IIurricane, on 27 February 2013 - 01:38 PM, said:
The question is, can you create a new threat without colliding with the established elements?
And of course, you might ask, should they ever make a new threat?
If the answer is no, how should the future of Battletech look like? Thousand and one Succession Wars or three hundred million clan invasions? Would that not be boring, even for a hardcore fan?
And no I am not an supporter of the Alien solution.
All I'm saying is, it is a difficult task to create something new without repeating itself. Especially in the Battletech Univerum because it has already been there so much.
One of the major elements for me in this take was to use the aliens as a new enemy, and to basically "reverse" the story of the Clan Invasion. Instead of the Inner Sphere being attacked and invaded, the Inner Sphere attacks someone else. To add some additional conflict potential and inner sphere infighting, I wanted the IS agressors to be tricked into attacking, and having a bit of conspiracy around it.
Another element was the idea of splitting ComStar. Which is kinda what already happened with the Blakists, but this along different lines. Instead of ideological differences, ecominical interests driving the conflict. ComStar was a major power for so long, suddenly sharing this power and wealth scares them, and drives them to do ... questionable things.
Also, rivals for ComStar can also drive technology. I don't know if it's too outlandish (compared to what? Aliens? BT standards), but imagine someone being able to build, say, a permanent "jump gate" allowing instantenous travel between planets. A belt of worlds connected by such gates would probably have significant economical advantages (provided the tech for the gates is cheap enough). There could be a race for developing this tech - but there is actually someone out there that already has it (the aliens?), and only ComStar knows.
It doesn't strictly require aliens, however. Apparantly, ComStar was still looking for lost Star League Outpusts. Maybe there is actually a secret/forgotten group of colonies out there. And they have something that is worth having, maybe the jump gate. The challenge is making it "believable" that there is actually something out there that is capable of fighting back. It seems more likely for that to be an entire alien civlization than one previously unmentioned human colony.
Though what I don't want is a repeat of Clan Tech power creep at the same time. Maybe stuff like HPG tech is very different, but I would just want the different factions to mostly use
different but equal tech. Imagine one side using pulse lasers and the other side er lasers. Balanced against each other, but different. I'd prefer to establish a new tech level, build from the concepts of the earlier timelines.
(Say, ditch double heat sinks - everyone is using double heat sinks now, and we call them just heat sinks. Maybe there are larger and heavier variants, but they come all with different advantages or drawbacks. Example: Standard Heat Sink: 1 ton, 1 crit, -1 heat. Compact Enhanced Heat Sink: 1.5 tons, 2 crits, -2 heat. If destroyed, corrosive cooling liquid damages the mech. Whenever the mech's heat level is 4 or higher, it takes 1 damage for each destroyed sink. Light Enhanced Heat Sink: 1 ton, 3 crits, -2 heat. If destroyed, the flammable cooling liquid risks heating up the mech further. For each destroyed sink, if the heat level is 4 or higher, the destroyed sink produces 1 additional heat. A complete shutdown of the mech and a flush of the coolant liquids negates this effect for all currently destroyed sinks. A Mech usually only holds enough coolant to perform one such flush, a second flush would disable all heat sinks and force the mech to shutdown until refilled. Engine Sinks are always standard sinks (so no magical doubling of heat dissipation.))
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