41 replies to this topic

[MechaBattler]

If Comcast and AT&T are anything to go by. They are positively prime evil. :3

[Metus regem]

MechaBattler, on 18 April 2018 - 11:50 AM, said:

If Comcast and AT&T are anything to go by. They are positively prime evil. :3

I think my most favourite RPG campgain revolved around 5 players, all playing covert ops characters from different factions sticking it to ComStar, for different reasons.... I'll tell you though, every time we got into combat it was bloody... by the end of it, most of my character was cybernetics.... He was a beast in CQB when all was said and done...

[Brain Cancer]

evilauthor, on 13 April 2018 - 06:38 PM, said:

I really feel that by the 3150s, the tech bases should have homogenized somewhat. Or hell, since they were effectively rebooting the whole setting for the Dark Ages, why not reboot the tech base too? New armor and new weapons replace the Inner Sphere and Clan tech base, but are balanced in such a way that they look suspiciously like the original TRO3025 weapons and equipment list with new names and technobabble behind them.

I mean hell, both Hardened Armor and Ferro Lamellar reduce damage from current BT weapons in a manner reminiscent of the way standard armor reduces the damage from "primitive" Rifles. It'd be easy to write that by the 3150s, the flaws of those armors were corrected or whole new armor was invented that eliminated their flaws, followed by a new generation of weapons to defeat those new armors.

Actually, the tech trees are rapidly merging at that point, so what we think of as "mixtech" is increasingly common by 3185 or so, with the Republic being the recipient of the Word of Blake's first serious forays into production-level stuff that tries to use the best of both worlds. Given, it took over a century of constant warfare and even another technological backstep or two, but it's happening.

[Ravensworth]

tankermottind, on 05 April 2018 - 01:35 PM, said:

That doesn't pan out either--if a centralized authority couldn't control that much territory, there would just be the birth of more factions as Inner Sphere factions overextended (empires always overextend, they can't help themselves. Just ask George W. Bush) or Periphery factions developed further and transitioned into being Inner Sphere factions with large militaries and power projection. Ghost Bear actually kind of did that by eating the FRR and merging with it gradually over time, which leads into...

The Clans, on the other hand, actually do have a pretty interesting and dynamic history with lasting and irreversible consequences from their failed invasion, which leads to more events with their own consequences. There's competing ideologies and interests, multiple perspectives on the same events, Clans rising and falling, merging and splitting, certain Clans (especially Ghost Bear) starting to increasingly resemble Inner Sphere factions from extended contact, and some even being destroyed. That's the sort of stuff that deserves to be applied to the Successor States.

This isn't even true today. The law in the U.S. with the exception of taxes only extends as far as the budget allows. Entire sections of inner cities are not policed. South West Houston was not even patrolled at one point for 3 years. What you claim you govern and what you actually govern are two different things. Go to the highlands of most third world countries and there is no government. No one has taken over either. There is no strongman in place or local Warlord.

I live in the Appalachian mountains. Trust me the law here does not travel up certain hollers or even on certain mountains. It isn't one person that keeps them out either. It is the entire culture that says we will not be governed. We pay our taxes so we don't have no feds looking around but that's it.

[evilauthor]

Ravensworth, on 26 April 2018 - 06:53 PM, said:

This isn't even true today. The law in the U.S. with the exception of taxes only extends as far as the budget allows. Entire sections of inner cities are not policed. South West Houston was not even patrolled at one point for 3 years. What you claim you govern and what you actually govern are two different things. Go to the highlands of most third world countries and there is no government. No one has taken over either. There is no strongman in place or local Warlord.

I live in the Appalachian mountains. Trust me the law here does not travel up certain hollers or even on certain mountains. It isn't one person that keeps them out either. It is the entire culture that says we will not be governed. We pay our taxes so we don't have no feds looking around but that's it.

On the other hand, what he said about factions is spot on. Literally every faction in BT can be divided up into even more factions and have. And this goes right down to the individual planet level where some local group might be rebelling against the local overlord.

[NimoStar]

It's because the battletech universe is as conservative as its overall fanbase and the company that manages it.

Which is to say, as you see, a lot...

I agree these stories proposed are more interesting than repetitive power struggles about carbon-copy Steiners and Davions for the same planets over and over, for all of eternity (but NOW on the year 5000 they have pulse-cycling lasers with double capacitors!).

Edited by NimoStar, 03 May 2018 - 06:06 PM.

