Venom
07/01/06 07:26 PM
63.241.182.3
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Do you think we have seen the last of them? They could be used as an excellent plot device to bring the universe out of this dark age crap.
But first a few thoughts.
-How would their technology evolve away from the Clans? They left before Omnis, Battle armor, eugenics(?) or other Clan tech. The constant warring of the Clans stimulated weapon development, without that could they develop weapons as good or better?
-Would McEveredy chose to push the remnants of the Wolverines in the same direction as the Clans? Or would they revert to a more IS like society? Granted they are starting with a fraction of the people that Kerensky had, and likely nowhere near the resources, but it has been 300 years...
-Speaking of resources, they would not have the capability to produce WarShips, and very likely DropShips as shipyards are huge and not easily mobile, and the Wolvies left in a hurry. Not to mention EndoSteel that requires an orbiting factory. For that matter, a 'mech factory can't be something you just pick up and move. Same with weapons labs and armor production. So would they have what they left with or do you think they could get something running in 300 years?
-People are neccesary to keep a war machine moving. Breeding produces people, yes but it is a time consuming process. Could the Wolverines make occasional runs to the IS and pick up Succesion war orphans? Or IS technology for that matter?
Or are they destined to be a foot note in the BT universe? I doubt it, people thought they had seen the last of Kerensky, but they came back. Or was all my typing for naught becasue FanPro already revealed them as a Periphery state or Merc command?
Just thought it would be a nice topic for discussion.
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Cray
07/01/06 08:09 PM
68.204.247.59
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Do you think we have seen the last of them? They could be used as an excellent plot device to bring the universe out of this dark age crap.
How could they alter much of anything?
Clan Wolverine broke away from the Clans before the Clan culture - let alone military technology- was well-developed. They had a tiny population, probably a few hundred thousand refugees, who managed to get away from the nascent Clan culture.
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But first a few thoughts.
-How would their technology evolve away from the Clans? They left before Omnis, Battle armor, eugenics(?) or other Clan tech. The constant warring of the Clans stimulated weapon development, without that could they develop weapons as good or better?
I doubt they'd even sustain Star League technology. They had to leave in a hurry, so they wouldn't take much industrial material with them and maybe not even much of their civilian population.
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Would McEveredy chose to push the remnants of the Wolverines in the same direction as the Clans? Or would they revert to a more IS like society? Granted they are starting with a fraction of the people that Kerensky had, and likely nowhere near the resources, but it has been 300 years...
The Wolverines broke from the Clans because the Wolverines were behaving in an Inner Sphere fashion. When they acted all Star League-y and nuked an abandoned Raven town, they were targeted for Annihilation by the new Clan society. I really doubt they'd have ANY urge to imitate the Clans.
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So would they have what they left with or do you think they could get something running in 300 years?
If they're at tech level C, I'd be impressed.
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-People are neccesary to keep a war machine moving. Breeding produces people, yes but it is a time consuming process. Could the Wolverines make occasional runs to the IS and pick up Succesion war orphans? Or IS technology for that matter?
I bet they'd have a population in the millions or tens of millions.
Wolverines picked up a little more coverage in Interstellar Players Guide.
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.
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Venom
07/01/06 08:46 PM
63.241.182.3
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Never heard of the Interstellar Players Guide. What does it have?
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Toontje
07/02/06 03:34 AM
84.24.165.226
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There is always the possibility they were a creation by thentime Comstar to stop the Kuritans from claiming the top spot on the food chain...
The handing over of that SL soldier doll to the almost nutty Coordinator, pushing him into full nuttyness, could very well have been an early ROM operation.
Rather to blow up, then.
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Cray
07/02/06 08:15 PM
70.118.43.50
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Never heard of the Interstellar Players Guide. What does it have?
It's a lot of rumored power groups akin to the "Threats" and "Threats 2" books in Shadowrun. ISP covers potential, rumored groups for gaming groups to explore, like the Illuminati (obvious bull), the Genecaste (radical Clan expatriates that abuse Clan genetic engineering technology), the Corporate Cabal, and several others. They're fun things for GMs and players to experiment with and see if they fit into their campaigns.
Among the interstellar players is a group of interstellar archeologists and explorers, some of whom hunt after the Wolverines. While they haven't found the Wolverines, they have been founded by some mysterious mech unit (the Green Ghosts, IIRC) as they (think they) get closer to their quarry. The ISP entry on the explorers did address the suspicious star system, McEvedy's Folly, but the inhabitants claim no historical records on their origins.
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.
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Karagin
07/05/06 04:19 PM
214.13.130.100
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No Cray the left AT THE BEGIN of the culture that Nicky was setting up. SO they would have some of things that the Clans would use, aka the iron wombs etc...
Who is to say they didn't have some scientist that could push their weapons tech and other engieenering and consturstion tech forward...
It's nice to see you once more shooting down this topic. Wow...at least you didn't bring up their fighting off the alien hoards etc...
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Cray
07/07/06 09:04 AM
147.160.136.10
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No Cray the left AT THE BEGIN of the culture that Nicky was setting up.
Cool, we're on the same page. I said the same thing:
"Clan Wolverine broke away from the Clans before the Clan culture...was well-developed."
In other words, at the beginning of the new Clan culture.
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SO they would have some of things that the Clans would use, aka the iron wombs etc...
Most of the breakthrough Clan technology was developed in the later 29th Century, not in the 2820s when the Wolverines fled. I'd recommend reading "Mechwarrior's Guide to the Clans" or "Warrior's of Kerensky" and focus on "The Golden Century."
Though Iron Wombs...searching...yes, Iron Wombs were available when the Wolverines fled. The first Clan kids from Iron Wombs were born in 2816, though the kids weren't mature when the Wolverines left Clan space (2823). The Wolverines could have iron wombs.
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Who is to say they didn't have some scientist that could push their weapons tech and other engieenering and consturstion tech forward...
They could have plenty of scientists. I'd be surprised if the Wolverines did not focus on evacuating key personnel like scientists.
But scientists have trouble introducing wundertech when they're too busy farming and building homes for a living on some isolated planet because most Wolverine civilians are stuck on the Clan homeworlds, being sterilized by the victors of the Trial of Annihilation. The few thousand people liberated from the Draconis Combine won't fix that labor deficit.
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It's nice to see you once more shooting down this topic.
It's interesting to see that you endorse the Wolverines' ability to reach some level of military power and technology, but that the "small" Word of Blake (which has a much larger population than all the Clan homeworlds put together) cannot achieve the same. Isn't that hypocrisy?
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Wow...at least you didn't bring up their fighting off the alien hoards etc...
That's reserved for players who have been over this topic before, and can take a joke.
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.
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Karagin
07/08/06 04:29 AM
214.13.130.100
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Cray the Wolverines had a small base for the population, but at the same time, they wanted to be left alone to do things their way. So if done right, they could have set up a cluture and weapons/tech research that meet their needs. I am not pushing nor endorsing uber tech for the Wolverines. I don't think they would have massive armies, divisons maybe but not like the crap that we have to believe the Word of Blake has since they are attacking everyone and can make it look like someone else and wait has nukes that they are willing to use repeatly. The Wolverienes used one maybe two nukes against one enemy not everyone else in the Clans. And the Blake has 1 world for sure, a single world that you believe everyone on it fully supports, and then they have 3 other worlds that "support" their cause if you call a government tied to the Blakes cause a friendly to common people. So where is the actually WoB population base? Wait another part of the age old manpower question again slams the Jihad storyline to the ground. Talk about hyocrisy...
The Wolveriens, had the same acess to the Tech base that the Clans had at the time of the Annihlation. So it is possible that they could advance something and not others. And I think you may want to read those same books again since I do recall that in the Kerensky one, there is talk between the Khan of the Wolveriens and her SaKhan about what is going and who as well as who is staying behind. So it's very likely that key personell did go out on the "first transports".
The Joke as you like to call it was and is the sign that some folks in the inner circles of TPTB don't like it when fans want something and ask for it if it differs from their (the writer or LD) ideas or thinking and it's really sad that it's used as away to end the topic here in discussion or the comment made to those who liked the Smoked Jaguars...things like this speak volumes and tranishes the repuation of the folks running the game for a long time and will as long as the one who spoutted both comments is still writing books for BT and has a part in the future growth of the game.
Bottomline, the Wolverienes have a better chance of setting up a socitey and reseach base and gain some advances then the Blake group does, mainly since they the Wolverienes have a population base that isn't going to be brutilized or forces to do things one way. Maybe you should re-read what the Wolverienes believed and WHY Nikky wanted them gone...
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Venom
07/08/06 09:15 PM
63.241.182.3
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I kind of see where WoB has a decent production base. They have the birthplace of humanity.
-First off, every continent on Earth(except Antarctica) is well developend indutrialy now, not to mention over a thousand years from now. That in and of itself makes Terra an industrial superpower that probly can't be rivaled in Clan or IS space.
-Secondly, Terra has not experienced the damage of the Succesion Wars. True, the recent fall of Terra could not have been good for the infastructure, but they have had over 300 years to repair damage from when Kerensky took Terra back. The rest of the IS never even had a hundred years between wars to repair and expand.
-Thirdly, Terra was not locked in a downward technological spiral for 300 years like the rest of the IS. Fully automated factories-a rarity in the IS-are SOP for Terra.
-Fourth, Terra is likely the most heavily populated planet in the universe. Most planets-from what I have read-have a few large cities, but the vast majority of the land is not used. Even the major planets only utallize land area equal to a large state or possibly an average country. With as much land that is developed now, fast forward 1000 years and you have a huge production capacity as well as a huge work force.
All that makes Terra a production power house. But I do see a LARGE problem.
Resources. They are finite and they have been being tapped by humanity for millenia. Earth is probly tapped out as far as fossil fuels(not sure if they have a synthetic alternative or not), metalic ore(need metal for 'mechs), rare minerals(used for weapons, propulsion, etc...), concrete, etc... All those things need to be imported from off-world. The ability to produce food for the huge amount of people is also a question mark but they would likely need to import food as well.
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Cray
07/08/06 09:41 PM
70.118.43.50
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I kind of see where WoB has a decent production base. They have the birthplace of humanity.
-First off, every continent on Earth(except Antarctica) is well developend indutrialy now, not to mention over a thousand years from now. That in and of itself makes Terra an industrial superpower that probly can't be rivaled in Clan or IS space.
-Secondly, Terra has not experienced the damage of the Succesion Wars. True, the recent fall of Terra could not have been good for the infastructure, but they have had over 300 years to repair damage from when Kerensky took Terra back. The rest of the IS never even had a hundred years between wars to repair and expand.
-Thirdly, Terra was not locked in a downward technological spiral for 300 years like the rest of the IS. Fully automated factories-a rarity in the IS-are SOP for Terra.
-Fourth, Terra is likely the most heavily populated planet in the universe. Most planets-from what I have read-have a few large cities, but the vast majority of the land is not used. Even the major planets only utallize land area equal to a large state or possibly an average country. With as much land that is developed now, fast forward 1000 years and you have a huge production capacity as well as a huge work force.
All that makes Terra a production power house.
It's not just Terra.
No individual Clan - avg. population 75 million - could've built up their 3050 military strength in isolation. But the Clans didn't grow up in isolation, they grew up amongst the Clan homeworlds. Even the most isolationist Clans traded. And that allowed them to grow to their 3050-era strength.
