950 replies to this topic

[Skylarr]

Skylarr, on 05 August 2012 - 06:44 PM, said:

If I send infantry into a city why would I not send in armor and tanks to support them? If my infantry cannot displace you from a section of the city I will use armor and Mech to destroy the Buildings you are in. That is exactly what the military does now. they send in the foot solder to find the enemy in a city and then the tanks destroy the building.

Melcyna, on 05 August 2012 - 07:39 PM, said:

On the subject of warfare in urban environment, it seems that you have some misconception here...
This is not new btw, this entire thing is one of the basic scenario taught in most military syllabus (and hence why one avoid sending mechanized infantry and armor directly against a hostile urban location without sieging them) but unfortunately actually formulating plan against it is easier said than done since it often requires strong coordination between the infantry and armor, or any other military force.

Is this not what I said?

Edited by Skylarr, 05 August 2012 - 08:02 PM.

[Bloodweaver]

Theodor Kling, on 04 August 2012 - 10:57 PM, said:

As to Comstar as an explanation for slow technological progress: That explanation is not so bad after all. Look at euopean histoy and you can easily see what a well organized eligiously motivated oganization (aka the Church) can do to impede scientific progress. For about a milenium lot´s of already wide spread roman ( and their victims) inventions were "lostech".
And don´t forget: Comstar is the only organization present on literally every IS planet.

It's interesting you would bring up the example of the Roman Catholic Church's role in the development of medieval Europe. History shows quite the opposite of what you suggest. The idea that the Roman Catholic Church prevented technological progress in Europe is based more on the current disdain for religion in popular culture than it is in reality, and even its few actual examples based in reality, like the fight against Galileo, are grossly misrepresented. Looking at this period of European history -I spend a lot of time studying the era from the 11th to the 15th centuries- will only show a continuous development of not only technology, but also trade, culture, philosophy, the sciences, etc.

The loss of much of what the Romans had more to do with the loss of a central agency -i.e., the Roman Empire- than with a vast ecclesiastic conspiracy to keep the little people down. The latter makes for a more thrilling story, but as with most things, the real world is quite a bit more mundane. As the Roman Empire disintegrated, the various regions it had once controlled became more and more independent, losing more and more contact with other regions. The emergence of the Church as a center of power was actually one of the major reasons -if not the major reason- that Europe was eventually able to regain a position of prominence. For most of Europe's history between the Roman Empire and the tail-end of the Renaissance, the most powerful entity in Europe was the various Islamic empires. To give you an idea of just how large the power gap was, the Muslims considered the "Franks," as they called all Europeans, to be little more than a nuisance made up of various primitive tribes. The Church served to gradually bring the various European feudal kingdoms into a semblance of unity, which eventually led to things like the Renaissance.

The Church obviously wanted to make its subjects behave according to its own rules, but it never wanted to make them powerless. This wouldn't have served its own interests at all - why make allies out of the weak?

Melcyna, on 05 August 2012 - 06:03 PM, said:

First thing first, there's no such thing as dodging lasers since 'dodging' laser imply you employ FTL movement and reaction time which means you need an FTL sensors of some sort...

note: i reread that laser 'dodging' comment and i assume a second possibility, that you meant that you are sufficiently far away from point of firing that even a laser would take a significant amount of time to reach.

In such case, assume this: for such 'dodging' to occur effectively one must displace the ship far enough to be of significant distance from it's point of origin that the laser missed.

With light speed being about 300 000 km/s this gives you about slightly over 3 second at 1 million kilometer to displace your jumpship, dropship, etc to avoid a hit ie: you have over 3 seconds at 1 million kilometer to move the bulk of the ship out of the laser's predicted path assuming the laser is fired directly at where your last position was (since you can't tell where exactly the laser is coming towards you have to guess this unless you have an FTL sensor).

It's a moot point, though. Without an FTL sensor, you wouldn't even be able to guess where the laser is going. You wouldn't even be able to tell a laser had been fired at all. You wouldn't see it until it hit you, since it is itself a beam of light

Edited by Bloodweaver, 05 August 2012 - 08:08 PM.

[GarretSidzaka]

Feindfeuer, on 31 July 2012 - 01:43 AM, said:

Not true, the noble Tetatae are a sentinent species that is part of the BT canon


edit: though the existance of the Tetatae could be considered a ridiculous Battletech fact.

didnt even know these existed. i dont think they are as threating to the BT aesthetic as the wiki protrays. they dont even have tech, and it makes sense that the only other aliens they find are primitive

[Skylarr]

Their tech and social lvl is equal to the Tribes in Africa or South America. It takes them hours to have a tribal meetings that should take 30 minutes because custom dictates they must follow certain protocal.