[Tetatae Squawkins]

Necro!

Why would I want to spend trillions of C-bills colonizing new worlds in the periphery that are a continuous economic drain on my realm when I can grab some developed and populated worlds from my neighbor. The Inner Sphere itself contains MILLIONS of uninhabted star systems, some number of those probably remain unexplored. The ~2000-3000 or so worlds of the IS are just the livable ones. And many of those are not that great.

What's the value of another dead rock? What resources can I find in the deep periphery that I can't find anywhere else. Habitability is the key in determining value. After that you need people and infrastructure. And if it's a 2+ year jumpship journey back to the core worlds what is the economic benefit?

There are many lost colonies in the deep periphery. Most of them probably died out. Some likely didnt. There could even be numerous interstellar nations far from the IS that have developed entirely independently for centuries. No one knows.

NimoStar, on 01 May 2018 - 02:25 AM, said:

It's because the battletech universe is as conservative as its overall fanbase and the company that manages it.

Which is to say, as you see, a lot...

I agree these stories proposed are more interesting than repetitive power struggles about carbon-copy Steiners and Davions for the same planets over and over, for all of eternity (but NOW on the year 5000 they have pulse-cycling lasers with double capacitors!).

This is the real reason yes. People are emotionally/monetarily invested in factions and wiping out the popular factions is bad business. The BT playerbase is inherently against major changes and tend to gripe about even moderate shifts in the universe.

They did do some house cleaning by wiping out several of the lesser clans. And I'm willing to bet we are going to see some further consolidation in the upcoming 3150+ era.

[evilauthor]

Tetatae Squawkins, on 25 July 2018 - 02:10 PM, said:

There are many lost colonies in the deep periphery. Most of them probably died out. Some likely didnt. There could even be numerous interstellar nations far from the IS that have developed entirely independently for centuries. No one knows.

The Aurigan Reach from the HBS game would be one such polity and they're practically right next door to the Inner Sphere!

Yet it's completely believable for them not to show up on an Inner Sphere map because of how small a non-entity they are. Smaller Periphery states appear on the map, but I think that's because they're far more aggressive against their neighbors than the Aurigans are; aka pirate nations and such.

Edit: And of course the Clans are the archtypical "Periphery nation turned superpower" example.

Edited by evilauthor, 25 July 2018 - 05:38 PM.

[Igor Mortice]

These discussions are why I read these posts. I love the back and forth, and in my opinion, I agree with the "Why explore when we are already unable to maintain the worlds we have" argument.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Igor Mortice, on 21 October 2018 - 05:42 PM, said:

These discussions are why I read these posts. I love the back and forth, and in my opinion, I agree with the "Why explore when we are already unable to maintain the worlds we have" argument.

I don't really think that, by 3025, there is any exploration going on. Everything on the map was explored during the pinnacle of the Star League back in the day. Once the Star League fell, and the Succession Wars started, these Star League frontier colonies were either abandoned, forgotten, or down right disappeared from known existence.

The Periphery isn't really an expanding frontier, but instead a shrinking one filled with isolated colonies, abandoned planets, and bandit kingdoms. The only "stable" parts of the Periphery are the Periphery States like The Taurians or the Magistracy of Canopus (just to name a couple).

Without the Star League (long gone) or the near by Periphery States giving a damn, many of the old colonies have disappeared, or become pirate havens.

[Leone]

But there is exploration. How can Comstar oppress the people if it doesn't know what they're doing? Not everyone has a working HPG station mind you. There could be someone out there rebuilding their technology without the 'aid' of Comstar... And thus was the explorer corps born!

~Leone.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Leone, on 22 October 2018 - 07:02 AM, said:

But there is exploration. How can Comstar oppress the people if it doesn't know what they're doing? Not everyone has a working HPG station mind you. There could be someone out there rebuilding their technology without the 'aid' of Comstar... And thus was the explorer corps born!

~Leone.

That is true. I forgot that Comstar was still poking their heads around (and past) the borders of the known Periphery. That is how they stumbled across the Clans after all.

That exploration is less about colonization and more about...well nefarious covert Comstar shenanigans like you mentioned.

[Koniving]

MechaBattler, on 18 April 2018 - 09:38 AM, said:

Can't you blame most of the IS' stagnation on Comstar murdering every scientist that attempted to improve technology? Locking the factions into an evenly matched struggle that just served to bleed them dry for Comstar's goals of dominion. Hard to explore space when the homefront is being encroached upon by bakaboys. And the technology to build most advanced tech is seemingly forgotten.

