39 replies to this topic

[Lyon]

I was about to jump into this thread with steel-toed boots on, as a WarShip fanatic who worked on an Aerotech mod for Freelancer...

But no, the guys have answered well and fully, and I'm content for the most part. Except:

In that list, there seem to be way too many Zechetinu IIs, not enough WoB ships (they looted a Star League mothball yard called the Ruins of Gabriel, hidden in the edge of the Thorin system), the Comstar fleet was NOT entirely eliminated at Terra, and the Capellans had several ships, mostly upgraded to Clan-killer levels. (Hate Capellans, love the Feng Huang 2.0 version)

[Pht]

Marowi, on 03 April 2012 - 12:03 PM, said:

I was doing some reading at sarna.net the other day, and I realized that there just don't seem to be that many WarShips in the BattleTech universe. Sure, there were the Succession Wars, and I get it that they blasted a lot of them--but you see both the Lyran Alliance/Federated Commonwealth (/Suns) cranking out gigantic Tharkad-class and Avalon-class ships by the 3050s.

Yet, at the same time, neither of these states has more WarShips than Clan Jade Falcon? In fact, only the Clans seem to have any naval assets at all--there are almost 270 canon Clan WarShips accounted for, but barely 100 from the Successor States? I don't get it. How do two economic powerhouses with 300-500 colonized planets and upwards of a trillion citizens fail to have a Navy? Or at least a navy as big as a power that for most of its history had 5 planets and had to share them. Someone with more knowledge of this universe than I please explain, otherwise, Clan insistence on single-combat on the ground looks pretty silly.

Warships are OBSCENELY expensive, and put a huge amount of eggs into a single basket - this is, IMO, the reason they're not so common.

It takes the resources of a great house or a clan to field the things, and yet all it takes is a single warship vs warship engagement to destroy them.

You can toss a significant amount of the GDP of entire houses and clans into the toilet in a single battle.

[Kenyon Burguess]

if its any consolation the IS does get back to building them in the 3050's with house marik having the most due to secret salvge runs to locations provided to them by comstar/WOB forces.

[Arctic Fox]

Lyon, on 03 April 2012 - 02:25 PM, said:

I was about to jump into this thread with steel-toed boots on, as a WarShip fanatic who worked on an Aerotech mod for Freelancer...

But no, the guys have answered well and fully, and I'm content for the most part. Except:

In that list, there seem to be way too many Zechetinu IIs, not enough WoB ships (they looted a Star League mothball yard called the Ruins of Gabriel, hidden in the edge of the Thorin system), the Comstar fleet was NOT entirely eliminated at Terra, and the Capellans had several ships, mostly upgraded to Clan-killer levels. (Hate Capellans, love the Feng Huang 2.0 version)

The number of Zechetinu IIs seem to match FM:U's numbers. Oh, and the Ruins of Gabriel were in the Odessa system, not Thorin.

[Lyon]

Quote

The number of Zechetinu IIs seem to match FM:U's numbers. Oh, and the Ruins of Gabriel were in the Odessa system, not Thorin.

I really need to buy a copy of FM:U, then. And Odessa...you are right.

[SeDevri]

hmm i think you have to remember that the BT/MW universe isn't exactly a very realistic scenario(not that that stops it from being awesome). Logically any space-fairing power would rely mostly upon its Navy for any real combat, as if you can hold a planet from orbit, you don't need massive armies and mechs to conquer it. Naval combat would be more efficient and actually save lives(until you reach a point of diminishing returns on fleet/ship sizes compared with crew needed.

Anyway, the REAL reason there aren't any real "navies" in the BT/MW universe is because it would detract from the AWESOMENESS that is mech warfare, simple as that.