WoB isn't in isolation. It's building its strength among an industrial base of 4 TRillion people. If it doesn't have a battlemech knee ball bearing factory on Terra, that's cool. It can just order out. Like during the Cold War, the US built SR-71s out of Russian titanium and the Russians craved US corn and IBM computers. Acquisition was just a matter of setting up shell companies who could acquire the goods without alerting the opposition, and sometimes you could buy on the open market (e.g., the USSR's purchase of US grain). WoB has buddies in the Inner Sphere who won't mind selling goods to WoB for any purpose - the entire FWL, for example.
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Resources. They are finite and they have been being tapped by humanity for millenia. Earth is probly tapped out as far as fossil fuels(not sure if they have a synthetic alternative or not), metalic ore(need metal for 'mechs), rare minerals(used for weapons, propulsion, etc...), concrete, etc... All those things need to be imported from off-world.
Sure, like from the Asteroid Belt. One largish (10km) metallic asteroid would meet the resource needs of the entire INNER SPHERE for millennia. Titan would meet any organic resource needs.
That's ignoring the option of recycling. 1300 years of Industrial Age junk didn't just disappear into the ether, it's still on Terra. Terra's 3070 population is a bit smaller than today's. Stick a fusion reactor in a landfill, shovel stuff through a plasma arc, and you can separate out 1300 years of industrial-era elements into useful, raw formats needed by industry. Some imports from the asteroid belt would cover any needs.
I mean, have you noticed how the raw material needs of the entire WoB ground forces are smaller than, say, a single modern oil tanker or two? It's not like the WoB MILITARY is going to strain any resources.
And if WoB needs resources beyond the Solar System for some bizarre reason, it has plenty of trading partners beyond the Solar System. There are countless billions of people in the Inner Sphere who are friendly to old Comstar/WoB. Some FS planets put the image of a Comstar acolyte on their flag in 3025, as they liked Comstar more than the FS. The FWL has been corrupted from the top-down, and both the Combine and Confederation have ties to WoB due to technology exchange and military aid. Many Periphery planets are just WoB whores.
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The ability to produce food for the huge amount of people is also a question mark but they would likely need to import food as well.
Terra has a population of 6 billion, 0.5 billion less than today. Food's a non-issue. North America can still feed everyone, and there are more farms than just on North America.
Anyway, put the typical Clan Wolverine/Minnesota Tribe in that context. It's hiding out in the Deep Periphery, without the mutual support of other Clans or the industrial base of the Inner Sphere. It starts off not with millions of people and the looted wealth of the Star League (like the Clans), but rather some hastily loaded jumpships and tens of thousands of people (divide the SLDF expatriates by 20 Clans - you get a few hundred thousand per Clan, and Wolverine didn't evacuate much of its population). What's the Minnesota Tribe going to evolve into?
Niops, if it's lucky.
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.
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Karagin
07/09/06 03:57 PM
214.13.130.100
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Wow...Terra isn't the damn holy grail. But then again TPTB never really seemed in a hurry to explain anything about the WOB and it's uber army.
Terra wasn't set up to build armies, yet now it is...funny things like oh bring factories out of mothball cost money, take time and resources, yet again WoB can do in mere days it seems and have the manpower to make the mech, pilot them and support them...sorry Venom but you like Cray aren't selling this too me.
Either TPTB give us concrete believable answers that explain everything fully or they won't and folks will still pick apart the Jihad and the current storyline. Maybe some have missed it but this whole Jihad to MW story line has caused more arguements and folks to leave the game then anything else.
Nice try though on defending the offical line of reasoning, I am sure that Cray will be happy that you are taking this line of thinking.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Karagin
07/09/06 04:01 PM
214.13.130.100
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And they can add water to nothing and get huge armies that don't cost them a dime, that they can feed and arm and man without having to pay the same cost as the rest of the Inner Sphere and the Clans...wow I guess for the WOB even Fasaphysic don't apply nor does common sense.
And they can do all this while being missed by every House and Clan intel agency...next you will be trying to sell us a bridge in New York or a tower in Paris...
Is PT Barnum working for the WoB or is Houdini?
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Toontje
07/09/06 07:16 PM
84.24.165.226
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Well.. they have at least 1 planet hidden (Gabriel), likely more going from HS:3070, the thermo nuked planet core. (Well.. the lava covered planet, anyway. Could be Gabriel anyway, after all it is the angel of fire.)
Asuming 1:100 planets was lost in the SW's, that is about 50 planets out there in the middle of the IS, with only antique records that they were ever settled, with potentially each a couple million pop from natural growth.
Not that much manpower, but it is extra room to store/train divisions.
Now manpower is not truely an issue for fanatics.. Enough disgrunted people everywhere ready to Join The Cause, even in peacetime, even when the populace at large is happy.
Rather to blow up, then.
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Venom
07/09/06 07:25 PM
64.12.116.134
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Terra was set up to produce armies. The fluff in 3058 makes it quite clear that ComStar brought a number of facilities out of mothballs. Then the WoB took Terra. They have lots of support in the Periphery, as well as followers all over the IS. Those followers make it to Terra, or a as yet unknown base of operations and get the training they need. I am not arguing that there are holes, but should the LDs decide for the defeat of the WoB, the first order will be to determine where all the men and machines are coming from.
On an aside, I need to know which book to buy to get the most of the jihad fluff. I am going on the little that I pick up on the internet, which makes me a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest when trying to argue points.
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Cray
07/09/06 07:45 PM
68.200.109.191
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Terra was set up to produce armies. The fluff in 3058 makes it quite clear that ComStar brought a number of facilities out of mothballs. Then the WoB took Terra. They have lots of support in the Periphery, as well as followers all over the IS. Those followers make it to Terra, or a as yet unknown base of operations and get the training they need.
Don't forget 6 billion people on Terra who have been brainwashed by Old Comstar (i.e., the source of WoB) for 2.5 centuries. That's more than enough people to fill out WoB's ranks.
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I am not arguing that there are holes, but should the LDs decide for the defeat of the WoB, the first order will be to determine where all the men and machines are coming from.
The Houses apparently have a fairly good idea of what WoB was up to with its "Sekret Armies." Unlike previous wars, though, there's a lot more confusion. It took the US months to get up to speed against Japan in WW2; imagine the US trying to mobilize against Japan with the confusion of Canada invading New England and Texas invading Mexico. That's kind of the situation that just the FS is in during the opening rounds of the Jihad.
Still some holes to be plugged in the plot, though, but there's time for that.
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On an aside, I need to know which book to buy to get the most of the jihad fluff. I am going on the little that I pick up on the internet, which makes me a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest when trying to argue points.
The opening stuff is covered in "Dawn of the Jihad." An equal concentration is found in "Hotspots: 3070." You'd need both books to be fully up to speed.
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.
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Venom
07/09/06 07:57 PM
64.12.116.134
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Crap. I just spent almost a hundred bucks on TRO revisions, mappacks and the like. Oh, well might as well push it over a hundred. BT is still a cheaper hobby than shooting IPSC any day. 
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Karagin
07/11/06 01:03 PM
214.13.130.100
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And Terra can make armies form thin air...wow...so they have a couple of factories, great...but where are they getting the troops, the ammo, the maintiance parts etc...all of that is the part they seem to have forgotten about, yet when the subject get's brought up we hear all kinds of reasons why it can but none of them explain away the issues they skirt around them.
Terra helps sure, the FWL links help sure, the idea that they have other outstide support help but they don't expalin things completly and believiably, thus the issues.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Karagin
07/11/06 01:07 PM
214.13.130.100
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Right 6 billion people who rush to sign up for the WoB...right and all the food to feed them daily as well as the other things folks need.
Right okay do you have any thing that actually explains all of this on a scale that is believable? Or are we stuck hearing the same answers over and over that don't answer anything?
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Karagin
07/11/06 01:16 PM
214.13.130.100
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Right the hidden/lost SL bases again and again and again...then 50 planets cut off from everything as Cray likes to say would have pop ulation problems, so again where are the soliders coming from???
More to the point, if they want hidden armies, then they need to do things better story wise.
With the Minnesota Tribe, they have the chance to do something, they have the time and they have the need. The WoB has roughly 20 to 30 years to do something and they are able to do it so wonderfully and so prefectly and so great etc...yet nothing is explain it's just expect to be believed and accpected.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Toontje
07/11/06 07:18 PM
84.24.165.226
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Right the hidden/lost SL bases again and again and again...then 50 planets cut off from everything as Cray likes to say would have pop ulation problems, so again where are the soliders coming from???
More to the point, if they want hidden armies, then they need to do things better story wise.
With the Minnesota Tribe, they have the chance to do something, they have the time and they have the need. The WoB has roughly 20 to 30 years to do something and they are able to do it so wonderfully and so prefectly and so great etc...yet nothing is explain it's just expect to be believed and accpected.
Hmm, a 'hidden' planet in the IS is not ompletely cut off for a long time. I expect that after the 1st succession war, maybe 2nd, comstar exploration vessels were visiting these. At latest at the foundation of Explorer corps. What would that be, 100, 150 years of isolation? Not even a lot of people need to know of transportations, either, just think of the goods being shipped IS-wide, not too hard to hide excistance of 'funny' transoprts, especially for comstar.
I do not say these have manpower/production facilities/SL bases, but have a small population, maybe a mill or 2, that can support a division with R&R, food and such.
Also, an exodus like the unnamed were forced to do, brings problems like lack of farmers as noted. An already existing colony, even very marginal, has a better manpower and survival knowledge base.
Rather to blow up, then.
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Cray
07/12/06 08:37 AM
147.160.136.10
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Hmm, a 'hidden' planet in the IS is not ompletely cut off for a long time. I expect that after the 1st succession war, maybe 2nd, comstar exploration vessels were visiting these.
That's probably the case. And since the Comstar personnel who were familiar with the hidden worlds went with WoB, WoB (i.e., Old Comstar) effectively had a couple of centuries to do...whatever...with these hidden worlds.
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At latest at the foundation of Explorer corps. What would that be, 100, 150 years of isolation? Not even a lot of people need to know of transportations, either, just think of the goods being shipped IS-wide, not too hard to hide excistance of 'funny' transoprts, especially for comstar.
There's several ways for Old Comstar to hide transport to and from hidden worlds.
Notably, space is big. Habitable planets are rare, and the range of sensors (10AU) guarding those habitable planets is negligible on the scale of space (63,240AU per light-year, with several light-years between most stars). There are plenty of routes to any planet that can avoid other habitable worlds.
For example, jumpships can pop into deep interstellar space - the standard jump points just mark the CLOSEST that a jumpship can normally approach a star, pirate points excepted. The jumpship would need to bring extra fuel to recharge, but one Mule's worth of fuel is 20 recharges for a Monolith. It would be highly unusual, since SW-era jumpship captains hate leaving habitable systems, but technically feasible. No one's going to spot you when you're 10,000 times beyond system defense sensor range.
Alternately, there are about 1-1.5 million stars in the Inner Sphere, or about 750 uninhabitable systems per habitable system. Transit through those gives Comstar the back-up of solar sail charging, and also gives Comstar almost perfect stealth. Few captains, Succession War-era or Star League-era, left habitable systems. Comstar also has a track record of using uninhabitable systems. One of its fleets operates from Ross 248 near Sol.
