Falsor
02/06/19 02:34 AM
67.185.211.196
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Greetings! I've been interested in battletech for a great many years but haven't ever been able to really get into it for a variety of reasons (do people still play the tabletop version or is it just my area that lacks any players?). That recently changed when a friend informed me that paradox had made a turn-based battletech game which he described as "mechwarrior X-COM." I immediately proceeded to play the ever loving **** out of said videogame.
I soon found that I got a lot more out of the game when I started boning up on battletech lore and reading Sarna entries for the mechs I acquired. I soon began to notice discrepancies between the tactical/equipment situation I was seeing play out in my video game and the state of affairs described by Sarna.
1: in el videogame I've found the default weapon/equipment set ups for almost every mech to be vastly inferior to my custom designs. I'm betting the video game isn't balanced the same way the canon version of the game is but some mechs load-outs seem just plain bad on a conceptual level. In the videogame changing weapon and equipment loadouts isn't a terribly big deal but sarna descriptions of most mechs seem to imply that almost every mech of a given type you'll see fielded will conform to the standard. Is this the case, or are mechs likely to be tailored to the needs of a given campaign or to fullfill a specific role within a larger force?
2: Who controls the jumpships and why is the special compact whatchamacallit jump drive nescesary to make a jump capable ship that can fight? (on an unrelated note: I want to punch whoever is responsible for codifying spaceship nomenclature in the nose. All of science fiction agrees more or less on what the word dropship means except for battletech in which it means something totally different; even more irritating is the term WarShip, does battletech have its own catch-all term for ships that make war?)
3: I don't quite get how Comstar can have this super-duper elite comguard capable of defeating the big bad clans when the comguard hasn't actually conducted large scale combat operations in like 200 years. I understand why they would have super-duper star league-era equipment and the like, but there's a lot more to an effective military than just having good hardware.
4: What are some good battletech novels to start with?
5: Is there some good explanation why cockpits are in the head instead of the chest because this seems dumber than hell to me?
6: Can anyone convince me that the Highlander 732 isn't just the coolest? (I mean cool in terms of hip-ness not in terms of heat management.)
7: Was all this clan lore introduced quite a while after the succession war era lore, and did it make a lot of players salty as hell?
8: If comstar controls all FTL communications in the inner spere/periphery why are they not the undisputed lords and master of all the inhabited world. They're described as functioning kind of like swizerland but it seems like they should function more like my local internet provider with several orders of magnitude more power and THAT would be a serious horror show.
Appologies if some of these questions make it sound like I'm saying battletech is dumb, that isn't my intent. So far delving through its lore has been a mixture of reading things that make me go, "Wow, thats some really awesome worldbuilding." and things that make me feel like my heads going to explode.
Edited by Falsor (02/06/19 02:52 AM)
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Frabby
02/06/19 09:26 AM
84.185.67.254
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I'll try to tackle you questions:
1. There are several answers to this, I think.
For starters, different configurations perform markedly different depending on the ruleset they are used under. A lengthy forum posting over at the BattleTech forum detailed how the BNC-1E, which is widely considered a white elephant under classic boardgame rules, becomes a murder machine under Alpha Strike rules. Similarly, under Solaris VII rules weapons behave so differently that unpopular weapons from the classic game are arguably overpowered in S7, and vice versa. The HBS game played it pretty loose with classic boardgame rules, and significantly altered the stats of various weapons as well as armor ratings on 'Mechs.
That said, the "canonical" in-universe designs were never meant to be optimized for any ruleset. Some were even positively designed to be... colorful. This was because early on there were 'Mech designs (taken from existing anime) that had certain gun ports before there were BattleTech rules; and the game designers initially designed the first BattleMechs to match the artwork, not any sensible configuration. That's why the Crusader has SRM launchers in the legs. Subsequent changes to the rules then created the "torso bomb" problem for many early designs, making things worse.
