every novel and narrative descriptions, it was a nearly unheard of thing for anyone in the Succession Wars setting to attack a JumpShip beyond shooting up its easily manufactured and replaced solar sail. Those who even threatened to do so were seen as barbarians. EVERYBODY valued that tech beyond measure because they knew with the loss of each one, humanity was that much closer to being stranded on individual planets with zero hope of trade or rescue...a genocidal death sentence on many worlds. So the preservation of this particular tech, while not the ability to create any more of it, was something upon which nearly everybody agreed. Repairs consist of what maintenance people today like to call 'swaptronics.' Pull a black box, put a new one in. You don't have a clue HOW it does what it does, you just know what it does...if it stops doing it, you don't bother cracking it open to see what went wrong, you get a different one.

'But muh crooz misils.' Can you build one without an existing manufacturing plant? I know I can't. In a total war, if Russia went and blew up Boeing's AGM-86 plant, killing every technical expert on it in the process, I could stare at a blueprint for one for the rest of my life and never complete one. And if they did that, the US would certainly do the same to Russia's KH-55 plant, depriving them of the ability to build any themselves. If the vast majority of both side's scientists were killed and all we had to go on was the undergrad-level physics understanding of non-specialists, it would take decades of uninterrupted research to replicate what we once took for granted. In a setting of 300 years of constant warfare, that isn't gonna happen.

You can't just say, 'that would never happen.' It's fiction, and in this fiction the circumstances to make it happen happened. So long as there is a plausible explanation given that doesn't violate the rules of the universe they built, it's all good.

(Oh, and Bombast: I don't know what a KY drive is. Frankly, I don't want to know what a KY drive is...it sounds like the MW5 'plug' DropShip coming in for a landing on an Astro-Glide path. I like the Kearny-Fuchida drive just fine, thanks.)

[ROSS-128]

A big thing to keep in mind is that, although they're not very visible in Mechwarrior games, in Battletech proper conventional forces very much exist and are used. The reason you can take over a planet with "a hundred battlemechs", is that those mechs are backed up by millions of infantry and conventional vehicles.

It's just that the the conventional forces' stories almost never get told, because they're not the focus of the setting.

The bigger headscratcher is actually how battlemechs manage to be so light for their size. Though that's technically a problem more specific to the Mechwarrior side of things, where the mechs are bigger relative to everything else than they are in BT canon.

For example, if you're running around in a mech and see a Demolisher that's just barely taller than your ankles? That Demolisher weighs 80 tons. And it's not like the Demolisher is heavy for its size, a real life Abrams is a bit smaller and weighs 60 tons (unless it's an A2, which squeezes 72 tons into roughly the same footprint due to having heavier armor/more stuff crammed into it).

So, if we assume that mechs and armored vehicles are made of similar construction materials (and why wouldn't they be?), a 60 ton mech should have a profile similar to an Abrams turned on its nose rather than a multi-story building. An Abrams is about 8m long, 2.4m tall, and 3.7m wide. This makes a 60 ton mech approximately 8m tall, maybe pushing around 10-12m if you tuck in its waistline and account for the legs being thinner than the torso.

That's close-ish to the canon heights for a mech in the high medium to low heavy range. A little on the short side (or the canon heights are a little on the tall side), but not enough to be *too* far out there. But the important thing is looking at what this means in relative terms: a tank turned on its nose should *at least* cover 2/3 of the mech, and with canon heights you should only need to stack about 4-5 tanks sitting on their treads to reach the height of the mech.

So Mechwarrior mechs are obviously way bigger than they are in canon, and made of wood or something.

[SargeantShepard]

OP, you realize you are basically calling for a massive retcon of a universe with literally decades worth of additions to the lore, a universe with a small but very dedicated fanbase, just because you personally dont like one aspect of the lore.

Did you really think BT fans were going to go "OMG you are right!!! Screw all the existing lore and technology and original creator's vision! This guy knows what's up. "

Not to mention your tone in your posts is very condescending to everyone who disagrees.

If you feel this strongly about it, write a "what if?" Fanfic about this setting, or, enen better, write your own setting. But Battletech is NOT going to change just because you want it to.

[VonBruinwald]

Kaeb Odellas, on 15 December 2017 - 07:02 AM, said:

If BattleMechs were superior replacements to cruise missiles, then perhaps you'd have a point here, but they're not.

Battletech is first and foremost a game, a map sheet is 56cm long (660m in game distance). If you want to play 'CruiseMissileTech - A realistic weapons range game' then you're going to need a pretty big room.... your mapsheets are going to be ~140m long!