Not that WoB needs those hidden worlds. Terra alone should have several times the industrial capacity of the pre-invasion Homeworld Clans, just on a comparison of the populations (6 vs 1.15 billion) and tech levels (Star League-era industrial tech in both cases - the Clans didn't innovate outside of the military).
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Also, an exodus like the unnamed were forced to do, brings problems like lack of farmers as noted. An already existing colony, even very marginal, has a better manpower and survival knowledge base.
Indeed. And a planet "bombed off the map" like Jardine opens some interesting looting potential. Nukes probably didn't get everything, and if bioweapons helped eliminate the population, you've probably got even more industrial base waiting for re-use. The scrambling survivors of Clan Wolverine wouldn't have that much with them, and a few thousand political refugees aren't going to make up their shortage of manpower.
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.
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Karagin
07/12/06 01:55 PM
214.13.130.100
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SO they start from nothing and grow...it makes more sense then having all the best from the get go and gaining things so fast that the basics are left out...The Wolverines have time and space to do what ever they end up doing. Even if all they have are 3 to 5 planets colonized that means they followed even the basics for BT colonization set forth in the original house books etc...now if they are getting the best toys and the most advanced tech without a need, then no. There has to be a balance and that is one of the things missing with the WoB and it's uberism etc...
IF all the Wolverines have are 1 SOLAR SYSTEM under it's control and several small colonies on moons and other planets then that too would be believable, given the amount of time that has passed since they were last heard from, more so then anything currently put out about the WoB and it's rise from factional group to super power...
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Karagin
07/12/06 01:58 PM
214.13.130.100
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Great...and over the years I have spent $1000s on the hobby...from books, to minatures to comics, to one off shot things to t-shirts to stickers to blueprints back to books to videogames to buying stuff of folks who wanted to sell their collections...but really non of this matters since the folks who tell FASA/WK/FP/TOPPS what folks are buying don't take into account the older fans and what they spend their money on.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Toontje
07/12/06 04:09 PM
84.24.165.226
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Aye, tech base would suffer. I am not saying isolated, or comstar-only worlds would thrive techologically. Wolverines could also start out with enough population, but they need yet another exodus from clan space, which was not yet fully recovered from the warring, so supplies would be hard. Tech base would suffer, as you need a lot of people to maintain a tech base.
All in all, without ISP handy to check with cannon, at best wolverines/minesota would inhabbit a system or 2, with periphery tech base.
I disagree on biowarred worlds ever to be inhabitable btw. Spores of the biowarfare agent are bound to remain. A couple in the face of some people exploring a cellar, and the world is emptied again.
Rather to blow up, then.
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Cray
07/12/06 05:18 PM
147.160.136.10
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Aye, tech base would suffer. I am not saying isolated, or comstar-only worlds would thrive techologically. Wolverines could also start out with enough population, but they need yet another exodus from clan space, which was not yet fully recovered from the warring, so supplies would be hard. Tech base would suffer, as you need a lot of people to maintain a tech base.
Wolverines, yes. IMO, backslides are unavoidable unless they found some way to get their population into the hundreds of millions, if not billions.
Comstar-only worlds...well, that depends on how much support Comstar shipped to them.
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I disagree on biowarred worlds ever to be inhabitable btw. Spores of the biowarfare agent are bound to remain. A couple in the face of some people exploring a cellar, and the world is emptied again.
I disagree for several reasons.
First, sometimes weapons aren't designed to linger. Maybe they were designed to clear a planet's resistance for future occupants, or maybe they were meant as a control method - "Obey your conquerers or you don't get the vaccine."
Second, live weapons that can linger may mutate into harmlessness.
Third, the bioweapon may be known and have a vaccine. The Inner Sphere has had centuries to deal with multiple bioweapons. I'd expect cures for at least some of the threats. Surely not every world hit by bioweapons succumbed.
You could have uber super germs, but I suspect many can be dealt with.
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.
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Toontje
07/12/06 05:38 PM
84.24.165.226
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Hehehe. Supervirus, and Son of Super Germ. 
There are several scenario's. And these are highly dependant of the goals of the attackers as you stated.
Still would be queasy when leaving the sealed environment.
Rather to blow up, then.
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Greyslayer
07/12/06 06:42 PM
216.14.198.49
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Tech base would suffer, as you need a lot of people to maintain a tech base.
That is a huge assumption. You would need a fairly large population to improve technology admittedly, with the need to research and the allocation of personnell away from more immediate concerned of well getting enough food to eat etc. What would be their greatest threat would be that of replacing lost parts through an industrial base, which could have been done when the 'tribe' pillaged through Kurita. Not the lost parts but the gathering of materials for a increase in industrial capacity to maintain technology levels. If they find an agriculturally stable planet than in one or two generations (even without iron wombs) the population could be of a suitable size to being not only rebuilding a technology base but expanding on it through research.
If a diverse group such as the exodus fleet was desparate enough to follow the lead of a man like Nicholas to reform themselves so radically then imagine the potential of a smaller more initially manageable group who are even more desparate following the lead of another?
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All in all, without ISP handy to check with cannon, at best wolverines/minesota would inhabbit a system or 2, with periphery tech base.
I would say without a serious civil war (which only come about if say food was scarce or resources low) even settling only one viable planet they could maintain a technology of level 2 after a couple of hundred years easily and be making their own breakthroughs (not to the level of the clans with their level of competition, there is something to be said of competition bringing the best out of things ... can be true but it can also bring sabotage as well).
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I disagree on biowarred worlds ever to be inhabitable btw. Spores of the biowarfare agent are bound to remain. A couple in the face of some people exploring a cellar, and the world is emptied again.
Cells can be 'time defined' easily enough so that after so many copies are made, them and the copies, die. Much like the overall timeline of the human body itself... it degrades with each cellular split.
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Toontje
07/12/06 07:27 PM
84.24.165.226
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Tech base would suffer, as you need a lot of people to maintain a tech base.
That is a huge assumption. You would need a fairly large population to improve technology admittedly, with the need to research and the allocation of personnell away from more immediate concerned of well getting enough food to eat etc. What would be their greatest threat would be that of replacing lost parts through an industrial base, which could have been done when the 'tribe' pillaged through Kurita. Not the lost parts but the gathering of materials for a increase in industrial capacity to maintain technology levels. If they find an agriculturally stable planet than in one or two generations (even without iron wombs) the population could be of a suitable size to being not only rebuilding a technology base but expanding on it through research.
If a diverse group such as the exodus fleet was desparate enough to follow the lead of a man like Nicholas to reform themselves so radically then imagine the potential of a smaller more initially manageable group who are even more desparate following the lead of another?
You can store knowledge on data. To be able to replicate this knowledge as technology, you will need tutoring. To be able to get ahead in a field, you need a lot of dedicated scientists before something usefull comes out. Synergy and such.
Also, for things like precision products, you need advanced factories, and an industrial base to supply the advanced factories with base stuff. Some processes are only efficient on large scales. How many people are we talking about here, start of the clans, for a single clan? 1000? 10.000?
These are just too few to maintain production of high tech stuff, as demand is too low to set up facilities in the supply product. (what you need germanium for, when main demand (jumpships and semiconductors) is in the kilo range instead of tonnes?) You can do it in generic labaratorea, but production will be very, very slow.
Now basic stuff is a completely different story. Iron can be made into tools, without extensive purification. 19th, early 20th century tech you could conceivably maintain with a populatioln of 100.000. But any higher is unlikely in my opinion. In a balanced society. Unbalanced, toward science, a good example there is the Niops Association. No real progress to export, after hundreds of years, due to lack of people giving one another fresch ideas.
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I disagree on biowarred worlds ever to be inhabitable btw. Spores of the biowarfare agent are bound to remain. A couple in the face of some people exploring a cellar, and the world is emptied again.
Cells can be 'time defined' easily enough so that after so many copies are made, them and the copies, die. Much like the overall timeline of the human body itself... it degrades with each cellular split.
Cell auto death is subject to mutation as any other part of the DNA/RNA. If I am not mistaken, only multi-cellular organisms posses the specific gene for programmed cell death. (Not a microbiologist, so I can be wrong on this)
From gazillions of viri/bacterea, there will be mutations anyway. Usually to less harmfull, as in dropping population numbers only slower strains will be able to infect new victims.
Rather to blow up, then.
Edited by Toontje (07/12/06 07:30 PM)
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Venom
07/12/06 07:33 PM
63.241.182.3
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There has been alot of talk of how long it would take to set up a tech base and civilization. Perhaps a perspective from the canon. THe book Far Country talks about a civilization that became lost when they mis-jumped, around the time that 'mechs first appeared. By 3025 they had set up a reasonable civilization, even tanks. But they were almost exclusively warriors and support personel, and they lacked the ability to trade or even leave the system, as well as the lack of heavy metals. By the time the second group of people arrived, it was about 600 years later(I could be wrong). The Wolverines had space travel, technicians and if a world did not have what they needed, they could get it elsewhere.
Another possibility is that they stumbled upon a former Star Leauge outpost. That does not seem far-fetched to me, as the Tanite worlds near the Pentagon worlds are much further-flung. That would give them a population base to start with, as well as the trappings of civilization.
Thoughts?
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Cray
07/12/06 07:36 PM
68.200.109.191
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If they find an agriculturally stable planet than in one or two generations (even without iron wombs) the population could be of a suitable size to being not only rebuilding a technology base but expanding on it through research.
I disagree. Niops reached a population in the 10s of millions and it hasn't been able to progress. The Wolverines could only have 10s of thousands during their exodus, plus some liberated prisoners. With an extremely generous 4% growth rate, two generations (~50 years) would only take them into the low hundreds of thousands at best.
The low hundreds of thousands isn't near to Niops (or the aggregate Clan homeworld population 2 generations after the Wolverines left, when the Clan tech breakthroughs really started.)
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If a diverse group such as the exodus fleet was desparate enough to follow the lead of a man like Nicholas to reform themselves so radically then imagine the potential of a smaller more initially manageable group who are even more desparate following the lead of another?
Lots of potential to fail, small potential to excel greatly. It's not hard to find people willing to flee a dictatorial leader. Mad St. Nick used Maoist techniques to subjugate the Pentagon worlds, like public-interaction torture of former leaders to bind the "liberated" peoples in a web of collective guilt. For the people of the enlightened Star League, that'd be worth fleeing even if your new leader is a guy who wears captain's hats made of newspaper, carries a rubber ducky at all times, and can't lead sailors to a whorehouse.
I mean, honestly, I'd take the first jumpship out of the homeworlds when Nicholas Kerensky started up with the torture stuff of a defeated populous. So long as the captain was smart enough to not screw up the KF drive, I'd follow him.
And quasi-evidence that Khan McEvedy wasn't a great leader: the planet McEvedy's Folly, mentioned in ISP as a suspected stopping point for some of the Minnesota Tribe. It's a backward farming planet, not a Periphery power house.
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I would say without a serious civil war (which only come about if say food was scarce or resources low) even settling only one viable planet they could maintain a technology of level 2 after a couple of hundred years easily and be making their own breakthroughs (not to the level of the clans with their level of competition, there is something to be said of competition bringing the best out of things ... can be true but it can also bring sabotage as well).