[Melcyna]

Skylarr, on 05 August 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

Is this not what I said?

You didn't read the rest,

this is a fine example in an ASYMMETRIC warfare, which is exactly what the western power is engaged in middle east.

But when you try to send combined infantry/armor directly into urban area with strong infantry defender you get the second part.. ie: Russian's armor and mechanized infantry casualties during the first Chechnya war when they did EXACTLY just that... mechanized infantries with their BMPs and tank support advancing into the town and cut to pieces.

If your infantry managed to suppress the urban infantry defender down to allow vehicle to enter the zone and assist in then you essentially have acquired control at least part of the urban section and had a strong infantry force to start with.

The vehicle is used to hammer them AFTER you shrink them down into defender pockets, not before...

It means the infantry force is still the primary force in the urban area because if they are insufficient in strength, there will never come a point in which you can utilize your vehicle to start with.

The reverse is true for the defender, as long as they retain control of the urban's vital zones from hostile infantry, they have the freedom to position and intercept anything that enters their field of engagement within the city since nothing but infantries can move freely within the city.

Edited by Melcyna, 05 August 2012 - 08:40 PM.

[Skylarr]

Melcyna, on 05 August 2012 - 08:37 PM, said:

It means the infantry force is still the primary force in the urban area because if they are insufficient in strength, there will never come a point in which you can utilize your vehicle to start with.

I agree with you. Sending armor, or BattleMech, without Infantry support would be suicidal. Infantry must first create an area were Armor and BattleMech could operate.

[Doc Sav]

Wow - Can't believe nobody mentioned the wonderful Phantom Mech Ability.
You become such a subliminally powerful pilot that computers and pilots completely lose the ability to target, hit, or identify you. Luckily only two (or maybe three, depending on who you ask) guys in the BT universe can do it, and 2 of them got wasted despite technically having the ability to be invulnerable at will from anything but other Phantom Mech dudes.

One of the original developers has disputed the ability as not canon because there is no "magic" in BT, but chalked the events in the books up to hallucinations or near death experiences. Perhaps an even stranger BT fact: Battlefield mass hallucination!

Brenden, on 31 July 2012 - 08:57 PM, said:

-They can jump using jets, but not by crouching their legs and then suddenly flexing upward

This happens in several books, but I will point you to the Camacho's Caballero's trilogy because that is the one I can remember that it happens several times in all three of the books. I think the idea in the game is that it could be done but the movement would not be great enough to even get you out your hex, and therefore not useful as a game mechanic. Jumpjets provide significant airtime and distance.

Mousehold, on 05 August 2012 - 02:54 PM, said:

Has anyone considered how off population demographics are in the Battletech universe? Between Marik, Steiner, Davion and the Clans it's like 80% Caucasian. Indians don't exist, and non-Japanese Asians almost completely vanished.

Non-Japanese asians almost completely vanished? I think House Liao of the Capellan Confederation would be unhappy to hear you say that. Indians (as in people from India) exist as the primary population of several Draconis Combine planets, and probably exist elsewhere as well. Indians like Native Americans are shown in several books. I don't know how many or which books you have read, but one of the underlying assumptions is that racial lines are not drawn very strictly between houses at all, except in the ruling families. For instance, the Draconis Combine sure does contain plenty of blond and red haired people, even at the highest levels of office (Source: Pretty much any novel) FWL has entire planets where the primary populations are descended from Mexicans or blacks, and the Clans have black people too. It's one of the not-so-ridiculous BT facts: When people of all races expand to small colonies, you would expect to see all kinds ~750 years later when those colonies have become empires.

Also - On the subject of Tanks \ Vehicle effectiveness - I was under the impression that a Mech's ability to deal with the widest variety of terrain was the main advantage over wheeled, tracked, or hover vehicles, which obviously have their strengths and weaknesses over various types of land (and water!) and surface area, stability, etc.

Edited by Doc Sav, 05 August 2012 - 09:16 PM.

[AnarchDuke]

Seeing how effective Drones are in today's wars, why are there even people riding inside the battlemechs?