The technological stagnation up til the Helmcore bit, yes. Hell, that's who brings about the dark ages.
Though without the technological means and everyone obsessed with fighting each other, it is pretty hard to go out and discover new lands. That costs money, requires technology, etc...
Some periphery systems still completely dependent on their respective IS faction are completely wiped out because the shipments stop, or pirates step in and steal crucial **** and nobody cares because "We're fighting a war son, suck it up!"
"They're late. Son, pass me some ore you missed your last three quotas. Son? Bah, another fight we'll send you another message later."
"Son? Anybody there?"

And now the rain weeps o'er their halls with no one left to hear.

They get to a point where for even into 3150, Jumpships flat out became forbidden targets for without them, they could not wage war or rule their kingdoms. I believe only a single jumpship was destroyed and after that everybody's like "Hold up, we only screw ourselves if we do that again." What's that, ambush waiting for dropships right at the jump point? "Take your time, take your time." Won't engage until they clear away from the jumpship. If they stay there, well they gotta jump out and thus invasion averted.

Which brings us to another problem. There's a finite amount of jumpships and its often not enough, which is why people often ferry on them like a tram system going from route to route if needed. They're not being sent out to discover new lands. They just tack something onto the route if they need to. Somewhat similar to Mass Effect's relays, if there isn't a relay to receive you, you can't get there. They jump from known point to known point as that's how it works. (You'll almost see them jump straight to a planet, they jump to a star and then leave the jumpship and manually thrust to the planet). A few military maneuvers have tried dark jumps or whatever they're called, but the results are so unpredictable that they might end up in some planet filled with bird men or face first into a black hole.

So once the main wars get big the actual expansion into the periphery does slow down.

I admit territories should make greater shifts. The only ones really losing their territory are the Capellans. Saint Ives' Compact and Davions are effectively taking it over.

[Throe]

[deleted by user]

Edited by Throe, 09 November 2018 - 11:23 AM.

[TripleEhBeef]

TBH, the IS had been so fracked up by the Succession Wars that most of the Great Houses considered sacrificing 10,000 men to capture a working Star League Cotton Gin to be a worthwhile trade.

Colonization of deep space didn't really have a spot on the agenda after planets that used to make JumpShips got nuked back to the wheel.

[Karl Streiger]

TripleEhBeef, on 27 October 2018 - 10:44 AM, said:

TBH, the IS had been so fracked up by the Succession Wars that most of the Great Houses considered sacrificing 10,000 men to capture a working Star League Cotton Gin to be a worthwhile trade.
.

10.000 für a Cache? This is cheap. We had Tyrants that kill billions for a personal instead and start there wars while eating cake

[Alexander of Macedon]

evilauthor, on 25 July 2018 - 05:37 PM, said:

The Aurigan Reach from the HBS game would be one such polity and they're practically right next door to the Inner Sphere!

Yet it's completely believable for them not to show up on an Inner Sphere map because of how small a non-entity they are. Smaller Periphery states appear on the map, but I think that's because they're far more aggressive against their neighbors than the Aurigans are; aka pirate nations and such.

Edit: And of course the Clans are the archtypical "Periphery nation turned superpower" example.

That's a different matter, the Reach is one of many Periphery states known to exist but not significant enough to be marked on maps of the IS.

And the Clans are absolutely not a "Periphery nation", nor did they "turn into" a superpower. The Periphery, again, is the edge of known space, mostly composed of systems too insignificant for the great houses to bother holding. Kerensky explicitly took the SLDF way out past that to try to preserve SL culture (hah) and keep SLDF material out of the hands of the houses.

Likewise, the SLDF after the fall of Cameron could fairly easily have put Kerensky on the throne regardless of what the houses wanted. That, combined with a good few centuries of the IS being wracked by war that destroyed the bulk of their industrial base, is the primary reason why the Clans were relatively advanced c. 3050. Note that just a few decades post-Invasion the IS was already catching up and innovating beyond the Clans in certain areas.

An example of an actual Periphery power is the Concordat. And they're mostly independent because they've made themselves too much of a hedgehog for the Feddies to **** with *cough*nukes*cough*.

[Koniving]

I think the Marian Hegemony is perhaps the most prominent example. The Taurian Concordant is pretty tightly nit along the Liao/Davion border and fluctuates by taking and releasing those border planets over time.