I think that's overly generous.
Sometimes you needs hundreds of millions, even billions of people to sustain a given level of technology. Many military-critical US electronic components are not built in the US; there's simply no domestic market to sustain them. Instead, the factories are supported by many different nations. In other cases, like in some sonar and hydrodynamics research facilities, the US military simply subsidizes the facility even though the research contracts and equipment produced by the facility are of smaller value than the cost of operating the facility.
Further, the finest US nuclear labs (national population: 300 million) are now looking at "supercritical water nuclear reactors," with hopes of substantially improving the cost of reactors and their safety features. We can design and engineer these reactors, develop every individual component, but...the US, with 100 million tons of annual steel production, can't build steel pressure vessels large and strong enough for the reactor. We'd have to go to Japan, the only nation on a planet of 6.5 billion people that has the ability to build the necessary pressure vessels.
The higher tech you go, the bigger the pyramid of industry is that supports the technology. 18th Century technology could be sustained by a large town, from gunpowder making to iron mining and blacksmithing and barrelmaking and all the rest. 19th Century technology took cities to handle all the specialized skills - boilermaking, gear manufacturing, telegraph wire production, pottery, mining, etc. By the late 20th Century, the mountain of industry required to get from a score of different mines (gallium, arsenic, silicon, etc.) to a microchip was daunting, and horribly expensive. Something like a "simple" fiberglass factory can be a Billion-dollar investment that not every nation will pay for.
The developmental potential of isolated groups has been discussed ad nauseum on soc.history.what-if, as a result of Stirling's "Isle in the Sea of Time" series.
Example discussion about Australia in 1950
It's not authoritative, but it hits on the relevant issues and illustrates the shortcomings of an advanced, First World population of 30 million. Verifiably: no jet fighter factories, next to no microchip production, inability to build parts for its military, etc.
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.
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Greyslayer
07/12/06 11:37 PM
216.14.198.49
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THe book Far Country talks about a civilization that became lost when they mis-jumped, around the time that 'mechs first appeared. By 3025 they had set up a reasonable civilization, even tanks. But they were almost exclusively warriors and support personel, and they lacked the ability to trade or even leave the system, as well as the lack of heavy metals. By the time the second group of people arrived, it was about 600 years later(I could be wrong).
While the idea was novel, due to the talking birds it wasn't a great book. That though was one of the glaring let-downs. Another was that an ECE (External Combustion Engine) even in the 20th century are quite capable of outperforming a 20th century ICE (Internal Combustion Engine that we use in most vehicles on this planet). A third was that talking of the lack of existance of heavy metals but have gold replace iron and other common metals as one of the most common strikes me as rather ironic.
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The Wolverines had space travel, technicians and if a world did not have what they needed, they could get it elsewhere.
This is a point. They spent alot of time scouting out possible places for a new start and I think their criteria was more than one planet clusters so even finding a suitable planet if it was too far away from other suitable planets may have been overlooked and the information on the planet largely ignored by the clans. The tribe though would probably only be looking for 1 really good planet possibly even a already settled planet but one largely forgotten none-the-less.
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Another possibility is that they stumbled upon a former Star Leauge outpost. That does not seem far-fetched to me, as the Tanite worlds near the Pentagon worlds are much further-flung. That would give them a population base to start with, as well as the trappings of civilization.
Unlikely but they would probably know the location of many of the Star League caches in say .... Kurita for example.
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Venom
07/13/06 12:44 AM
63.241.182.3
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I don't think it unlikely that there are alot of forgotten SL bases. If the distubution of SL colonies is similar to the distribution of star systems, you will find a greater occurance closer to the point of origionation. I would think that the Tanite systems are the exception, not the rule. Most colonies would be close to the IS.
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Greyslayer
07/13/06 12:46 AM
216.14.198.49
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And quasi-evidence that Khan McEvedy wasn't a great leader: the planet McEvedy's Folly, mentioned in ISP as a suspected stopping point for some of the Minnesota Tribe. It's a backward farming planet, not a Periphery power house.
Yes and while this could be true, Nicholas was not first choice for leader.... who was that? His esteemed father which means the current leadership may not need to be great if there was some change of leadership to someone who could do a better job in the circumstances.
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I think that's overly generous.
Why? The equipment itself can be stored for hundreds of years (i.e. mothballed) with no problems. the only real issue is maintaining the knowledge rather than the equipment itself.
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Sometimes you needs hundreds of millions, even billions of people to sustain a given level of technology. Many military-critical US electronic components are not built in the US; there's simply no domestic market to sustain them. Instead, the factories are supported by many different nations. In other cases, like in some sonar and hydrodynamics research facilities, the US military simply subsidizes the facility even though the research contracts and equipment produced by the facility are of smaller value than the cost of operating the facility.
Which is part of the problem of a ECONOMY-based system. The population needs to continually grow to increase demand to increase supply and innovation. there are critical points of these models. Supply and demand can still exist without the need of an economy but getting it to work is an unlikely event.
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Further, the finest US nuclear labs (national population: 300 million) are now looking at "supercritical water nuclear reactors," with hopes of substantially improving the cost of reactors and their safety features. We can design and engineer these reactors, develop every individual component, but...the US, with 100 million tons of annual steel production, can't build steel pressure vessels large and strong enough for the reactor. We'd have to go to Japan, the only nation on a planet of 6.5 billion people that has the ability to build the necessary pressure vessels.
The US CAN build these vessels but it is financially unviable to do so. If the need is great enough they WOULD.
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The higher tech you go, the bigger the pyramid of industry is that supports the technology. 18th Century technology could be sustained by a large town, from gunpowder making to iron mining and blacksmithing and barrelmaking and all the rest. 19th Century technology took cities to handle all the specialized skills - boilermaking, gear manufacturing, telegraph wire production, pottery, mining, etc. By the late 20th Century, the mountain of industry required to get from a score of different mines (gallium, arsenic, silicon, etc.) to a microchip was daunting, and horribly expensive. Something like a "simple" fiberglass factory can be a Billion-dollar investment that not every nation will pay for.
True enough. But apart from trading with the Inner-sphere (getting away from reality here as we know how relevant that is in the IS  ) what is the use of a currency? All your examples the technology could be used by the one population to use but it was cheaper somewhere else even though the technology was not outside of that particular population to produce.
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Example discussion about Australia in 1950
Australia was still surviving on financial handouts from Great Britain in the 1930s so self-efficiency by the 1950s was highly unlikely especially given the toil we went through with our level of involvement during the whole war.
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It's not authoritative, but it hits on the relevant issues and illustrates the shortcomings of an advanced, First World population of 30 million.
30 million? That'd be Indonesia I'd reckon. Try 20 million currently.
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Verifiably: no jet fighter factories, next to no microchip production, inability to build parts for its military, etc.
Only due to the relative price of building these facilities and the cost of labour to produce those parts make the whole thing exceedingly expensive. We have the raw materials (which many of these places that manufacture the parts do NOT have) and we do have the technology as well as the research levels to improve things... it just isn't economically feasable to do so.
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Cray
07/13/06 09:55 AM
147.160.136.10
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Yes and while this could be true, Nicholas was not first choice for leader.... who was that? His esteemed father which means the current leadership may not need to be great if there was some change of leadership to someone who could do a better job in the circumstances.
Right. And the Wolverine leadership wasn't necessarily great, either.
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Example discussion about Australia in 1950
Australia was still surviving on financial handouts from Great Britain in the 1930s so self-efficiency by the 1950s was highly unlikely especially given the toil we went through with our level of involvement during the whole war.
I think this represents the dangers of skimming material too fast - or not reading it - for both of us. For you, the thread wasn't talking about 1950s Australia; it was talking about 2000AD Australia teleported back in time. My mistake was misreading it as being teleported back to 1950AD. It wasn't - the premise was that it got teleported back to 1500AD.
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I think that's overly generous.
Why? The equipment itself can be stored for hundreds of years (i.e. mothballed) with no problems. the only real issue is maintaining the knowledge rather than the equipment itself.
There's also the issue of providing sufficient personnel for the equipment.
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Sometimes you needs hundreds of millions, even billions of people to sustain a given level of technology. Many military-critical US electronic components are not built in the US; there's simply no domestic market to sustain them. Instead, the factories are supported by many different nations. In other cases, like in some sonar and hydrodynamics research facilities, the US military simply subsidizes the facility even though the research contracts and equipment produced by the facility are of smaller value than the cost of operating the facility.
Which is part of the problem of a ECONOMY-based system. The population needs to continually grow to increase demand to increase supply and innovation. there are critical points of these models. Supply and demand can still exist without the need of an economy but getting it to work is an unlikely event.
Nitpick: I think you mean "capitalist" system. Any system involving the production and exchange of goods, services, and labor is an economy in one form or another. It might be a poorly balanced economy or a prosperous economy, but it's still an economy.
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All your examples the technology could be used by the one population to use but it was cheaper somewhere else even though the technology was not outside of that particular population to produce.
No, not exactly. Price was only a secondary issue in some examples. More immediate issues were the lack of skills and/or industrial equipment.
In the case of the reactor vessel, the primary problem is that US lacks the skills and industrial equipment needed to manufacture the pressure vessel. Go to any US steel mill or boiler maker and they'll tell you: they don't have the ability to make it. No nation on the planet except Japan had the skills and appropriate steel working equipment to make pressure vessels with the size and strength needed by those reactors.
As a side effect, yes, it's cheaper to go to Japan because anyone else would have to start from scratch - buy the equipment, expand the facilities, make several practice vessels, train with the Japanese, test your practice vessels, etc. But cash isn't the first problem, it's the lack of skills and equipment.
Similarly, cash is a secondary issue with the sonar and hydrodynamics facilities. No one else in the world has developed those specific skills with sonar and hydrodynamics that the US has - it wasn't money holding the USSR or UK or Japan back from developing them, it was the specific needs of the USN. No one else quite needed those specific features in their own sonar and ship design programs...but the USN sure as heck did. The end result was that the USN couldn't go anywhere else unless it wanted to start from scratch. Money could solve the problem, but it wasn't the source of the problem. Lack of skills and equipment were the problem.
It's not enough to have some (for example) welders amongst the Wolverines and expect them to effortlessly step into every welding task needed on their new home world. Joe Welder, who only welded mild steel in steel-framed buildings, is unlikely to know even where to begin when you ask him to start welding a 46cm-thick pressure vessel of a finicky steel alloy that needs pre-heating, inter-pass heating, timed weld passes, post-heating, and can only be welded in certain orientations. Likewise, if Bob Welder does know how to handle thick boiler welds, he might be prone to mistakes on mild steel (and/ror overly cautious to the extent of losing productivity) and he'll be lost if you ask him to weld finicky armor steel, which is finicky in a different way than boiler steel. (Hell, metallurgists are in the same boat. You can get a doctorate in steel metallurgy and still not know everything about steel, let alone other metals.)
That's the problem with the Wolverines' small population. Do they have machinists? Great. Do they have machinists familiar with steels, titanium alloys, heat sink graphite, polymer composites, and ceramics? Each material is different and has a learning curve, during which the machinists won't be producing, they'll be training. Do the Wolverines have people experienced in manufacturing microchips? If so, are they experienced on the particular model microchip fabbers that the Wolverines grabbed in their hurry to flee? A 3-nanometer gamma ray nanotech etcher probably takes quite different skills than a 35nm deep UV wet etcher.