[Marowi]

Well, after having discussed this topic with you all for an afternoon, I think the major issue is simply that the advent of "Pocket WarShips" drastically changes the equation--sort of in the same way that long-range, highly-accurate ship-to-ship missiles and aircraft changed the equation for 20th and 21st century Earth. If you have a ton of JumpShips (and the knowledge to produce them in greater numbers than WarShips, assuming that this is true--I can see equally valid arguments going either way), that can transport enough armed DropShips to a battle, such that it has the same battle value as a WarShip or two, then you can fight just as effectively without--as one member put it--risking throwing away a substantial portion of your state's GDP. A Pocket WarShip, or a squadron of them, is just a WarShip that can't jump, practically speaking.

This is interesting because it makes the efforts of the Successor States in the 3050s somewhat moot; they invested huge amounts of effort, in producing the 31st century equivalent of WWII-style battleships when, in reality, they needed attack submarines and missile carriers. Now, I'm not so much of a WarShip fanatic as I am a statistics/analysis fanatic. A qualitative analysis of relative Naval strength for the 31st and 32nd centuries would involve, in my opinion, an accurate inventory of each state's armed-DropShip, Assault DropShip, and "Pocket WarShip" forces plus, of course, JumpShip inventories. Any idea who might win on that score?

*EDIT: I think SeDevri is absolutely right, but we're discussing a sci-fi franchise. We all engage in some level of narrative interpretation to make the universe coherent for us. Part of that is explaining the things in front of us in logical terms within the realm of certain assumptions. There are no WarShips as 'Mech combat is the shizzle (as alluded to before), but let's also try to do the case some justice.

Edited by Marowi, 03 April 2012 - 07:21 PM.

[SeDevri]

Marowi, on 03 April 2012 - 07:18 PM, said:

We all engage in some level of narrative interpretation to make the universe coherent for us. Part of that is explaining the things in front of us in logical terms within the realm of certain assumptions. There are no WarShips as 'Mech combat is the shizzle (as alluded to before), but let's also try to do the case some justice.

If you want a really good book series with lots of naval combat, look up the Honor Harrington series. It has some GREAT concepts for futuristic naval combat.

[Arctic Fox]

Marowi, on 03 April 2012 - 07:18 PM, said:

Well, after having discussed this topic with you all for an afternoon, I think the major issue is simply that the advent of "Pocket WarShips" drastically changes the equation--sort of in the same way that long-range, highly-accurate ship-to-ship missiles and aircraft changed the equation for 20th and 21st century Earth. If you have a ton of JumpShips (and the knowledge to produce them in greater numbers than WarShips, assuming that this is true--I can see equally valid arguments going either way), that can transport enough armed DropShips to a battle, such that it has the same battle value as a WarShip or two, then you can fight just as effectively without--as one member put it--risking throwing away a substantial portion of your state's GDP. A Pocket WarShip, or a squadron of them, is just a WarShip that can't jump, practically speaking.

This is interesting because it makes the efforts of the Successor States in the 3050s somewhat moot; they invested huge amounts of effort, in producing the 31st century equivalent of WWII-style battleships when, in reality, they needed attack submarines and missile carriers. Now, I'm not so much of a WarShip fanatic as I am a statistics/analysis fanatic. A qualitative analysis of relative Naval strength for the 31st and 32nd centuries would involve, in my opinion, an accurate inventory of each state's armed-DropShip, Assault DropShip, and "Pocket WarShip" forces plus, of course, JumpShip inventories. Any idea who might win on that score?

*EDIT: I think SeDevri is absolutely right, but we're discussing a sci-fi franchise. We all engage in some level of narrative interpretation to make the universe coherent for us. Part of that is explaining the things in front of us in logical terms within the realm of certain assumptions. There are no WarShips as 'Mech combat is the shizzle (as alluded to before), but let's also try to do the case some justice.

While this is essentially true, I think a better comparison might be to Dreadnoughts during World War I. WarShips are still relevant in combat, and they're still the single most powerful units in the BattleTech universe, but they're so expensive that by using them in battle you often risk more than you stand to gain. In the 3050s and 3060s there was little other choice, as not much could stand up to a WarShip, but with the introduction of Pocket WarShips one can get much more direct combat power at much less cost and risk.