In response to the guy that said there is no technology to target a planetary target from space with a big rock, I am sure they could use a complex targeting device consisting of appropriately spaced convex lenses to magnify the targetted area. A 10000 kg rock hitting the ground at 10 thousand km/hr doesn't need to be that accurate to destroy the crap out of the area.

[Skylarr]

How about the Aiden Pryde event? They one when he died. There was enough fire power hitting his Mech that it should have went up in a fire ball. But, it kept on going. Many said they saw many shots hit the head and the Cockpit was destroyed, but, it kept going. Buying the Guard enough time to load a dropship and leave.

AnarchDuke, on 05 August 2012 - 09:31 PM, said:

Seeing how effective Drones are in today's wars, why are there even people riding inside the battlemechs?

In response to the guy that said there is no technology to target a planetary target from space with a big rock, I am sure they could use a complex targeting device consisting of appropriately spaced convex lenses to magnify the targetted area. A 10000 kg rock hitting the ground at 10 thousand km/hr doesn't need to be that accurate to destroy the crap out of the area.

When the game was developed drones were not fully operational. Remotely controlled Mechs can be jammed by enemy forces.


Can you guarantee that the Rock will hit exactly were you want it? A Mech on TT controls a 30 meter hex.

Edited by Skylarr, 05 August 2012 - 09:42 PM.

[Melcyna]

Doc Sav, on 05 August 2012 - 09:07 PM, said:

Also - On the subject of Tanks \ Vehicle effectiveness - I was under the impression that a Mech's ability to deal with the widest variety of terrain was the main advantage over wheeled, tracked, or hover vehicles, which obviously have their strengths and weaknesses over various types of land (and water!) and surface area, stability, etc.

This is basically a partial myth that often circulates whenever argument for legged machines are used.

The unfortunate reality is that a giant legged machine thanks to their incredibly high ground pressure would be highly unsuitable for the largest amount of terrain variety.

Unless for some reason the BT world is populated with planets with composition of it's terrain mostly of hardened rock and metal.

There's not much point for improved ability to hold a footing on the ground when the very ground itself cannot hold the ground pressure exerted on it and buckle.

What's even more ironic is that most of the battlefield that the battlemech ends up fighting on in novels and game boards never justified it's supposed 'nonsensical' capability of traversing terrain with their legs.

Skylarr, on 05 August 2012 - 09:36 PM, said:

When the game was developed drones were not fully operational. Remotely controlled Mechs can be jammed by enemy forces.


Can you guarantee that the Rock will hit exactly were you want it? A Mech on TT controls a 30 meter hex.

Jammed drones essentially revert to their fallback programming, depending on what the task is... that may not exactly be a problem, PROVIDED that your forces are not averse to letting an automated drone do the task without operator confirmation, the US for example will NEVER allow this as their protocol mandate that the operator confirmation and order is required before any armed drone can release their weapon.

And there are ways around jamming, the only question is how much effort you are willing to expend, for example... jamming a laser signal based drone would be essentially near impossible without physically obstructing the drone or flooding the drone with laser emitter signal, neither of which are realistic proposal in actual field assuming one are not suicidal.

radio signal based can instead uses repeater drone ie: drones designed to relay and boost signals which can bypass RF jamming.

etc... each method to jam them, have method to counter it as well, some better than others... and so on and so forth... the only question thus is, how much are you willing to work on it and what asset you actually have.

On the subject of the accuracy? That depends... for example in an orbital precision bombardment scenario, if the target is a munition factory then a deviation on the rock by a 100m is acceptable.

If you are hitting their military spaceport for example, you could also miss by over several hundred meters and it will still be fine.

In the case where absolute accuracy is required then you guide the orbital projectile to allow it to maintain acceptable deviation.

you don't need to drop a rock either, all you need is something suitably dense and can survive reentry.. based on project Thor for example their proposed weapon projectile was tungsten poles, each roughly the size of a telephone pole impacting with enough force that the resulting effect is essentially similar to a bunker buster except you can drop one at any point on the planet.

Edited by Melcyna, 05 August 2012 - 10:04 PM.

[TheMysteriousGX]

AnarchDuke, on 05 August 2012 - 09:31 PM, said:

In response to the guy that said there is no technology to target a planetary target from space with a big rock, I am sure they could use a complex targeting device consisting of appropriately spaced convex lenses to magnify the targetted area. A 10000 kg rock hitting the ground at 10 thousand km/hr doesn't need to be that accurate to destroy the crap out of the area.