Speaking of microchips, my earlier examples microchip factories and fiberglass factories ARE examples where cash is the primary problem, and less so skills and gear. And speaking of cash...
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True enough. But apart from trading with the Inner-sphere (getting away from reality here as we know how relevant that is in the IS ) what is the use of a currency?
...While currency can vary in value due to supply and demand forces, at its heart currency it is a means of accounting for labor and resources in an economy.
When a fiberglass factory costs $1 billion, it's not because the factory builders are gouging for a one-of-a-kind facility because, to the contractors putting the factory together, much of the factory is nothing special - just another industrial facility that they build all the time. They're probably only inflating the cost 5-10% for their profit. No, the most of the $1 billion is from all the labor, resources, and time to get the factory working (plus some rare-but-available skills with fiberglass manufacturing, which is more an art than a science.)
If the Wolverines want to build a new fusion engine factory worth $10 billion (for example), they can try to avoid the problem of "money supply" by waving away currency, but the factory is $10 billion due to the sheer amount of labor, resources, and time needed to put it together. That cost will be taken out of the economy somehow - missing labor, food shortages, lack of rails for railroads, etc. - as $10 billion in resources and labor go into the factory rather than elsewhere.
All the Wolverines are escaping by waving away currency is the profit margin of the contractors and charges levied by local laws. The Star League, for example, liked to apply taxes to key industries in the Periphery so that the Periphery turned to Inner Sphere factories for supplies - a fusion engine factory worth $10 billion in the Inner Sphere might be taxed to $20 billion in the Periphery. But that's an artificial cost - the costs that Wolverines cannot escape are labor, resources, and available skillsets.
Which leads to the point that even if you say, "The Wolverines abandon all currency and just order their people to work on this or that task," there's still only so much labor in total, so many skilled laborers for a given task, and only so many resources that they have available.
There's an enormous number of items to be made to sustain and expand a Star League-era industrial base. A few hundred thousand people won't cover it all, and they probably don't have all the needed skillsets.
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The US CAN build these vessels but it is financially unviable to do so.
No, it can't. Not with the people and facilities it currently has. For behemoth steel products like that, you're looking at a 5-year program, minimum, to develop the domestic ability to construct them, and that's if you can hire the Japanese to help instruct you.
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It's not authoritative, but it hits on the relevant issues and illustrates the shortcomings of an advanced, First World population of 30 million.
30 million? That'd be Indonesia I'd reckon. Try 20 million currently.
D'oh, I had Canada on the brain from a draft example I deleted. Yes, 20 million.
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Only due to the relative price of building these facilities and the cost of labour to produce those parts make the whole thing exceedingly expensive. We have the raw materials (which many of these places that manufacture the parts do NOT have) and we do have the technology as well as the research levels to improve things... it just isn't economically feasable to do so.
Economics isn't just a matter of artificially valued scraps of paper. I'd recommend going to that thread I linked in before and looking at some of the difficulties raised. Sometimes a nation just runs out of resources and labor to throw at problems, nevermind the funny colored bits of paper in the economy. Sometimes it just doesn't have the skillsets.
For example, there's only a handful (2-3) places in the world with a few dozen people who know all the secrets of casting single crystal nickel alloy turbine blades. The information required for the moulds, temperature control, crystal orientation, exact alloying, and pre-processing aren't in libraries or universities - they're under lock and key in corporate engineering offices (none in Australia). If you took 20 million Aussies and all their industry and dumped them on a new world, they wouldn't be making exact replacements of the first stage turbines in their jet engines for a long time.
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.
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tgsofgc
07/13/06 06:13 PM
68.231.174.183
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I think I understand where Cray is coming from and as usual it is well thought out and reasoned. Granted you can throw countless variables to make any scenario you want or you'd think improve the universe to work, but I'd agree that as we have had it presented when working from reality the Wolverines would most likely pose no signifigant threat to anyone.
As to the issue example brought forth about the steel and the development of a local industry to meet the needs as an analogy to the complexity of trade and specialization I would also point to the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. The book which aims to address the inequalities of the modern world through science brings forth how the economy of technology is very much a shaping factor in how the world's civilizations developed, namely the investments to initially domesticate animals, and develop farming.
My view of the Wolverines if they are still around they likely are a rather turbulent periphery power confined to a single star system. Manufacture of vehicles on planet is likely at best to be ICE, and depending on the political climate of the regime after the dissappearance, which would most likely be standard periphery instable (due to the myraid of diverse reasons to leave the clans, yet a lack of unifying vision or leadership post departure), would have most if not all its battlemech forces that departed with them beyond use or repair.
I find that 'pinpoint' accuracy during a bombing run increases proportionally with the amount of munitions used.
-Commander Nathaniel Klepper,
Avanti's Angels, 3058
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Cray
07/13/06 07:08 PM
68.200.109.191
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My view of the Wolverines if they are still around they likely are a rather turbulent periphery power confined to a single star system. Manufacture of vehicles on planet is likely at best to be ICE, and depending on the political climate of the regime after the dissappearance, which would most likely be standard periphery instable (due to the myraid of diverse reasons to leave the clans, yet a lack of unifying vision or leadership post departure), would have most if not all its battlemech forces that departed with them beyond use or repair.
Honestly, I think Wolverines COULD do better than that. I'm just not holding my breath.
If they put a lot of forethought into the matter, carefully saved technological records (akin to memory cores), make good use of iron wombs to pump up their population, and were lucky in the industrial equipment they evacuated, I could see them recovering some Star League level of technology in the 31st Century.
Also, like Niops, they might be able to produce some high tech gear right along using factory gear brought with them from the Clan homeworlds.
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.
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Greyslayer
07/14/06 12:39 AM
216.14.198.49
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My view of the Wolverines if they are still around they likely are a rather turbulent periphery power confined to a single star system.
Very plausible.
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Manufacture of vehicles on planet is likely at best to be ICE,
Not necessarily true. The fusion engine is a far from new technology. It might be more a lack of the 'rare metals' used that is mentioned in the construction of a fusion engine that would be lacking.... though technologically it is easier to maintain ICE/ECE engines than fusion ones.
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and depending on the political climate of the regime after the dissappearance, which would most likely be standard periphery instable (due to the myraid of diverse reasons to leave the clans, yet a lack of unifying vision or leadership post departure),
Most of those powers seemed unstable due to outside forces exerted on them through either other periphery states, house or comstar agents. The whole objective of the minnesota tribe was to disappear. It is harder to mess with something if you either don't know it exists or where it exists if you do know it exists.
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would have most if not all its battlemech forces that departed with them beyond use or repair.
battlemechs? who has been mentioning these recently? Vehicles can use level 1 or 2 equipment as well but requires less resources to initially setup (more resources in the long run but the level of those resources is actually very low... things like track pads, track link etc rather than actuator assembly pieces etc).
|
Greyslayer
07/14/06 07:21 PM
216.14.198.49
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Quote:
Go to any US steel mill or boiler maker and they'll tell you: they don't have the ability to make it.
If I had become a boilermaker then I would be at least 3rd probably 4th generation in that particular skillset. The ability to retrain to even more technical positions is easy enough once the basic skillset has been set.
Quote:
No nation on the planet except Japan had the skills and appropriate steel working equipment to make pressure vessels with the size and strength needed by those reactors.
And since they had managed to develope the technique does not mean they are the only ones who can do it, but to disprove this point much of the controls on what is made where is actually down to the Patent, not the limit of skills if the we take financial concerns out of the picture.
Quote:
train with the Japanese,
Irrellevant unless you purpose built the facility to use the vessels the Japanese use which I think is the case here. If the Japanese vessel did not exist then what is stopping them from redesigning the facility to have a more effective vessel? As the vessel already existed then the design of the facility was already going to be designed around using it.
Quote:
test your practice vessels, etc. But cash isn't the first problem, it's the lack of skills and equipment.
With enough resources (whether that be cash or not), these problems can be overcome. It may take time but it is certainly far, far, far removed from impossible.
Quote:
Money could solve the problem, but it wasn't the source of the problem. Lack of skills and equipment were the problem.
Which could be overcome with the use of research, training and testing which takes ..... MONEY.
Quote:
It's not enough to have some (for example) welders amongst the Wolverines and expect them to effortlessly step into every welding task needed on their new home world. Joe Welder, who only welded mild steel in steel-framed buildings, is unlikely to know even where to begin when you ask him to start welding a 46cm-thick pressure vessel of a finicky steel alloy that needs pre-heating, inter-pass heating, timed weld passes, post-heating, and can only be welded in certain orientations. Likewise, if Bob Welder does know how to handle thick boiler welds, he might be prone to mistakes on mild steel (and/ror overly cautious to the extent of losing productivity) and he'll be lost if you ask him to weld finicky armor steel, which is finicky in a different way than boiler steel. (Hell, metallurgists are in the same boat. You can get a doctorate in steel metallurgy and still not know everything about steel, let alone other metals.)
But he could receive much of the training he would need from engineers in warships in many other areas. Technical staff probably wouldn't be the problem unless they tried to maintain their entire fleet with a small population to start with. They could probably either mothball or cannibalise a majority of the vessels and utilise the staff elsewhere..... and since they need buildings fairly urgently why drag the welder away from there initially?
Quote:
That's the problem with the Wolverines' small population. Do they have machinists? Great. Do they have machinists familiar with steels, titanium alloys, heat sink graphite, polymer composites, and ceramics?
We are assuming the 'people' they took along with the fleet may not have the skills but many of the engineers, astechs etc would have a fairly solid grounding in many of these areas.
Quote:
...While currency can vary in value due to supply and demand forces, at its heart currency it is a means of accounting for labor and resources in an economy.
True. I have no idea if perhaps they have found a planet and were just getting the people they need for the colonisation of to fill the skillsets they need.
Quote:
When a fiberglass factory costs $1 billion, it's not because the factory builders are gouging for a one-of-a-kind facility because, to the contractors putting the factory together, much of the factory is nothing special - just another industrial facility that they build all the time. They're probably only inflating the cost 5-10% for their profit. No, the most of the $1 billion is from all the labor, resources, and time to get the factory working (plus some rare-but-available skills with fiberglass manufacturing, which is more an art than a science.)
Sheesh, now who is trying to dodgey the facts? Every step of the way someone is trying to take 5-10% not as part of the completion value. A good example would be how GST is charged in Australia (10%, which would be a good example). It isn't a perfect example since a minor party managed to screw up the whole system in their attempt to make themselves look important (and the government didn't have a clear majority in the senate thus had to deal with them), in the Australia system 'primary goods' such as fruit and vege is not charged GST but fortunately it doesn't need to sit in this example.
GST is charged on each manufactured item at each point from say where it is manufactured to the company that supplies that part to the company that installs that part so in a fairly short example we see 10% on base price + 10% on this price + 10% in that price. (Base value 100 1) 110 2) 121 3) 133.1. Hardly just a 10% change). Not to mention if they hold a patent over the part and the people desparately need it then the price is just a 'tad' more than 10% in commerical dealings.