Also, the construction rules were an important factor to the game's success. Players were encouraged to modify the existing, sub-par designs or build entirely new ones. Having no "perfect" units played right into this modding/construction aspect.
2. Not sure what you mean by "controlling" a JumpShip. Much like any other spacecraft, they have a crew and captain, and may be aligned with a state, merc unit, corporation, or be free traders.
The rules posit that a regular jump drive makes up 95% of the JumpShip's mass - before crew, life support, docking collars, engines, and everything else. No room for guns or armor. They suck at being anything but JumpShips.
WarShips have those special compact cores that only make up 42.5% of their mass. That's why they can mount all that fancy combat equipment and huge maneuvering thrusters. Since the game is about 'Mechs not WarShips, their number and relevance was deliberately downplayed in the setting.
As for nomenclature, I can't quite follow you - I guess it comes down to a YMMV situation.
3. They had a capable General in Anastasius Focht, with real military experience. They understood the Clan rules of engagement, and how to use it against them. Clan Wolf and ilKhan Ulric Kerensky of the Wolves could almost be said to have sabotaged the Clan offensive from within. Vastly superior numbers and being the defender also helps And finally, author fiat. The Clans had to be stopped from a storyline point of view.
4. Oh my. All of them, in chronological order.  Barring that, Wolves on the Border is a standalone novel that might give you a good idea of, well, one part of the setting. The Warrior trilogy by Keith, Blood of Kerensky (Clan Invasion) trilogy by Stackpole, and pretty much any other novel is also good to know.
5. No.
6. Pass.
7. Oooh yeah. Most players apparently agree that it was overpowered, poorly thought out, and poorly implemented.
8. It's probably much better to be a puppet master than an overt ruler, because when acting from behind the scenes, you can easily dodge responsibility when it suits you. Also, circles within circles, religious nutterism, and compulsive backstabbing disorder are rampant in the order.
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Cray
02/07/19 11:27 PM
71.47.193.139
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Quote:
2: Who controls the jumpships
Their owners, which tend to be nations and large corporations.
Quote:
and why is the special compact whatchamacallit jump drive nescesary to make a jump capable ship that can fight?
Well, a standard Kearny-Fuchida Drive is 95% of a ship's mass. A standard JumpShip can mount a few guns, but its peak acceleration is a fraction of a thrust point and it doesn't have much mass for armor, structure, firepower, fuel, etc. So they can shoot, but that tends to end poorly for them.
Meanwhile, a WarShip's compact core is 45.25% of its mass. They typically have hundreds of thousands of tons for structure, armor, fuel, weaponry, DropShips, and fighters. If they start a fight, then they usually have a good chance of winning.
Quote:
(on an unrelated note: I want to punch whoever is responsible for codifying spaceship nomenclature in the nose. All of science fiction agrees more or less on what the word dropship means except for battletech in which it means something totally different
Dropships in Aliens universe: they drop away from a starship to take troops to the ground.
DropShips in BattleTech Universe: they drop away from a starship to take troops to the ground.
Which fictional universe uses the term "dropship" differently than those two?
Quote:
even more irritating is the term WarShip, does battletech have its own catch-all term for ships that make war?)
In addition to WarShips, BattleTech also has armed JumpShips, combat space stations, aerospace fighters, smallcraft, and DropShips (either conventional military DropShips or the specialized assault DropShips). Each of those have different definitions within the construction and combat rules. WarShips, for example, have compact KF cores - no other "class" of spacecraft in BT has a compact core.
If you're looking for other classifications, BattleTech's "WarShip" is almost as broad a term as "warship" among 21st Century navies. "WarShip" encompasses transports, fighter carriers, destroyers, frigates, cruisers big and small, battleships, and more. Those terms, like in real wet navies, are broad and indistinct terms.
Quote:
3: I don't quite get how Comstar can have this super-duper elite comguard capable of defeating the big bad clans when the comguard hasn't actually conducted large scale combat operations in like 200 years.