The Marian Hegemony doesn't fluctuate much, specializes heavily in producing refit kits (mech customizations that take a fraction of the time and far less skill (due to having instructions!) than trying to do a major customization of your own (otherwise everyone would have a fully customized unique mech), it also removes the chances of critical failure in customization. No other plays sells more of these refits, and as such they have a unique identifier, "H"), has a major military force, a Roman-based culture (based on the founder's own inaccurate interpretation, much like Dracs are based on Kurita's own warped and inaccurate interpretation of ancient Japanese culture, which the Japanese in both real life and in the canonical world of Battletech think is twisted) with a number of reasons to stand out, and so much else including a working cellular network and smart phones used to hack security keypads and stuff through wifi...written in the 1980s of our real world before smart phones or wifi or wirelessly computer-linked security keypads existed in real life. O.o;

There's also H2 which I used to think was part of the Marian Hegemony due to how close it is, but apparently it isn't. Hesperus II (also Hesperus 2) is a major factory planet that is frequently fought over, and its unique designs get a unique identifier, "H2". The only planet that gets its own unique variant identifier. I was going to include it among the Marian Hegemony's as a second unique identifier, which would basically make it the single most important periphery area, but even so both of these make them some exceptional highlights.

--------------

Dropships and Jumpships as well as Mechwarrior RPG first edition and Classic Battletech RPG all basically state the biggest limiting factor of expansion is water. Iceberg ships are sent out to deliver water to areas without them, and as the Succession Wars broke out, their routes were cut down due to jumpships cutting the routes down in order to make more frequent trips to where the factions needed to go. Colonies, mining operations, etc., anything not deemed a high enough priority or revenue got cut off. This is actually how Periphery nations began to form, and in some cases how jumpships even travel between them at all is either ]
the jumpship got designated for the area or commandeered and repurposed (typically by its crew). Jumpships are quite precious so as long as they are still doing their functions, they are generally left alone despite this.

(Honestly the easiest way to have stopped the Clan threat would have been to go after the jumpships, but that'd mean going through their warships. For some reason the general preference was to face them on the ground in their Batchalls because, quite frankly, their 'honor' when respected allowed them to be tricked into all kinds of handicaps including "We'll fight on the battlefield of American football." o.O; You can't make this **** up.)

----------------------------------------

And now a word on MW5, which has to do with another reason there was a big technological and expansionist decline; woeful disregard for human life and property damage.

Quote I put on this youtube video.
"Know what I find interesting? I've been mentioning how the first and second succession wars had a complete disregard for civilians, including scenes of mech pilots that gone off the deep end to stomp on children pouring out of schools, people out of churches because of their religion or families pouring farms because it was fun. And here we are, at a farm, with children, and mechs attacking it for very little reason. Seemingly because it might be fun. Also I've noticed mechs seem to be scaled closer to canon, far more so than ever done in MWO."

Edit: Watching the video further I added this to the youtube vid:
"Side note: I think there should be more of a delay between the warning of a dropship on approach and it magically appearing 270 meters in front of you. These things travel, and your support should detect it much sooner than that. It would add a higher degree of pressure and difficulty, knowing that it's coming in X amount of time, do you pull out now or wait to engage them? Are you still engaged with an enemy force, did you resolve fight before they arrive? Can you? Or will you be fighting insurmountable odds due to not being able to clear the current enemy force before the reinforcements arrive?"

Side note: If not implemented by the time it comes out, my first mod's gonna be some kind of penalty for disregard of facilities important to the client.

In Battletech/Megamek, I already have this and a character notorious for 'accidents'.
Note Callsign and history.

His poor piloting skills are actually what generally causes the destruction, one time just crossing a street during training he created a nine car and one semi pile up. Another time he slipped in an empty parking lot under light rain and skid so hard that his mech lost an arm, went through a starbucks in a mall, fell into a basement floor...yet somehow managed to get out on the first try with only one arm and without causing further damage....until he accidentally causes a firetruck to crash about 3 minutes later.

Though the senseless need to try to solve every situation with the use of his firearm has brought a number of perfectly avoidable conflicts into, well, shooting galleries. Given a weapon, though, his exceptional accuracy makes him remarkable enough to continue using mechs. Though his lack of patience make sniping roles problematic, an otherwise ideal low piloting skill requirement.

I love flawed characters, much like flawed mechs. It makes working out problems more interesting.