Let's be practical here, if we were going to use realistic weapon ranges 'mech models would have to be the size of a pinhead to have a chance of making a practical tabletop game. Good luck painting that.

[Y E O N N E]

VonBruinwald, on 15 December 2017 - 01:14 PM, said:

Let's be practical here, if we were going to use realistic weapon ranges 'mech models would have to be the size of a pinhead to have a chance of making a practical tabletop game. Good luck painting that.

No they wouldn't. You just abstract the 'Mech representation rather than the map representation.

[Khobai]

isnt the short range of weapons in battletech at least partly explained by electronic countermeasures being so powerful?

other mechwarrior games had passive sensor modes to kindve represent silent running

MWO does it through ECM... although it would be better if we had passive sensor mode instead. because ECM is supposed to do other important things instead like generate fake radar contacts and cut off enemy mechs from sharing sensor information with their teammates.

and the weapons in MWO should not do as much damage past optimum range without a sensor lock. that would help make getting sensor locks more important. the weapon ranges in MWO are way too long for a battletech game, so they should at least require a sensor lock to do any respectable damage at those ranges.

Edited by Khobai, 15 December 2017 - 02:30 PM.

[VonBruinwald]

Yeonne Greene, on 15 December 2017 - 01:24 PM, said:

No they wouldn't. You just abstract the 'Mech representation rather than the map representation.

The problem is when you do so to that degree you end up with single 'mechs occupying a hex several kilometres across. Do you know what that does to a 2/3 Urbie!!!

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

You have influence from anime with fast action robots with instant kill speed and ninja moves, but at the same time, you have the idea of mech pilots being more like gritty and grunge tank drivers.


Clearly you've never watched Gundam 08th MS team...

[Bombast]

Khobai, on 15 December 2017 - 02:24 PM, said:

isnt the short range of weapons in battletech at least partly explained by electronic countermeasures being so powerful?

Its one of the reasons, yes.

The out of universe reason is pretty simple, and there are two parts to it:

1. The maps would be huge. One could argue thats rectified by merely scaling the maps down to fit on a table, but this doesn't work well with things like 3d terrain, or scale - If every hex is 500m, than why does my mech fill the whole thing? Why is it so tall?

2. You can't punch things that are in another map grid square.

[Kaeb Odellas]

James Argent, on 15 December 2017 - 08:46 AM, said:

'But muh crooz misils.' Can you build one without an existing manufacturing plant? I know I can't. In a total war, if Russia went and blew up Boeing's AGM-86 plant, killing every technical expert on it in the process, I could stare at a blueprint for one for the rest of my life and never complete one. And if they did that, the US would certainly do the same to Russia's KH-55 plant, depriving them of the ability to build any themselves. If the vast majority of both side's scientists were killed and all we had to go on was the undergrad-level physics understanding of non-specialists, it would take decades of uninterrupted research to replicate what we once took for granted. In a setting of 300 years of constant warfare, that isn't gonna happen.

You can't just say, 'that would never happen.' It's fiction, and in this fiction the circumstances to make it happen happened. So long as there is a plausible explanation given that doesn't violate the rules of the universe they built, it's all good.

Blowing up the AGM-86 factory and killing all the AGM-86 experts doesn't destroy our ability to design, develop, and manufacture cruise missiles. It hampers our ability to create AGM-86es, but even then doesn't eliminate it forever as long as someone out there knows how to read the schematics and has access to the infrastructure needed to build a new factory. And there are still other cruise missile designs. Even if every cruise missile factory in the world were destroyed and every cruise missile expert killed, there would still be several people left in the world who could figure out how to make one, given time and motivation.

Battletech would have you believe that it's plausible that every cruise missile factory and expert in the galaxy was lost, but the giant robot and massive dropship factories survived, and that no one in 500 years has figured out how to strap a big warhead and simple guidance system to a large rocket. It makes no logical sense.

[Y E O N N E]

VonBruinwald, on 15 December 2017 - 02:26 PM, said:

The problem is when you do so to that degree you end up with single 'mechs occupying a hex several kilometres across. Do you know what that does to a 2/3 Urbie!!!

Does it matter when that Urbie can actually level the grid square now?

[ShadowFire]

Read the books.... It just might help your understanding.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Yeonne Greene, on 15 December 2017 - 02:50 PM, said:

Does it matter when that Urbie can actually level the grid square now?

Why does Urbie need to be big to level the grid square hex?