Still, there are a few areas where WarShips can definitely perform significantly better than any other unit, such as when executing a jump straight into combat, in which case a WarShip is capable of carrying itself and its complement of DropShips and AeroSpace Fighters into (and out of) action without risking an extremely vulnerable JumpShip, and when it comes to orbital bombardment, which Pocket WarShips can perform but much less effectively (Well, that applies to bombarding something without destroying everything else. A flotilla of Pocket WarShip can ruin a planet with nuclear weapons just as fast as a WarShip, as the Principality of Regulus demonstrated during their rampage through the FWL and Circinus Federation). So I think that WarShips would still have a fairly major role, alongside the much more numerous cheaper alternatives, if the infrastructure that built and supported them would not have taken such extensive damage during the Jihad.

As for who would win such a comparison, it's very hard to tell, as there's no direct count of anything but WarShips. The AeroSpace industries of the Lyran Alliance/Commonwealth and Draconis Combine have been heavily damaged in the Jihad, so it's safe to leave those out. The same is pretty much true for the former Free Worlds League, though some states like Regulus field a fairly sizable fleet. The Raven Alliance, Republic of the Sphere and the Federated Suns seems like pretty good contenders for strongest fleet in the post-Jihad era, though the latter's JumpShip industry has been severely mauled, so its Aerospace force is mostly defensive. There's not enough information on such matters beyond 3085 yet, so we'll have to wait to see how much things change by the 32nd century.

[Marowi]

That seems to be the distinction: a "Pocket" WarShip is effectively a WarShip that can't jump on its own. I don't necessarily grant that they can't undertake orbital bombardments as effectively or accurately as WarShips-in-fact can, but the direct-combat jump is the most obvious area in which they are lacking. And, of course, unless you want your sublight WarShips trapped in a single system, forever, an upper limit on their size is imposed by how large a DropShip a JumpShip can carry.

As for the comparison... Well, 50 years is a long time, if we consider that, in aggregate, the Successor States produced a fleet of roughly 100 WarShips in the span of a decade in the 3050s and '60s. The only question is whether the Lyrans and the Draconis Combine "forgot" how to build WarShips post-Jihad, or, if not, how long it will take them to rebuild their production capacity for WarShips (given the loss of Alarion and... Galdeon V, I think?). My immediate assumption is that, since they clearly lacked the capacity pre-Clan invasion, and were then able to get it running within eight years, that a similar time span isn't inconceivable. Of course, this depends on how thoroughly savaged the Lyrans/DC were, but either way it seems like only a matter of one decade or a few. I suppose the same applies to the Federated Suns, but perhaps to a more favorable extent. As for the FWL and the Capellans, I can't make any guess. I don't know whether the Capellans rode out the Jihad any better than anyone else or just had less to lose, and given the collapse of the Marik state, it's possible the FWL lacks the necessary organization for such undertakings (when a single corvette-type WarShip costs as much as 1,600 Atlas BattleMechs). If it were up to me, I'd say just leave it at JumpShips (a Star Lord-class is only 75 Atlases) and sublight combat vessels.

[Arctic Fox]

Marowi, on 04 April 2012 - 03:01 PM, said:

That seems to be the distinction: a "Pocket" WarShip is effectively a WarShip that can't jump on its own. I don't necessarily grant that they can't undertake orbital bombardments as effectively or accurately as WarShips-in-fact can, but the direct-combat jump is the most obvious area in which they are lacking. And, of course, unless you want your sublight WarShips trapped in a single system, forever, an upper limit on their size is imposed by how large a DropShip a JumpShip can carry.

The maximum size and mass of DropShips is what limits the Pocket WarShip's ability to execute orbital bombardment as effectively as WarShips. You can't fit any full scale Capital weapons on DropShips besides missiles, and because of the restriction of only long ranged weapons being capable of orbital bombardment, the only direct-fire weapons they can use for that are the SCL/1 and Light Sub-Capital Cannon, which aren't nearly as powerful as the various full-scale Capital weapons of comparable range found on WarShips.