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If the Wolverines want to build a new fusion engine factory worth $10 billion (for example), they can try to avoid the problem of "money supply" by waving away currency, but the factory is $10 billion due to the sheer amount of labor, resources, and time needed to put it together. That cost will be taken out of the economy somehow - missing labor, food shortages, lack of rails for railroads, etc. - as $10 billion in resources and labor go into the factory rather than elsewhere.
So what is the time factor? Would it need to be started immediately or could they wait for a more healthy environment to push that agenda?
Quote:
There's an enormous number of items to be made to sustain and expand a Star League-era industrial base. A few hundred thousand people won't cover it all, and they probably don't have all the needed skillsets.
I don't think I have said that they could maintain a complete Star League era industrial base, especially early on. The knowledge they DO have stored away and the limited skillsets they DO have in the way of persons captured, civilians that did manage to get on the fleet and the members of the fleet such as engineers means they are not completely useless either.
Quote:
D'oh, I had Canada on the brain from a draft example I deleted. Yes, 20 million.
Canada only 30 million? sheesh.
Quote:
Sometimes a nation just runs out of resources and labor to throw at problems, nevermind the funny colored bits of paper in the economy. Sometimes it just doesn't have the skillsets.
Even in one of the biggest booms to our economy known in its history our unemployment rate has just snuck under 5% yet in nearly every area we are exporting skilled staff for many jobs that do no exist in this country... yet we have those people trained in those skilled that are valued overseas. Of course money offered for those skills that are used here are also leaving for better money in say the US. This has meant to fill the void we have had to import Kiwis  (who come over here in droves anyway ) to fill our own vacancies in some cases. The absolute main reason why we may have skill shortages in some areas though is that business is stupid in offering too low a value on the job and are continually forcing the government to allow foreign workers to be able to move here so that they could undercut the job value further.
Quote:
For example, there's only a handful (2-3) places in the world with a few dozen people who know all the secrets of casting single crystal nickel alloy turbine blades. The information required for the moulds, temperature control, crystal orientation, exact alloying, and pre-processing aren't in libraries or universities - they're under lock and key in corporate engineering offices (none in Australia). If you took 20 million Aussies and all their industry and dumped them on a new world, they wouldn't be making exact replacements of the first stage turbines in their jet engines for a long time.
Nor would they need to if there was no immediate threat. But we would have enough knowledge of the process to perhaps later look at something like that providing several situations exist (ie fossil fuel deposits). But your example isn't looking at the fact that the Wolverines may perhaps have the knowledge just not the application at the time when you use the example of Australian population.
BTW who made the scramjet work? A large US agency willing to spend billions or a small Aussie team from a local uni that only wanted to spend hundreds of thousands?
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tgsofgc
07/14/06 09:18 PM
68.231.174.183
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Quote:
Not necessarily true. The fusion engine is a far from new technology. It might be more a lack of the 'rare metals' used that is mentioned in the construction of a fusion engine that would be lacking.... though technologically it is easier to maintain ICE/ECE engines than fusion ones.
Yes I agree, but it could also be a lack of infrastructure. There were limitations to the population that escaped and its likely key personel were in many technical areas were missing as such. This coupled with the difficulties in finding resources, and a lack of need for Fusion engines (well in the face of the readily available and easy to manufacture ICEs would presumably curtail plans to rebuild the necessary infrastructure for Fusion engines. Similarly the necessity of other technological infrastructure likely more valuable to a hiding civilization, say mining, construction, civilian transportation, farming, water management etc. would make the signifigant investment in time and man hours seem even more unreasonable.
Quote:
Most of those powers seemed unstable due to outside forces exerted on them through either other periphery states, house or comstar agents. The whole objective of the minnesota tribe was to disappear. It is harder to mess with something if you either don't know it exists or where it exists if you do know it exists.
I agree what I meant wasn't say the instability of the Taurian Concord or any number of other nations, but more akin to the instability of the Pentagon worlds. Namely you have people unified by a desire for something that wasn't what Niki was doing, and a need to escape quickly. Once they have escaped you no longer have that unification and likely have lost a great deal of the unification with in the clan itself as well, due to the signifigant loss of the traditional power structure and a need to quickly reorganize the surviving population to form a viable self sustaining colony. As such it is reasonable to assume that any power balance or concensus of rule would be fragile at best and easily disturbed/changed by social trends in the colony. Granted this is wholely an opinion and its based largely on what i'd assume would happen not any factual analogies I can be bothered to search for or look up right now.
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battlemechs? who has been mentioning these recently? Vehicles can use level 1 or 2 equipment as well but requires less resources to initially setup (more resources in the long run but the level of those resources is actually very low... things like track pads, track link etc rather than actuator assembly pieces etc).
Oh i was just trying to set down a truth for the universially optimistic. Yeah I could forsee all manner of level 1 vehicles on the planet, particularly those made from or adapted from the type of vehicles common for civillian reasons, ie armed jeeps, vtols, and conventional aircraft.
I find that 'pinpoint' accuracy during a bombing run increases proportionally with the amount of munitions used.
-Commander Nathaniel Klepper,
Avanti's Angels, 3058
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Karagin
04/27/09 02:27 AM
79.141.17.231
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Oh in case you missed it, they have been used...they are now part of the WoB, and seem to be the big boost in why the Jihad worked...or some other BS as the writers have given us. I do love how they have managed to take 99% of the mysterious back stories and retcon then into the current story arc. It seems to me that they are doing this to tie up all the lose ends and write out anything that might be come an issue later on. Talk about painting your self into a corner...thought they would have gotten the hint with the backlash and loss of fans that the Jihad and Dark Age settings have caused, but no they are set on this path...
So the Wolverines are now part of or major allies of the WoB and thus have become enemies of the Inner Sphere, which seems to go against what we have seen in print about them, but hey the writers know what they are doing, and we the fans should be so "lucky" to have then grace us with their mere presence by taking their time to write this stuff for, because after all with out them there would be no more Battletech...
(moves before the hell fire and brimstone and lighting hit)
What they have done is begin to dismantle the BT universe and re-write it to fit the outcome we all have seen via Dark Age and the rest of the Clickyverse story lines. Sad day for this once wonderful and fun game.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Cray
04/27/09 09:22 AM
147.160.136.10
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Quote:
Oh in case you missed it, they have been used...they are now part of the WoB, and seem to be the big boost in why the Jihad worked...
Karagin, that's an awfully firm critique based on a "tabloid rumors" section of Jihad Secrets.
Before accepting it as literal truth (when even Jihad Secrets says to take it with a grain of salt), you might want to doublecheck your MWDA information to see what the post-Jihad historians said about the individual motivations for each Clan that joined Stone's anti-WoB Alliance.
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 (04/27/09 10:13 AM)
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Venom
05/06/09 07:07 PM
207.191.200.101
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Hate to say it, but I agree with Karagin. Blake Documents seem to confirm the tabloid rumors section Cray. If I am wrong, please correct me, but I drop $25-35 for a sourcebook to tell me what is happening in the BTech universe; not to indulge an LDs artistic side with a bunch of crap that may or may not be happening.
I want just the facts. When I GM I can make the truth a little hard to find. That does not cost my players a cent.
Hell, at this point I think all I am doing is indulging the wallet of FanPro or catalyst or whoever the hell owns the brand this year.
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Cray
05/06/09 08:34 PM
97.97.245.195
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Quote:
Hate to say it, but I agree with Karagin. Blake Documents seem to confirm the tabloid rumors section Cray.
First, how does a document confirm itself? The only modern discussion about the Wolverines is in the Jihad Secrets: Blake Documents.
Second, if you're debating buying it, the book is not another ISP-like book-o'-rumors. Jihad Secrets: The Blake Documents has, yes, 23 pages of tabloid material...and 130 pages of solid facts and new rules for GMs. It starts off with the canon explanation for WoB's rise to power and motivations so GMs no longer have to guess (I was specifically asked to write that section for the book by the line developers because I spent so much time on the forums going over those explanations); it provides a clear summary of the Jihad to date to remove questions about what happened from 3067 to 3074; reviews current events to 3076ish (effectively serving as Jihad Hotspots: 3076); and provides rules to construct primitive units uncovered by the Hegemony memory core (see TR:3075).
Then, yes, there's 23 pages of oddball speculations: Sun Tzu is Hanse Davion's love child, Victor Steiner Davion's secret marriage, the Wolverines, etc.
No, I don't get royalties on sales of the book, I'm just summarizing its table of contents.
Quote:
If I am wrong, please correct me, but I drop $25-35 for a sourcebook to tell me what is happening in the BTech universe; not to indulge an LDs artistic side with a bunch of crap that may or may not be happening.
I'll say this: the in-character information on the Wolverines is not a line developer having fun, but explaining material previously given in MWDA. It is very important to the timeline, but not at face value.
As a GM, the Wolverines story...well, note that it basically doesn't connect to anything. As stated on pg134, "The [wolverine] documents are like a self-reinforcing delusion, providing mutual support but lacking any definitive, incontrovertible links to known facts. Much that is stated can be attributed to coincidence or wishful thinking. The deep recesses of our minds want to find a grand conspiracy at the heart of the most apocalyptic war humanity has ever seen. That might in some way excuse how we were tricked into turning on each other in an orgy of destruction. Never mind that we’re a weak-willed species and quite capable of committing atrocities without being manipulated; there were no “hidden Wolverines” for Hitler or Amaris. No “secret cabal” for Pol Pot or Jinjiro Kurita."
Basically, as a GM you could say, "Sure, WoB's Jihad is a Wolverine plot," because that has no impact on game play. The documents suggest the Wolverines long ago merged into Comstar/WoB (or vice versa), meaning no one's going to be fighting Wolverine-flagged units. If "the Master" is cackling in his secret hideout on Mars while wearing a Wolverine-skinned robe, then that has no bearing on WoB's military, motivation, strategy, tactics, or equipment (all of which are detailed at length in other publications and the beginning of Jihad Secrets' non-tabloid section.)
Or you can say, "The Wolverine documents are pure fiction," and that won't matter in the board game either. It just means the Master wears a different colored robe. Like Jihad Secrets say, those Wolverine documents don't really tie into anything substantial.
BUT Two issues that should matter to a GM, though, is that 1) the Wolverine documents have been published in-character 2) and who believes the publications. Some BattleTech factions still have a real bug up their ass about the Wolverines, and I'm not talking about conspiracy theorists. I mean folks who swore to kill zem, kill zem all. What were those faction doing in 3075 with respect to the Jihad?
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.
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Venom
05/06/09 09:08 PM
207.191.200.101
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"What were those faction doing in 3075 with respect to the Jihad? "
"Before accepting it as literal truth (when even Jihad Secrets says to take it with a grain of salt), you might want to doublecheck your MWDA information to see what the post-Jihad historians said about the individual motivations for each Clan that joined Stone's anti-WoB Alliance."
I guess I am lacking that perspective right now. Specificaly, I am lacking the knowledge of where to gain that perspective. MWDA novels?
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Cray
05/06/09 09:32 PM
97.97.245.195
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Quote:
Quote:
What were those faction doing in 3075 with respect to the Jihad? "
I guess I am lacking that perspective right now. Specificaly, I am lacking the knowledge of where to gain that perspective. MWDA novels?