See, way back in the first couple succession wars, the factions killed each other so hard they started losing tech levels. Now, if you've paid attention to earth, we have never had a war that has done that, so picture what that sort of carnage that would take. Then picture a group of religious zelots with delusions of ruling the inner sphere murderizing any scientist or enginner or corporation trying to raise the tech level back up. That's why they try not to destroy cities or factories anymore, as they are worth far more to capture. Also, every house has a stupidly high number of WMD's they will use if a different house uses WMD's, so its got a real cold war vibe as far as major invasions go. Orbital rock on a city equals faction suicide.

Now for something completely different, my silly BT facts;

The primary armament of a Spider is equal to the Rear facing weapons of an Atlas, and the IIRC, the Atlas has more rear torso armor than the spider has total torso armor.

The Dobakoo (sp?) was the first mech in the Inner Sphere euiped with both CASE and a rock-em-sock-em robot button. This somehow made it into production despite showing up in testing, fluffwise.

Edited by Jagermech, 05 August 2012 - 10:02 PM.

[Skylarr]

Doc Sav, on 05 August 2012 - 09:07 PM, said:

Also - On the subject of Tanks \ Vehicle effectiveness - I was under the impression that a Mech's ability to deal with the widest variety of terrain was the main advantage over wheeled, tracked, or hover vehicles, which obviously have their strengths and weaknesses over various types of land (and water!) and surface area, stability, etc.

Again this is SciFi. Someones Opinion of how the future will be. Years ago there were many Writers who created stories about what they felt would be in the future. The when people read it and compared it to the Technology and science they know and said "No way this will happen". Now if you look around some of these ideas did come true. ( here is Star Trek as an example The Science of Star Trek)

In the beginning of BTs universe History it said someone developed a walking tank that was more versatile than a tank. Able to gain access to area standard vehicles could not get to. What is wrong with taking a leap of faith and getting lost the SciFi aspect. Why does someone have to prove how something the far future happens by explaining it in todays terms?

Edited by Skylarr, 05 August 2012 - 10:11 PM.

[Theodor Kling]

Skylarr, on 05 August 2012 - 06:58 PM, said:

It is 3049 the only way to control the space around a planet is by using massive amounts of Aerospace. There are no Warships right now and Dropships are to valuable.

When there are Warships you will send yours after strategic planet. Then I will send mine to defend it.

Allot of people here seem to think that Warships are everywhere.

[/i]

I know that warships ae pretty scarce. Whch makes space controll even less likeley. Sure finding somethign in space is easy.. hitting it is not. Well... as was poitned out it is not that complicated using guided weapons unlesss you got relativistic speeds. But with BT targeting systems hittign someting as "small2 as a Leaporad or Uninon is basicly impossible after a few kilometers.

Bloodweaver, on 05 August 2012 - 08:07 PM, said:

It's interesting you would bring up the example of the Roman Catholic Church's role in the development of medieval Europe. History shows quite the opposite of what you suggest. The idea that the Roman Catholic Church prevented technological progress in Europe is based more on the current disdain for religion in popular culture than it is in reality, and even its few actual examples based in reality, like the fight against Galileo, are grossly misrepresented. Looking at this period of European history -I spend a lot of time studying the era from the 11th to the 15th centuries- will only show a continuous development of not only technology, but also trade, culture, philosophy, the sciences, etc.

The loss of much of what the Romans had more to do with the loss of a central agency -i.e., the Roman Empire- than with a vast ecclesiastic conspiracy to keep the little people down. The latter makes for a more thrilling story, but as with most things, the real world is quite a bit more mundane. As the Roman Empire disintegrated, the various regions it had once controlled became more and more independent, losing more and more contact with other regions. The emergence of the Church as a center of power was actually one of the major reasons -if not the major reason- that Europe was eventually able to regain a position of prominence. For most of Europe's history between the Roman Empire and the tail-end of the Renaissance, the most powerful entity in Europe was the various Islamic empires. To give you an idea of just how large the power gap was, the Muslims considered the "Franks," as they called all Europeans, to be little more than a nuisance made up of various primitive tribes. The Church served to gradually bring the various European feudal kingdoms into a semblance of unity, which eventually led to things like the Renaissance.

The Church obviously wanted to make its subjects behave according to its own rules, but it never wanted to make them powerless. This wouldn't have served its own interests at all - why make allies out of the weak?