[Khobai]

Quote

no one in 500 years has figured out how to strap a big warhead and simple guidance system to a large rocket.

[James Argent]

Kaeb Odellas, on 15 December 2017 - 02:38 PM, said:

Blowing up the AGM-86 factory and killing all the AGM-86 experts doesn't destroy our ability to design, develop, and manufacture cruise missiles. It hampers our ability to create AGM-86es, but even then doesn't eliminate it forever as long as someone out there knows how to read the schematics and has access to the infrastructure needed to build a new factory. And there are still other cruise missile designs. Even if every cruise missile factory in the world were destroyed and every cruise missile expert killed, there would still be several people left in the world who could figure out how to make one, given time and motivation.

Battletech would have you believe that it's plausible that every cruise missile factory and expert in the galaxy was lost, but the giant robot and massive dropship factories survived, and that no one in 500 years has figured out how to strap a big warhead and simple guidance system to a large rocket. It makes no logical sense.

The decline of civilizations due to extended warfare is a well documented thing. Now do it for three hundred years...you're going to lose some things and fight like Hell to keep a hold on others.

But in any case, this is a dumb argument. We all know about cruise missiles NOW. In pre-internet 1984 when BattleDroids was created, they did exist, but most of the people who knew anything significant about them were under NDAs or military orders to not talk a lot about them. People who followed the military closely and subscribed to Jane's knew, but we can't expect every game creator at that time to have been up on the topic, so the Inner Sphere was created as 'In a World Where' either cruise missiles never existed or had fallen out of favor for one reason or another...perhaps because in this world it turned out that advances in the defense of extremely long range missiles were easier to maintain and improve upon than the cruise missiles themselves. After all, we only have fire and forget missiles at a maximum range of 400-ish meters...longer than that and it takes active measures to maintain the target lock.

Edit: Or the Occam's Razor answer: If cruise missiles were better than BattleMechs, there would be no Battletech.

Edited by James Argent, 15 December 2017 - 05:45 PM.

[Anjian]

The Basilisk, on 15 December 2017 - 02:46 AM, said:

The first sentence already shows that you neither have any kind of idea what Battletech actually is, where it comes from, why it is what it is and how "logical" tech actually works.

The birthright and primary idea of Battletech is to get away from animee stupid magic littlegirl singing bllinky magiccolor my little pony stuff.

It is about a universe where mankind made its perpetual error of bringing its first and most capital sins to every world.
- envy
- lordliness
- murder
- greed

Battletech tells the tale of the guys and girls fighting for crazy starlords in handdown losstech machines among a mankind that hardly knows basic tech anymore on most planets because they used for centurys any weapon available to cubber each other back to stoneage.
That is the setting of Battletech.
I like it.
And so do other BattletetechFans.

If you do not like the basics, if you do not like BATTLETECH go play hawken or any other twitchy bullscrap....oh right doesn't exist anymore guess why.

Actually, the environment and lore behind Battletech is similar to the background and environment behind the anime Fang of the Sun Dougram (Taiyo no Kiba Dougram). The very look, feel and style of Battletech is straight out of Dougram. Right down to the sweaty gritty mech pilots in tank tops look.

Mankind has spread to the stars.

You have a righteous rebellion in one of the colony planets due to an oppressive, greedy government. The Federation pursues our heroic rebels, to whom the Governor's estranged son is aligned to. The rebels manage to steal a combat mech prototype for their own purpose, hence the titular name. (In Battletech, this mech is the Shadowhawk). The story ends with the success of the rebellion and the liberation of the planet from the Federation.

Emphasis on military tactics rather than super over power of the giant robot, the power of idol songs or your child friends.

"Aces" meant to drive giant robots.

Nothing is flying. All robots involve do ground combat with fairly realistic weapons. Considerable presence of conventional air and land forces as well.

Character naming that would fit a Battletech convention. "Von Stein" is one of the characters.

Many designs in Dougram were copied into Battletech, especially Dougram itself and the various Roundfacers. We know them as the Griffin, Battlemaster, Shadowhawk, Wolverine and Thunderbolt. The entire Phoenix Project pack is a celebration of all things Dougram.

Russ did consult the makers of Dougram as to whether any possible copyright issues might result with the release of the Dougram "Unseen". The answer is that as long as the new designs are distinctive enough and are not outright copies of the original Dougram mechs. The rest is MWO history.

The success of Dougram led to Armored Trooper Votoms, which inspired Heavy Gear.


And yes, the quads from Dougram are also copied into Battletech.

Edited by Anjian, 15 December 2017 - 06:31 PM.