Any Classic BattleTech Clan Sourcebook should name the factions interested in the Wolverines (hint: any faction with naming with "Clan:..."), while the Jihad Sourcebooks will tell you what they're (not) doing in 3075 or earlier.
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 (05/06/09 09:37 PM)
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Venom
05/07/09 02:17 AM
207.191.200.101
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The Jihad sourcebooks are not telling me a darn thing about Clan space right now. The last sourcebook that had anything useful in it about the Clans was Feild Manual:Updates which is about six years out of date. Just tell me what to buy damn it!
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Cray
05/07/09 08:59 AM
147.160.136.10
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Quote:
The last sourcebook that had anything useful in it about the Clans was Feild Manual:Updates which is about six years out of date. Just tell me what to buy damn it!
...what books do you have?
Quote:
The Jihad sourcebooks are not telling me a darn thing about Clan space right now.
The homeworlds are irrelevant; even in MWDA they're isolated and not talking, nor are any MWDA Inner Sphere Clans talking about the homeworlds.
DotJ p100, "A Spheroid Affair?" is most significant. Hell, the title of the section tells you everything you need to know about Clan opinions at the Dawn of the Jihad.
JHS:3070 has a handy summary on pg16-17, the "Clan Factor," which basically summarizes all Inner Sphere Clan actions: some raids and internal politicking.
JHS:3072 has another handy summary of JHS:3070's Clan events. Raids between Clans and raids, the Ghost Bears swallowed Rasalhague, and Hells Horses came into the Inner Sphere.
Blake Documents summarizes the Clan fights throughout the early years of the Jihad and discusses critical decisions by the Clans.
JHS:3076 summarizes past Clan activities on pg17, "Hells Horses Stalled," where the common truce amongst the Inner Sphere Clans (and whipping of the Hellions) is discussed. More importantly, the book sees the Bears beginning to move against the Protectorate.
What to buy? If you don't have them already, try the Blake Documents and Hotspots:3076. They summarize the prior JHS books and tell you what the Clans are doing in more detail than past JHS books.
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.
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Bob_Richter
06/10/09 08:42 PM
66.191.9.99
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I've been seeing hints that the Ghost Bears either discovered the Wolverine Connection (if true) or were tricked into believing in the Wolverine Connection
Myth (if false) and that that was the main motivation behind their purge.
If that was the main motivation, the truth value of that rumor is not an inconsequential detail as it relates to the faction's character, but it's still fun to leave it unresolved for now. (Mysteries are Fandom Fuel)
I'm still firmly of the opinion that the Minnesota Tribe went to ground somewhere in the Deep Periphery and may well have died off. (And in any case, could not have reconstructed a 28th Century, to say nothing of Golden Century, tech base)
-Bob (The Magnificent) Richter
Assertions made in this post are the humble opinion of Bob.
They are not necessarily statements of fact or decrees from God Himself, unless explicitly and seriously stated to be so.
:)
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LAMdriver
06/11/09 05:38 AM
68.118.31.98
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Now I may not know everything about CBT (I've been out of it for a while), and I barely have the basic materials to conduct a game session, but it seems to me that we are forgetting the one important factor in all of this discussion.
That factor is that this is science fiction and anything can and will happen. as long as the owner of CBT of the month can produce a couple of books and make some money off this.
Personally, I think that Clan Wolverine is alive and well in the Deep Periphery between the Dranconis Combine, and Outworld's Alliance. And they are building and are pissed off at the Clans.
" The object of war is not to die for your country. It's to make some other bastard die for his!"--Patton
""War is Hell. Combat is a motherfucker."---General Tommy Franks
Edited by LAMdriver (06/11/09 05:39 AM)
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Atlan
07/22/09 11:00 PM
123.255.28.194
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There are lots of posibilites for where the Wolverines went, but most of them are silly. (ie my personal favourite, they went back to the inner sphere, concoured a planet, destroyed it's HPG, forbid all radio transmition in favour of fibire optic comunications, and pretended that the planet was destroyed via use of emergency beacons- and as the first succession war was in full swing and people were throwing nukes around for the fun of it, no one noticed)
What did the Wolverines have to work with? An army, a navy, technical databases, and jumpships. So they would have looked at the galaxy like this:
The Inner Sphere is an inferno of violence- must stay away.
The Kerensky cluster is full of people who are dedicated to the death of the Wolverines, and outnumber them 19:1.
The periphey consists of a few small powers near the Free Worlds Leage and the Cappellen confederation, with tiny powers scattered near them outside the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, indpendent colonies scattered loosly around the galaxy, and the pirate haven near the Combine.
So where can they go, live in peace, and not technologically regress back to the victorian era?
The most reasonable explanation that comes to mind is that the Wolverines started back the way they came- down Exodus Road. They hit the Combine, rescued enough people to give them a population that could sustain itself on a planet, and went back up Exodus Road- part way. Several light years in, they turned away from the Pentagon. (Imagine a map of the Inner Sphere, shown in it's normal orientation- Cappellen Confederation and Federated Suns at the bottom)- Wolverine turned right. There, they circled around the pirates that infest that part of the periphery, and eventually found an uninhabited planet that they could live on, and moved in.
They did the colonist thing- moved in, built towns, farms, factories to build the basics. But they had four things that your average periphey colony didnt.
1: Numbers
They had enough people that they could build the big things- and build them quickly.
2: Information
They would almost certainly have a memory core or two- they would have been able to look up designs and plans for any advanced technology (I don't mean PPCs or KF drives. I mean Power Plants, smelting, water purification. All the things you need to build an indrustrial base.)
3: A standing army (and navy)
Most periphy nations had to worry about pirates. The Wolverines had an army of top of the line millitary grade technology- an army that was origionally to defend several planets against nations with equivlent technology and numbers. Overkill for pirates. With the warships they still had from the Exodus, the Pirates would never have lived to leave the system.
4: Prey
They lived on the border of the most pirate-ridden region of space. All those pirates- with not only all their mechs and fighters, but also the loot they had from harrassing the Combine and the Federation. The Wolverines were nearby, and much, much better armed. They could take what they didnt have, and do it guilt free.
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Cray
07/23/09 08:35 AM
147.160.136.10
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Quote:
What did the Wolverines have to work with?
Not much. Per the latest BattleCorps series on the Wolverines, they were in pretty bad shape.
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An army
An army of less than one intact regiment, once you put all the shattered surviving combatants together.
Quote:
a navy
Of two WarShips and refugee JumpShips with no shipyards or spare parts stockpiles to maintain them.
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technical databases
CDs of blueprints make nice decorations for your grass hut when you didn't have time to evacuate your factory tools.
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The Kerensky cluster is full of people who are dedicated to the death of the Wolverines, and outnumber them 19:1.
More like 50 or 100:1. Remember, not all of the Wolverines got away. The Wolverine leadership had been hoping for a peaceful resolution or wrist slap right up until the order for Annihilation. While they'd made some preparations, a lot of the Wolverine civilian population was left behind and most of the warriors (admittedly a small part of the population) were killed in rear guard actions.
Quote:
They did the colonist thing- moved in, built towns, farms, factories to build the basics. But they had four things that your average periphey colony didnt.
The average Periphery planet near the Inner Sphere has a billion or more people on it. The Wolverines had tens of thousands of ill-prepared survivors, and their raids on the Combine didn't significantly change the population, not in comparison to the population requirement for an industrialized civilization.
Quote:
1: Numbers
They had enough people that they could build the big things- and build them quickly.
No, they the population of a town or small city. Since they didn't bring all the industrial equipment needed to set up an advanced industrial base, they're going to have to spend a long time working on the basics until their population reaches a suitable level, in the hundreds of millions. Recommended reading:
http://www.sarna.net/forums/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/133879/page/0/vc/1
http://www.sarna.net/forums/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/133932/page/0/vc/1
Quote:
2: Information
They would almost certainly have a memory core or two- they would have been able to look up designs and plans for any advanced technology (I don't mean PPCs or KF drives. I mean Power Plants, smelting, water purification. All the things you need to build an indrustrial base.)
Except for people and skilled workers.
Sometimes you needs hundreds of millions, even billions of people to sustain a given level of technology. Many military-critical US electronic components are not built in the US; there's simply no domestic market to sustain them. Instead, the factories are supported by many different nations. In other cases, like in some sonar and hydrodynamics research facilities, the US military simply subsidizes the facility even though the research contracts and equipment produced by the facility are of smaller value than the cost of operating the facility.
Further, the finest US nuclear labs (national population: 300 million) are now looking at "supercritical water nuclear reactors," with hopes of substantially improving the cost of reactors and their safety features. We can design and engineer these reactors, develop every individual component, but...the US, with 100 million tons of annual steel production, can't build steel pressure vessels large and strong enough for the reactor. We'd have to go to Japan, the only nation on a planet of 6.5 billion people that has the ability to build the necessary pressure vessels.
The higher tech you go, the bigger the pyramid of industry is that supports the technology. 18th Century technology could be sustained by a large town, from gunpowder making to iron mining and blacksmithing and barrelmaking and all the rest. 19th Century technology took cities to handle all the specialized skills - boilermaking, gear manufacturing, telegraph wire production, pottery, mining, etc. By the late 20th Century, the mountain of industry required to get from a score of different mines (gallium, arsenic, silicon, etc.) to a microchip was daunting, and horribly expensive. Something like a "simple" fiberglass factory can be a Billion-dollar investment that not every nation will pay for.
Fusion power plants, Star League water filters, robotic factories? They're even worse.
Quote:
3: A standing army (and navy)
With no industry to repair the damage done during the evacuation, and no shipyards to maintain the warships, and insufficient population to build and staff the factories and shipyards.
Quote:
4: Prey
They lived on the border of the most pirate-ridden region of space. All those pirates- with not only all their mechs and fighters, but also the loot they had from harrassing the Combine and the Federation. The Wolverines were nearby, and much, much better armed. They could take what they didnt have, and do it guilt free.
They don't have sufficient JumpShips required to bring in hundreds of millions of skilled laborers.
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.
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His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
07/23/09 10:55 AM
24.4.97.143
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You have quite a point there Cray. Reading the history of the clans, they should never have survived with any real level of technology to be able to return. When Nicholas Kerensky left the second time that should have sealed there fate. He left with what 3,000 people?
quote
Kerensky's son took 800 of his best warriors and 600 civilian families away to a planet known as Strana Mechty ("land of dreams" in Russian) where he forged a new order. This order was known as the Clans. Those who possessed exceptional military skill became the breeding stock of what would become a hereditary ruling class. They embodied the pinnacle of combat prowess, and were put through a variety of competitive and selective processes with each generation to produce virtual super-soldiers. They were charged to protect the weak and powerless, but primarily to take back the Pentagon Worlds and, some day, the Inner Sphere where they, the Clans, would reinstate the glorious Star League.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.
I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
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Cray
07/23/09 12:48 PM
147.160.136.10
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Quote:
You have quite a point there Cray. Reading the history of the clans, they should never have survived with any real level of technology to be able to return. When Nicholas Kerensky left the second time that should have sealed there fate. He left with what 3,000 people?
Over a million, plus about 500,000 who had already left the Pentagon to settle near Strana Mechty. See pg10 of the "The Clans - Warriors of Kerensky." (I assume the 800 warriors and families refers to only loyalist troops and their families, not the whole mass of civilians who went with him.)