Oh the church was good for the exact reason that it supressed individual thinking and asking questions, bringing political stability. And their unification of the erupean "tribes" was also important.
But they DID supress technological progress when they could ( and cared). Another fine example is the crossbow, which was banned as "dishonarable". Because you don´t want your army of serfs armed with a weapon that can shoot a knight no matter his armor, with conparativly little training.
Without the powe of centralized religion I agree that the effects of the Roman Empire collapsing would have been worse. But the church is also responsible ( although not exclusivly.. relion or not, feudal agricultural nations are not the best base for resarch) for the slow reagaining of knowledge.
I am not saying they were "evil" because of that. It was just a tradeoff. They brought stability, to a large extend by keeping the population dumb. ( And not just peasants. Many lords never learned to write and had to call on the chuch whenever they needed an official document witten)
On the other hand.. china lost it´s tech superiority over the west because they lost exactly that stability.

[Theodor Kling]

Jagermech, on 05 August 2012 - 10:00 PM, said:

Also, every house has a stupidly high number of WMD's they will use if a different house uses WMD's, so its got a real cold war vibe as far as major invasions go. Orbital rock on a city equals faction suicide.

I seriously doubt that. Else Maximilain or Romano would have used the when the FedSuns nearly crusehd them with their new lyran fiends backign them up.

[Doc Sav]

Melcyna, on 05 August 2012 - 09:46 PM, said:

This is basically a partial myth that often circulates whenever argument for legged machines are used.

Hmmm. While I don't necessarily disagree with your arguments for the problems with the in-game rationales and the locations actually fought in, I do have to raise this point: I can reach far more areas at my neighborhood park in the foothills than an RC car could (thinking about scale here), or even a full-sized car. An SUV could probably get to many of the places I could, but I don't think BT contains vehicles the size of mechs. Doesn't it stand to reason that bipedal locomotion can get you places where wheels and tracks can't, even at the cost of stability? Just a thought experiment I am doing right now - I have no hard evidence on any of this.

[Elsydeon]

Considering that Iran grabbed one of our drones by feeding it BS GPS data to make it think it was somewhere else, having a human inside of a large machine bristling with weapons and able to simply stomp things to death is useful.

People of various ethnicities exist everywhere, in both the IS and the Clans. The Clans, being a racially apathetic meritocracy (as long as you are not freebirth scum), have bloodnames from every ethnic group. The DC has large numbers of Nordic people (whom end up forming the FRR), the BT cartoon has Dr. Nakamura (also from the Combine), whom is black, but has Asian features.

Infantry support in a city only matters if you actually care about the buildings and civilian population. One common tactic that the Israeli Defense Force uses is to take a Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, slap on a few tons of armor (it will stop an RPG), and knock down the building that the terrorists are hiding in, at first they are nice and just give it a love tap or two, then if they do not surrender, they knock the entire thing down. It might seem brutal considering the possibility of collateral damage, but it also prevents hostage taking (by occupying residential or business structures in use) due to the lack of effectiveness in stopping a dude with a bulldozer from taking the building out from under you.

Finally, the Catholic Church was not opposed to technology as such, but toward anything that opposed its nearly omnipresent power (they disprove God exists, nobody listens to the church anymore since they no longer have divine backup), including discoveries such as the Earth revolving around Sol (our star) instead of everything spinning around us.

[Kommunist Kodiak]

Anyone who said there are no mechs over 100 tons, see this
http://www.sarna.net...ega_(BattleMech)

Edited by Kommunist Kodiak, 05 August 2012 - 10:49 PM.

[Melcyna]

Elsydeon, on 05 August 2012 - 10:33 PM, said:

Considering that Iran grabbed one of our drones by feeding it BS GPS data to make it think it was somewhere else, having a human inside of a large machine bristling with weapons and able to simply stomp things to death is useful.

Ironically the drone technically has a secondary navigation mechanism ie: INS based navigation that would've told the drone that it's navigation is whacked. Why the INS is completely overriden by the GPS in the fallback procedure is anyone's guess since traditionally INS is the fail safe option even if it's less accurate and it's physically impossible to modify the INS unless one can somehow directly alter it's internal data feed mechanism.

Doc Sav, on 05 August 2012 - 10:25 PM, said:

Hmmm. While I don't necessarily disagree with your arguments for the problems with the in-game rationales and the locations actually fought in, I do have to raise this point: I can reach far more areas at my neighborhood park in the foothills than an RC car could (thinking about scale here), or even a full-sized car. An SUV could probably get to many of the places I could, but I don't think BT contains vehicles the size of mechs. Doesn't it stand to reason that bipedal locomotion can get you places where wheels and tracks can't, even at the cost of stability? Just a thought experiment I am doing right now - I have no hard evidence on any of this.