The ComGuards included a large number of troops from Houses and mercenaries. Up through 3050, ComStar was a quasi-religious organization that included a function akin to the monasteries of medieval Earth: when some noble warrior or mercenary got in trouble, they could run to shelter in ComStar to get a new life. Hence, it's worth noting the skills assigned to the assorted ComGuard armies in ComStar Sourcebook, Fall of Terra, and Battle of Tukayyid: they ain't all "Green."
Beginning with the mass deployments of the ComGuards in the 3030s, ComStar made use of all that talent to spin up the ComGuards. They had a couple of decades to turn a lot of good hardware and a core of trained troops into a functional army with deployments across the Inner Sphere.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Edited by Cray (02/07/19 11:37 PM)
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Carns
04/12/19 04:58 PM
168.9.128.5
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6. The Highlander-732 is basically the Star League's upgrade of an Age of War design, the Victor. However, where the Victor is one of the kings of close range brawling, the power of the Highlander is mostly that it "has a Gauss Rifle". It is a hugely ammo dependent Mech that was more than a match for most Mechs at the time of it's construction, but is woefully under-powered against other "has a Gauss Rifle" x2 or x3 IS Assaults, not to mention many heavies, and even some mediums.
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Wick
07/04/19 01:28 AM
45.43.104.179
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I mentioned this in another thread, but...
3. ComGuard was basically playing defense in 14 mini-battles. Each battle was quite large on its own (roughly 10 ComStar regiments vs 7 clusters in each battle), but being the defender of a fortified position probably makes for a much easier gameplan than offensive operations, recons, raids, etc. Except for the Wolves, the Clans showed faulty strategy and ran out of ammo early, allowing ComStar (who as the defender were sitting on all the ammo they could ask for) to win the majority of the battles. If ComGuard had to take the offensive in half the battles, they'd have probably lost. Focht knew his military was green, but if the overall strategy was kept simple and the Clans acted as he expected they would (and all but Wolf did), the ComGuards could win.
Also...
1. The video games have to alter rules to present a different gaming experience, and this often means restricting what is editable, changing the way things are edited to not fit canon (as in HBS BattleTech), or in some cases matching quite closely (MechWarrior 2) and in other cases, very poorly (MechCommander 1 & 2) From a canon standpoint, most units have one or two factory models at any given time, and one or two official refits popular within a House's military. Sometimes the refit is more popular than the factory model in some nations. While the video games may make it appear that customization is entirely commonplace, in truth uniquely customized units comprise only roughly 1 in 100 of the House military units, and 1 in 15 of mercenary and pirate forces (who are forced to compromise in many cases, and most often a single weapon swap, not the radical changes possible in the video games.) The tabletop game has always encouraged creating your own designs or modifying existing ones (taking it to the extreme with the Omnimech idea), though full customization of this nature is hard to implement in a video game setting without introducing the ability to go overboard and completely swap out a weapons payload for something entirely different. Since the non-customized stuff covers 99+% of units, and by the mid-1990s there were enough units to cover just about any desire and playstyle, the need to customize further became muted outside of personal Omnimech configuration choices.
2. It should be noted that early BattleTech literature/sourcebooks (and even the HBS BattleTech game) can name assault dropships as "warships". Proper warships would have the compact KF drive and usually weigh many hundreds of thousands of tons, making them capital ships in the BT universe. When referring to the thousands of tons assault dropships, the term "pocket warship" is preferred. From a gaming aspect, anything that mounts weapons can effectively be called an instrument of war and loosely termed a "warship", but it more properly applies to role. Warships as a role are designed to fight against other spacefaring ships, both bigger and smaller than they are. The non-warships fall into three categories: transport jumpships, transport dropships (cargo, passengers, or military hardware), and small craft (fighters, shuttle buses, and the occasional escape pod.) Further clouding the issue are the military transport dropships (like the Union and Overlord classes) that are often used as pocket warships during the early phases of a planetary assault, and once spacefaring defenders are vanquished they then perform their normal role of landing planetside to disembark their mechs and vehicles.