Marowi, on 04 April 2012 - 03:01 PM, said:

As for the comparison... Well, 50 years is a long time, if we consider that, in aggregate, the Successor States produced a fleet of roughly 100 WarShips in the span of a decade in the 3050s and '60s. The only question is whether the Lyrans and the Draconis Combine "forgot" how to build WarShips post-Jihad, or, if not, how long it will take them to rebuild their production capacity for WarShips (given the loss of Alarion and... Galdeon V, I think?). My immediate assumption is that, since they clearly lacked the capacity pre-Clan invasion, and were then able to get it running within eight years, that a similar time span isn't inconceivable. Of course, this depends on how thoroughly savaged the Lyrans/DC were, but either way it seems like only a matter of one decade or a few. I suppose the same applies to the Federated Suns, but perhaps to a more favorable extent. As for the FWL and the Capellans, I can't make any guess. I don't know whether the Capellans rode out the Jihad any better than anyone else or just had less to lose, and given the collapse of the Marik state, it's possible the FWL lacks the necessary organization for such undertakings (when a single corvette-type WarShip costs as much as 1,600 Atlas BattleMechs). If it were up to me, I'd say just leave it at JumpShips (a Star Lord-class is only 75 Atlases) and sublight combat vessels.

The knowledge of building WarShips hasn't been lost, so most factions could theoretically rebuild their shipyards and start building WarShips within a few years if they wanted, but the focus shifted to Pocket WarShips given the immense cost of restarting and continuing WarShip production.

[Karel Spaten]

Thorn Hallis, on 03 April 2012 - 12:39 PM, said:

No. The only Warships in the Inner Sphere were in the hands of Comstar, and they had them mothballed in the Terran system. Comstar pressed them into active service after the battle of Tukayyid. Around the same time the Successor States started to jumpstart their Warship programs. Dunno when the FWL had 40 warships (probably during/after the Jihad?), but as of 3060 they had around 10 or so (including their mega-carriers, I guess the Ravens would like to have them). The Confedration created a destroyer-class Warship in conjunction with the Free World League and also a cruiser-class warship with the help of the Word of Blake.

Word of Blake just plain stole a large number of the FWLN's warships during the Jihad, so numbers are likely to be unclear. There's also the matter of the Secret Fleet (salvaged/mothballed Star League-era warships recovered with WoB's help).

[The Smith]

The lost tech consept in Battletech has always felt poorly thought out to me. I mean it's ridiculous, the idea that technologies could be so easily lost in a post information age society. Even today information transcends single locations, and individual minds in such a way that it can never really be lost. For that to happen entire worlds would have had to be destroyed, and millions, or tens of millions of scientists, and technicians would have had to be killed. I know the succession wars were horrible but did they really create Fallout like wastelands of every world they touched? I also can't understand the argument that a warship of any size, or type would be so expensive that it would be impractical to use. The economy for an empire with hundreds of worlds, and trillions of citizens could easily afford thousands... even millions of them.

[Marowi]

Smith: I agree with you. In my mind, the only way you could truly "lose" technology would be for every major world to be reduced to, as you call it, a Fallout-like wasteland. We know this isn't the case. Especially given the resources at the command of the Successor States--hundreds of worlds, hundreds of billions of citizens, FTL space travel--it doesn't seem like they should really be able to forget some of these things. I don't think I ever really bought into lostech, even when I was really into BattleTech and MechWarrior in the mid-'90s (and when the Internet and the information revolution weren't nearly as prominent), even though it is a key feature of the universe. Anyway, it's what we're given, so I suppose we have to explain it. As far as WarShips are concerned, perhaps there's major issues with the power demands of their weapons, and the resulting reactor needs require hugely complex and dangerous contraptions. Perhaps the same goes for FTL, though I don't know why the FTL for a WarShip should be any different than for a JumpShip (which some of the Successor States can build as of 3050?).