-------------
And a shameless plug.
Check out the Corsair thread I started. Was hoping it'd get more people to put in some input in how a pirate might use this hobbling, slow heap of scrap. Surprise shift in my work routine is stalling me a bit (working a day earlier this coming week, did some overtime, and such), but next weekend is when results will start pumping through.

Note that after the Corsair, I will also put the Sunspider and the Roughneck, as well as "BattleTechnology" mechs and any other suggested mechs through some test missions, R&R maintenance costs comparisons, etc. Particularly excited to try my rendition of the implied but not yet created Loader King (the industrial mech the Roughneck is based on) versus the Powerman and the Buster.

Naturally I'll have generic pilot #81 and two other pilots with character flaws (including Ota above) for each test as each test and challenge will be run 3 times (once per pilot) and each repair/maintenance cycle will also be run 3 times.

Edited by Koniving, 08 December 2018 - 10:21 AM.

[MechaBattler]

They should hire Koniving. Put that extra lore detail in MW5. Or at least consult on those kit conversions. It'd be interesting if they had those in the game. So if you wanted a certain variant, but weren't seeing it on the battlefield, you could purchase the kit instead.

[Koniving]

MechaBattler, on 09 December 2018 - 10:27 AM, said:

They should hire Koniving. Put that extra lore detail in MW5. Or at least consult on those kit conversions. It'd be interesting if they had those in the game. So if you wanted a certain variant, but weren't seeing it on the battlefield, you could purchase the kit instead.

I wish but I'm not sure how I'd feel about Canada. Think I'd rather be hired by Catalyst. More job security.

Refit kits make good sense for a number of things. For example until the Crucis V hunchback skeleton and Kali-Yama doing their big cash grab, the only variants of Hunchback were made via popular refit kits as only 4G came off a factory line and since they weren't made for over a hundred years...to risk losing one to tinkering around was a risk most couldn't take.

Spoiler

Since refitting hbk 4G was not only common but practically necessary (it's huge 180mm ac/20 was hard to fix/replace and worse ammo was getting scarce since few if anyone produced it anymore), there was a huge business in refit kits for it.

Anyway. Kali-Yama when a quiring the rights basically had to redesign it anyway so one thing they did was put a deal of work in making sure it wasn't compatible with any refit kits out there. Pretty easy to see why too. They were going to sell imitations of all the common refit designs right out of the factory. These typically used in house variants of weapon models such as the 4G Crucis V having a 120mm Kali-Yama Big Bore instead of the Kobiyasha VII Ts...am not looking up the spelling of that 180mm gun now.

Each one used different brand name lasers launchers etc. In some cases the weapon s were either marginally better or worse. While incompatible with any refit kits for nearly 20 years, one advantage they had was they were slightly bigger than the Kobiyasha VII Hunchbacks. That should be a drawback right? But it isn't. See the issue with the original models is that they were as contact as possible to suit their role. Tgus meant there wasn't space inside. Hell it stores the ammo on its back! But a Crucis V didn't have to and as such the 5M did not even have a back drum. It also only carried a single ton of ammo. Anyway the Crucis V "Classic" 4G put the drum back on despite it being unneccessary (something about it being easier to reload in the field by switching drums). But as such...there was space for double heatsinks. Something Kobiyasha VII Hunchbacks couldn't do.

This sort of thing actually doubles the number of Hunchbacks and calls for a bit of difference between the two base designs. Though a cheap way is to make all Kobiyasha VII models look 100+ years old.

Love that kind of detail as it adds a level of believability that otherwise isn't there.

Numerous other mechs would need either the hard work of manual changes with all the risks or have refit options if you can't get your hands on a variants that you want.

Such could be modded in though so I am not wortied about it. I have a lot of unreal engine experience as I once tried an overly ambitious FF7 2 mod. Combat was terrible but in terms of dialogue and AI Barks it was fairly impressive. Interestingly lo g before playing an elder scrolls I found many of the ideas I came up with on my own in elder scrolls, in ff12, and recently in FF15. Animals that live, breathe, have needs, enemies that have priorities and more brains than the first Turok (has enemy seen me? Charge relentlessly! Got attacked by other not of my own species? Kill it first!). Still an impressive game for 16 megabytes but Turok's ai...

Anywho. Give input on the Corsair page. Maybe some assumptions/beliefs about what each variant's intended role should be. Really need some ideas as the basic pirate "raid" doesn't work for it.

Edited by Koniving, 09 December 2018 - 02:06 PM.