To give you an idea why giant bipedal or legged machines are ludicrous:

a human ground pressure is around 50kPA STANDING still...

that ground pressure reaches double that when he walks and more so when he runs...

a TANK, yes that's right an MBT, not just an APC but a full fledged modern tank weighing somewhere around 40-70ton depending on design, exert around 100kPa for the 70 ton model.

Now take that human ground pressure from an adult male and scale it up to the mech size and weight....

Do you see now why it's ground pressure is ridiculous?

Considering many grounds on EARTH already fail to support the ground pressure of some tanks and other heavy vehicle, many of which have some of the best ground pressure distribution, the very idea that one will take a LEGGED DESIGN of which are among the WORST design in existence for distributing ground pressure and then scale it up to multi dozen ton weight and make it WALK, and then run essentially destroy any semblance of physical viability.

[zealist]

Quietly Crazy, on 31 July 2012 - 12:36 AM, said:

-Though weaponized spacecraft exist, most combat still takes place on the ground in battlemechs instead of the enourmous ships bristling with guns.

-Orbital bombardments rarely occur, instead being replaced by battlemechs blowing the hell out of everything

-Faxes are still considered a valid means of transmitting private information. (If you want to avoid Comstar, at least)

-Though the entire galaxy has been searched, only the human race managed to become sentient. No other star system produced what can be considered even semi-intelligent life.

-Hippies still exist, though it's really a cover for terrorism.

if you've read about the technological decline they actually have at least got some story elements that explain why they use mostly mechs to fight with, there's like some kinda pact in the lore that was made to preserve technology but everyone can still blow the **** outta each other

[Bloodweaver]

Theodor Kling, on 05 August 2012 - 10:15 PM, said:

But they DID supress technological progress when they could ( and cared). Another fine example is the crossbow, which was banned as "dishonarable". Because you don´t want your army of serfs armed with a weapon that can shoot a knight no matter his armor, with conparativly little training.
Without the powe of centralized religion I agree that the effects of the Roman Empire collapsing would have been worse. But the church is also responsible ( although not exclusivly.. relion or not, feudal agricultural nations are not the best base for resarch) for the slow reagaining of knowledge.
I am not saying they were "evil" because of that. It was just a tradeoff. They brought stability, to a large extend by keeping the population dumb. ( And not just peasants. Many lords never learned to write and had to call on the chuch whenever they needed an official document witten)
On the other hand.. china lost it´s tech superiority over the west because they lost exactly that stability.

Technological development in Europe was not hindered by the Church. The crossbow example is as much a myth as the idea that plate-armored knights had to be mounted on their horses with a crane. Just looking through medieval art will show plenty of images of soldiers using crossbows. Maximilian, Holy Roman Emperor, chose to depict himself with one - hard to believe he'd do so if it were something that would lower his social standing. If the Church tried to ban it, it didn't work. Additionally, the crossbows of 1300 are different in many significant ways than those of 1500, meaning that not only were they continually in use, but also that they were in a continual state of development. Metallurgy, armor, weaponry, agriculture, tactics, and many other fields went through many drastic leaps of development during the period in question.

Similarly, the idea that the Church suppressed knowledge is mostly bunk. The Church was the source of knowledge. It wasn't just a religious institution, as it is today; the modern world is much more interested in compartmentalization than older cultures were. This applies to a lot of different phenomena, but the role of the Church in the medieval world is a good example of it. In addition to being the spiritual leader of whatever community it inhabited, it was also the educational institution, the banking system, a balancing check against the local nobility's power, and a calendar service. I understand you're mostly referring to the fact that you wouldn't find a lot of turnip farmers filling the ecclesiastic vestures, but you have to bear in mind that the main reason for this is because these same farmers wouldn't have found the idea beneficial to their lifestyle. What would they gain from learning to read and write, if the only way to make use of that skill is to read and write more? A modern comparison would be studying philosophy, or art history. A degree in either is, generally speaking, only useful if you intend to become a professor in the same subject. They're not widely applicable subjects.

If you'd like to look into the area of medieval European studies more fully, I can suggest http://www.myarmoury.com and its associated forum. Quite a few of its regular members are accredited scholars

Edited by Bloodweaver, 05 August 2012 - 11:09 PM.