[Arctic Fox]

Well, the first two Succession Wars did reduce many, many worlds into wastelands. Major industry and infrastructure were routinely the targets of large scale nuclear attacks and orbital bombardment, while many of the less populated worlds died off when they were cut off from needed resources or technology. Granted, it's not every world, but a fair amount of them. ComStar also spent much of the time slitting the throats of scientists and conducting sabotage to speed the technological decline along.

Marowi, on 09 April 2012 - 07:14 AM, said:

As far as WarShips are concerned, perhaps there's major issues with the power demands of their weapons, and the resulting reactor needs require hugely complex and dangerous contraptions. Perhaps the same goes for FTL, though I don't know why the FTL for a WarShip should be any different than for a JumpShip (which some of the Successor States can build as of 3050?).

The FTL drive of a WarShip has a compact core. A standard jump core, as found in most JumpShips, can only jump twice its own mass, meaning JumpShips basically amount to a K-F Drive, a station-keeping engine and as little of everything else as possible. A WarShip's compact core, on the other hand, can transport 6 times its own mass, which allows a WarShip to carry its own transit drive, fuel, armour, weapons and attached craft. So the technology is not really the same.

Edited by Arctic Fox, 09 April 2012 - 08:51 AM.

[Marowi]

Arctic: I haven't been able to find many maps of the Star League-era Inner Sphere that accounts for individual planets; but what I have found does not seem to indicate that too many worlds were depopulated during the Succession Wars, of course, a world need not be depopulated to be unable to contribute to high-tech manufacturing. Even so, I think we're at a point in this conversation where we need to talk about what it means to be "reduced to a wasteland." Many of the worlds of the Inner Sphere still retain large populations: even in 3130 (post-Jihad!), the Federated Suns has an average planetary population of 3 billion people. This cannot possibly be a "Fallout-style wasteland"--this kind of a population implies massive urban centers, centers of learning, industrial infrastructure, agricultural production, etc. Of course, this is only the average, but from what I've seen, no planet's population exceeds 7 billion people, so it is unlikely that there are many planets with populations in the "mere" millions. I think Smith and I agree that, in order for entire star empires to "forget" such obviously necessary things as building interstellar warships, Fallout-style wastelands must be the norm throughout the empire. That's the nature of information; especially in a society with instantaneous FTL travel. The Succession Wars are depicted as being especially brutal, it's true, but from the fiction I've read, only mere "billions" die (the Federated Suns loses, what, 20 billion people in the First Succession War?), but this is, at most, only 1 or 2% of the state's total population. Let's be conservative and assume its 2700s population is only half its 3100s population; this would still only mean 2 or 4% of the state's population was lost. For comparison, the Soviet Union lost upwards of 14% of its population in World War II--and 15 years later was the first country to put a man in space.

Edited by Marowi, 09 April 2012 - 10:28 AM.

[The Smith]

For true loss of technology you would have to lose a massive percentage of your population as well as all of the data, and infrastructure related to said technology, as well as many other technologies more important to the immediate survival of your people. Post nuclear war there will be a lot more farmers then artists, architects, and gun makers. This would lead to real brain drain and actual tech loss. But for that sort of thing to happen in the Battletech universe every world in every empire would need to have the hell nuked out of it, all coms cut, and FTL travel would also need to disappear.

[Arctic Fox]

Marowi, on 09 April 2012 - 10:21 AM, said:

Arctic: I haven't been able to find many maps of the Star League-era Inner Sphere that accounts for individual planets; but what I have found does not seem to indicate that too many worlds were depopulated during the Succession Wars, of course, a world need not be depopulated to be unable to contribute to high-tech manufacturing. Even so, I think we're at a point in this conversation where we need to talk about what it means to be "reduced to a wasteland." Many of the worlds of the Inner Sphere still retain large populations: even in 3130 (post-Jihad!), the Federated Suns has an average planetary population of 3 billion people. This cannot possibly be a "Fallout-style wasteland"--this kind of a population implies massive urban centers, centers of learning, industrial infrastructure, agricultural production, etc. Of course, this is only the average, but from what I've seen, no planet's population exceeds 7 billion people, so it is unlikely that there are many planets with populations in the "mere" millions. I think Smith and I agree that, in order for entire star empires to "forget" such obviously necessary things as building interstellar warships, Fallout-style wastelands must be the norm throughout the empire. That's the nature of information; especially in a society with instantaneous FTL travel. The Succession Wars are depicted as being especially brutal, it's true, but from the fiction I've read, only mere "billions" die (the Federated Suns loses, what, 20 billion people in the First Succession War?), but this is, at most, only 1 or 2% of the state's total population. Let's be conservative and assume its 2700s population is only half its 3100s population; this would still only mean 2 or 4% of the state's population was lost. For comparison, the Soviet Union lost upwards of 14% of its population in World War II--and 15 years later was the first country to put a man in space.