4. The original Warrior trilogy is a great starter. Though any of Stackpole's books are probably good. Should probably avoid Dark Age series books, as many people consider that era an abomination.
5. Simplicity of gaming. The head is a 12 on a 2D6 role (1 in 36 chance to hit). I rather wish they'd used 3D6 or more D6s or even used other sided dice like D&D. It would have offered more chassis configurations with different number of critical slots in different areas (perhaps with greater chance to hit head.) Some mechs just look like they'd take head shots easily (the Jenner being an obvious example.) The game eventually did add torso-mounted cockpits, but did it in kind of a hamfisted way.
6. Yeah the HGN-732 is pretty cool. -736 is even better: double heat sinks for better heat control, a streak SRM launcher, Artemis for the LRM, and a C3i system for teammate advantages. One-on-one the Highlanders are pretty tough to beat: few mechs can match the firepower, and those that do are usually much more expensive (its contemporary, the Pillager, can take it, but price-wise you can get eight Highlanders for the price of three Pillagers.) Its slow speed and heavy reliance on ammunition does present some weak points in large battles or campaign settings though.
7. Yep. The Clans looked cool as hell when TRO:3050 came out. ("Wait a minute. Not only does that Mad Cat look awesome, I get both a Marauder AND a Catapult in the same mech!?") But then you realize you had to retrain your brain to get used to the new weapon ranges, damage, and heat metrics. and as soon as you tried to play them against your favorite Succession War-era mechs (which back in the day were just called "3025-tech"), you quickly discovered the Clan stuff utterly overwhelmed the old stuff and ruined the game. At least in our gaming group, we tossed the Clan stuff aside and kept playing Inner Sphere things, even well after TRO:3055 came out.
8. How do you know your internet provider isn't playing God with you? Maybe what you're reading here isn't what I actually typed, but what your IP decided to share or alter to their tastes. In short though, I agree with Frabby's "puppet master" comment. ComStar, at least from the time Conrad Toyama took over up until 3052, did want to rule the Inner Sphere, but they want to be welcomed as saviors, not conquerers, so they're willing to play manipulator and let the Houses slowly destroy each other. In the grand scheme of things, ComStar's actions are usually subtler than the House's (i.e., planetary invasions)
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Karagin
07/04/19 02:29 AM
72.176.171.47
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Yes folks still play the table top game, you just need to find them. So places have more then others.
In my opinion FORGET the video games, they are nothing but a pain the neck for the canon BT game, and given how many things that have been ported over Blazer Cannon prime example after it was said it wouldn't be, has added a mess of silliness to the game. Sure the video games are fun, but they are video games, they have YET to follow the rules of the board game to the letter, they don't follow the construction rules and you will find that configs and other things don't translate into the board game at all.
As for the rest, been answered by the others, but on the reading order, I would suggest this:
Sword and Dagger
Grey Death Legion Novels (3 of them)
Warrior Trilogy (Stackpole)
Wolves on the Border
Heir To the Dragon
Kerensky Trilogy (Stackpole)
Then after that...follow the order listed in the front or back of the books.
Also read ALL of the sourcebooks and TROs, they will fill in things and give you the full coverage and color of the Battletech Universe in detail and allow you see why things are as they are.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Requiem
07/04/19 03:28 AM
1.158.130.13
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If you want to read a fantastic space opera that’s opening is quite similar in many ways to that of the Battletech universe may I suggest the following book from Japan that has been translated into English and first published in 1982 ....
Title: Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Author: Yoshiki Tanaka
Publisher: Haika Soru
Get thee to Coventry … Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious by this daughter of Tharkad … Our army shall march through. Well to New Avalon tonight.
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Barring that, Wolves on the Border is a standalone novel that might give you a good idea of, well, one part of the setting. The Warrior trilogy by Keith, Blood of Kerensky (Clan Invasion) trilogy by Stackpole, and pretty much any other novel is also good to know.