Further details from pg7-10 of Warriors of Kerensky: The entire SLDF Exodus (c2784) involved 6 million people, a number that hadn't changed much by 2800. Kerensky took a million on the Second Exodus to an area (Kerensky Cluster) that was already being developed and exploited by about 500,000 folks. That left 4.5 million in the Pentagon worlds, who spent the next 20 years nuking, gasing, and plaguing each other into the stone age during the Exodus Civil War. By 2820, when the Clans returned to the Pentagon, there were "barely 2 million" survivors on the Pentagon worlds. Following the Pentagon's conquest (completed c2822), the Clan population stood at 3.5 million.
In the subsequent 235 years (to 3058), the Clan homeworld population grew to 1.15 billion, a very high growth rate. With a very focused effort, the Clans would be able to sustain and slightly develop their military technologies. Elsewhere, they'd stagnate (which is just what Warriors of Kerensky shows - most Clan civilian equipment, appliances, etc. are carbon copies of Star League gear.)
The Clans apparently managed to get through their period of inadequate population (say, 2800 to 2950) by the sheer amount of supplies and industrial equipment the SLDF took into exile. You can knock off whole orders of magnitude of required population if you don't have to build basic supporting industries from scratch, but can instead pull them out of mothballs.
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.
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His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
07/23/09 02:46 PM
24.4.97.143
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(A) I don't own the book (B) Until now never heard of it either.
It said, "Kerensky's son took 800 of his best warriors and 600 civilian families away to a planet known as Strana Mechty." It did not say anything about taking any others with him. Since it said, "his best warriors AND 600 civilian families. I would assume by the and word that the civilians where not the warriors families.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.
I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
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LAMdriver
07/23/09 08:09 PM
68.118.31.98
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He's got you there Cray.
" The object of war is not to die for your country. It's to make some other bastard die for his!"--Patton
""War is Hell. Combat is a motherfucker."---General Tommy Franks
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Cray
07/23/09 08:09 PM
173.168.115.68
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Quote:
(A) I don't own the book (B) Until now never heard of it either.
Too bad. It's one of the best books about the Clans. It details their history, economics, culture, and many other aspects of their lives. It also expands on data found in FM: Crusader Clans, FM: Warden Clans, and Invading Clans Sourcebooks. It is one of the primary reference for BT's fact checkers on Clan society.
http://www.classicbattletech.com/index.php?action=products&mode=full&id=129
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.
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Cray
07/23/09 08:13 PM
173.168.115.68
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Quote:
He's got you there Cray.
And I've got the more recent FASA book that's the definitive source on the topic. :P
Warriors of Kerensky is 10 years old - it's been available quite a while. And do you really think 600 families are going to support a campaign of WarShips, BattleMechs, aerospace fighters, JumpShips, and DropShips against 2 million?
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.
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LAMdriver
07/23/09 08:13 PM
68.118.31.98
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By the way, are there any hard numbers for the amount of people that escaped the Trials?
" The object of war is not to die for your country. It's to make some other bastard die for his!"--Patton
""War is Hell. Combat is a motherfucker."---General Tommy Franks
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Cray
07/23/09 08:14 PM
173.168.115.68
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Quote:
By the way, are there any hard numbers for the amount of people that escaped the Trials?
What do you mean by "the trials"?
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.
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LAMdriver
07/23/09 08:20 PM
64.147.209.78
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I asked if there was any hard numbers for those that survived the Trial of Annihation that was carried out by Clan Wolf.
I know that they took a ceneus, found out that most of the front line units and personal were accounted for, but some of the second line units and most of the civies made it out alive.
So my question is: How many?
" The object of war is not to die for your country. It's to make some other bastard die for his!"--Patton
""War is Hell. Combat is a motherfucker."---General Tommy Franks
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Cray
07/23/09 08:42 PM
173.168.115.68
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Quote:
I asked if there was any hard numbers for those that survived the Trial of Annihation that was carried out by Clan Wolf.
The annihilation was carried out by every Clan.
Quote:
I know that they took a ceneus, found out that most of the front line units and personal were accounted for, but some of the second line units and most of the civies made it out alive.
So my question is: How many?
Per the BattleCorps series "Betrayal of Ideals" by Blaine Pardoe...
All the Wolverine mech factories were torched to the ground by their own hands.
"A full third" of their civilian population had been left behind by choice or didn't reach the evacuation ships. An unidentified further number couldn't be carried by the handful of evacuation ships. Assuming equal division of the population in the homeworlds, that means the Wolverines evacuated with about 117,000 civilians at the most; most likely it would be in the tens of thousands (75 to 90K).
The Wolverine touman - numbering about 50 warriors in 2822 - had "a quarter unaccounted for." That means about 30-40 warriors got away.
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.
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LAMdriver
07/23/09 10:17 PM
64.147.209.78
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Hate to say it, but your wrong about Clan Wolf. They won the batchall against Clan Widowmaker, but had to bid below the cutoff. As soon as the Trial of Annihilation was voted on in the council, three clans (Mongoose, Nova Cat and Snow Raven) tried to get a head start. The Wolverines handed Snow Raven their ass by sacking their capital and nuking their genetic repository. They finally backed down when 3 clans forces were massing.
Well despite all of this, if Kerensky can take only 800 warriors and 600 families into the unkown and create a society. Then it is just as likely that Clan Wolverine can do the same with more people even if it is not at full strength of warriors and civies. Even if your estimate is true, that is alot of manpower and things will get done in order to survive.
" The object of war is not to die for your country. It's to make some other bastard die for his!"--Patton
""War is Hell. Combat is a motherfucker."---General Tommy Franks
Edited by LAMdriver (07/23/09 10:27 PM)
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Bob_Richter
07/24/09 12:02 AM
66.191.9.99
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That's the old history, LAMdriver. You missed the part where BLP decided to change everything and TPTB decided to let him.
-Bob (The Magnificent) Richter
Assertions made in this post are the humble opinion of Bob.
They are not necessarily statements of fact or decrees from God Himself, unless explicitly and seriously stated to be so.
:)
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LAMdriver
07/24/09 02:44 AM
64.147.209.78
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DAMN IT!!!! LOL!!!
" The object of war is not to die for your country. It's to make some other bastard die for his!"--Patton
""War is Hell. Combat is a motherfucker."---General Tommy Franks
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Venom
07/24/09 05:22 AM
207.191.200.101
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You won't find the answers to the questions you as here. The board is moderated by an employee of the current company developing the storyline. He has a vested intrest in you buying the next book. If anything you will find red herrings and anything else that disuades you from the direction that the story is going-even though we know the horrible truth(i.e. battlemechs that float across the terrain upon bases that "click").
The Wolverines play a part-if even a small one-in this jihad nonsense. Follow the money.
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Cray
07/24/09 08:52 AM
147.160.136.10
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Quote:
Hate to say it, but your wrong about Clan Wolf. They won the batchall against Clan Widowmaker, but had to bid below the cutoff. As soon as the Trial of Annihilation was voted on in the council, three clans (Mongoose, Nova Cat and Snow Raven) tried to get a head start. The Wolverines handed Snow Raven their ass by sacking their capital and nuking their genetic repository. They finally backed down when 3 clans forces were massing.
How am I wrong about Clan Wolf not launching the annihilation alone when you just confirmed that multiple Clans were involved?
Quote:
Well despite all of this, if Kerensky can take only 800 warriors and 600 families into the unkown and create a society
He took 800 warriors and 1 million people. See Warriors of Kerensky, page 10.
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.
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Cray
07/24/09 09:12 AM
147.160.136.10
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Venom, don't mistake your experience from 3 months ago for the current state of the thread. Folks are now asking questions about past publications where all the answers are in the open.
Quote:
You won't find the answers to the questions you as here.
 I've been giving answers to questions asked by LAMDriver and Donkey, who don't seem to have the required books or BattleCorps stories. I've been digging through old FASA books, new BattleCorps stories, and recent FanPro/Catalyst books to find the canon facts about Wolverine. The answers I'm giving them are quotes straight from publications, not red herrings.
Quote:
The board is moderated by an employee of the current company developing the storyline.
Employee? Heh, that's a good one. 99% of my work for FanPro and Catalyst is pure volunteer work as a reviewer, assistant developer, and fact checker. For my few writing assignments (none on the Wolverines), I've received small, one-time, up front checks. My day job is not "Catalyst writer," it's "engineer at a research and development firm."
Quote:
He has a vested intrest in you buying the next book.
And what's that interest? Do you think I get paid for each book sold?
Quote:
If anything you will find red herrings and anything else that disuades you from the direction that the story is going-even though we know the horrible truth(i.e. battlemechs that float across the terrain upon bases that "click").
Wizkids shut down and Clicktech is no longer in production.
Quote:
The Wolverines play a part-if even a small one-in this jihad nonsense.
Oh, they play a part, just probably not the one you're thinking of. A good thread to visit: Why are the Bears So Pissed?
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 (07/24/09 09:36 AM)
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His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
07/24/09 12:07 PM
24.4.97.143
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What does it matter if he was paid or not?
Even if he is an employee he would not get a stake in the profits.
He does what he does here because he loves the game.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.
I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
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Bob_Richter
07/25/09 12:44 AM
66.191.9.99
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Indeed, Cray was a forumite before he joined the Forces Of Evil (tm)
-Bob (The Magnificent) Richter
Assertions made in this post are the humble opinion of Bob.
They are not necessarily statements of fact or decrees from God Himself, unless explicitly and seriously stated to be so.
:)
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His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
07/25/09 08:07 AM
24.4.97.143
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You make that sound as if its a bad thing.
If it was not for us bad guys, the heroes that you like so much would be seen for what they truly are babbling incompetent fools. Some how the idiot, see hero, with some impossible luck, happens to stumble across are fool prof plan that we took great efforts in planing out in every detail. He/she does something really stupid and ruins are efforts. Most of the time not knowing that they did anything until some one that was cheering them happens to point out to the idiot what we where up to and how there bungling happen to ruin are plans. Of course they then act as if there stupid act was done intentionally as if they knew what they where doing when it is obvious that they had no clue what happened until it was explained to them in great detail very slowly so there slow mind can comprehend what there being told.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.
I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
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Cray
07/25/09 10:27 AM
68.205.198.74
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Quote:
Indeed, Cray was a forumite before he joined the Forces Of Evil (tm)
Being a know-it-all forumite on rec.games.mecha, an early incarnation of CBT.com, and Sarna.net got me my first reviewing job, the mech guts section of the CBT:Companion.
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 (07/25/09 10:28 AM)
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Venom
07/25/09 02:15 PM
207.191.200.101
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I only recently became aware of Cray's association with TPTB. I think I was perusing the table of contents of one of my books and his name popped off the page at me. It actualy took me a few days to figure out where I had heard that name before! That is about the time I came back here, come to think of it.
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Venom
07/25/09 02:20 PM
207.191.200.101
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Okay, I did look at that thread and it seems a foolish premise. "Why are the GBs pissed?" Well duh! How about robes using WMDs on their trothkin? It actualy seems folly to go out and blab your(real, fabricated or imagined) conection to the Wolvies after you have already pissed off the biggest Clan.
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