It's a bit hard to tell the exact amount because of the dates of the maps found in most of the Handbooks, but the amount of worlds that are depopulated (and therefore vanish from ComStar's maps) during the first three Succession Wars is in the hundreds. Maybe now that we have a full map of the Inner Sphere in the 28th century in Liberation of Terra, Volume 1 it will be possible to make an exact count of how many worlds were turned into wastelands or otherwise died off.

Anyway, I wasn't arguing that the LosTech concept necessarily makes sense. I think it makes enough sense considering the situation in the Succession Wars so as to be not totally unbelievable, but I can see why one could think otherwise. I was mostly responding to what The Smith said about entire worlds needing to be destroyed and millions of scientists killed, which is exactly what happened.

Edited by Arctic Fox, 11 April 2012 - 10:28 AM.

[Marowi]

I can't wait to get my hands on Liberation of Terra, then.

I think the widespread assassination of scientists would probably have more to do with it--since it seems we didn't nuke every populated world in the Known Universe. I suppose my issue remains that, save for the FTL issue, it doesn't seem that hard to build a WarShip. A Nimitz-class carrier displaces ~100,000 tons, so that's basically half a Fox-class corvette right there (of course, granted, a substantial WarShip like a Mjolnir-class battlecruiser would be more comparable to building the entire U.S. nuclear carrier fleet, which took decades to do in the 20th century). Provided you save at least one compact-FTL scientist's life, it seems like you should be able to do it. Perhaps, then, the shipyards, themselves, take an inordinate amount of time and expense to build--maybe even on the order of decades or so. Well, if this is the case, why isn't the location of every shipyard capable of producing WarShips a closely-guarded state secret? It's fiction, so it doesn't have to be logical, but I'll be damned if BattleTech doesn't have one of the more interesting naval space battle depictions out there.

[BerryChunks]

SeDevri, on 03 April 2012 - 07:11 PM, said:

hmm i think you have to remember that the BT/MW universe isn't exactly a very realistic scenario(not that that stops it from being awesome). Logically any space-fairing power would rely mostly upon its Navy for any real combat, as if you can hold a planet from orbit, you don't need massive armies and mechs to conquer it. Naval combat would be more efficient and actually save lives(until you reach a point of diminishing returns on fleet/ship sizes compared with crew needed.

Anyway, the REAL reason there aren't any real "navies" in the BT/MW universe is because it would detract from the AWESOMENESS that is mech warfare, simple as that.

money actually is the reason.

Why hasn't any first world country today done away with infantry and moved solely to tanks and jets and battleships? humans are cheaper and more plentiful. Also, you need presence to hold something.

If you want to just nuke the planet to death, thats fine, but then it defeats the purpose of taking it. if you want a dead planet you can just easily find one that needs to be terraformed, and spend less money. Or nuke a planet and spend more for the ships and more for the terraforming gear, which now needs to decontaminate an entire planet.

because of all these reasons, dominance forces such as infantry and mechs will never fall by the wayside to pure navy. attacking is about taking control of reasources, access to females, spreading your ideology, since the dawn of time. If you nuke the planet or make it uninhabitable, then you've destroyed tons of its more complex resources like food, water, human labor, etc, and reduced it to radioactive mineral resources.

The only time you want to completely wipe out something is if you don't care about getting any return out of it.