Cray
08/13/02 07:49 AM
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BATTLETECH: 2300
A proposed alternate BT setting. Glowing comments appreciated. 
If my dates from FASA's timeline are a bit off, bear with me. This is an alternate history. A few years of inaccuracy aren't inaccuracy they're, uh, intentional changes because important people died or didn't die 'n stuff.
Anyway, the goal is (as the title suggests) a variant of BT set in the 2300s. I'm going to steal much of the setting and rewrite a few chunks (particularly by fragmenting the Terran Alliance) with the goal of producing a setting that has some of the feel of Aliens' marines. (Where small, hearty bands of infantry drop onto unsuspecting colonial planets and blow $hit up. As written, the targeted feces are colonial guerillas and the fledgling interstellar nations, but if a GM wants to play Mechs vs Aliens, go for it.)
Most of the 2300s in BT is already well suited for this sort of setting. The Inner Sphere is only partially settled, though the great nations of the Inner Sphere of the 31st Century have largely formed. They are, however, young nations surrounded by many others that are later subsumed: Rasalhague, Chesterson Commonality, St. Ives, Tikonov, the United Hindu Collective, etc. The great houses we all know and love are still expanding by diplomacy and war. Planets are considered populous when they have millions of people on them; many have been colonized only within the past generation or two. By 2235 - about a century prior to my target start date - 600 worlds had been colonized. Individuals own larger fleets of jumpships than some 3025 Successor States (heck: a Liao owns 1000 jumpships in this period; that's half the 3025-era IS jumpship population). Multiple regiments of (Terran Alliance) colonial marines are stationed on planets to keep the peace. This period is so cool I have to wonder why FASA didn't exploit it.
Well, I will.
Actually, I'm going to write the setting, get some reviews, and probably watch my players insist on D&D, Shadowrun, or quick 12-hour Everquest session rather than play this setting. Dang EQ addicts.
Anyway, I'm going to kick off this alternate BT setting with speculation about the nebulously detailed Terran Alliance of the
2200s.
FASA's timeline (I might call this the "prime timeline" or just "prime") held that the Alliance's fortunes began to wane in the 2230s with the Rim Worlds Rebellion. (I think I got that right.) Around 2237, the Liberal party came to power and cut off all colonies beyond 1 jump from Terra. This caused some consternation, of course, among the colonies. I'm not interested in the colonies.
What followed was about 80 years of seesawing elections between the Liberals and Expansionists. I'm not going to change that.
However, several offhanded comments in, oh, Jumpships and Dropships, the Star League Sourcebook, etc. caught my eye. During
the Deimos Project, several Terran Alliance nations seceded from the Alliance over the incredible cost of the project. Now that's an interesting precedent.
FASA's 1000-year future history understandably lacks detail in periods where no gaming is expected to occur. There just isn't room, time, or interest. So when FASA says that the Terran Alliance politics were dominated by seesawing power struggles between the Liberals and Expansionists there's room to interpret what was going on. For example, you could derive that Terrans were one of four things:
Violently pro-Liberal
Violently pro-Expansionist
Apathetic
Violently anti-Hegemony
The last sort, of course, were the people who fled to the colonies and fledgling interstellar states. Obviously those four are just high points of a spectrum of beliefs, but they don't cover some details I'm interested in. That's good; in short, I have room to speculate.
The Terran Alliance was built from sometimes violently patriotic nations. Those nations joined the Alliance with the view it wasn't much more than a stronger UN. The USA, for example, joined the (Western) Alliance after being convinced it would lose none of its prestige and power. Do you think China and the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere merged with the Alliance because of a sense of oneness with humanity and a desire for global peace? They joined right after *nearly going to war* with the Alliance. Also, no (or few) shots were fired, so no one figured out who was the biggest kid on the block and no scores were
settled. If the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere didn't join the Alliance out of the goodness of its heart (we're talking about) and didn't join as a broken, occupied vassal state, why did it join?
Because China thought it stood to gain a LOT from this, with minimal return effort. Again, the member-states thought of themselves as being as important as the central Alliance government. IMO, this situation seems very similar to the early United States of America in the era prior to the Civil War. There was a distinct separation of powers between the states and federal government, and the federal government often played second fiddle to the state governments. It took the test
of fire of the Civil War to shift that balance of power and give the federal government the upper hand.
Did the Terran Alliance ever undergo its own Nullification Crisis where its member-states declared they could refute Alliance laws within their borders? I haven't seen a whiff of that subject, though I have seen the Alliance government allowed member-states to secede. That's the ultimate nullification. Therefore, I can conclude there were still member-state identities into the latter days of the Alliance. The citizens of the Alliance may have viewed themselves as Japanese or Russians or French first and Alliancinianans second.
What I'm getting at here is that it seems that member-state patriotism was alive in the Alliance into 23rd and 24th centuries. Certainly there were plenty of colonies described in the old House sourcebooks that were founded by patriots to one nationality or another in addition to specific creeds and races.
Though I will say this: given 2 centuries of living in the Alliance without a significant alternative, most people would begin thinking of themselves as citizens of the Alliance. Therefore, I'm going to assume something awakens member-state patriotism before 2314. (2314 is the end of the window of opportunity: James McKenna makes a deal the Alliance can't refuse at that point, and probably doesn't want to refuse. So I need to make another offer - independence - before 2314.)
Heck, patriotism to a member-state might have existed in FASA's timeline. Whether it did or not, I think there's plenty of room for member-state patriotism in FASA's timeline. What I'm going to do is make it more prominent and because of that, prevent the formation of the Terran Hegemony. There will be no single, terrestrially oriented, central nation driving history in this timeline.
So how does member-state patriotism figure into causing the collapse of the Alliance and prevention of the Hegemony's birth? It goes something like this:
1) Patriotism to the USA, or France or Liechtenstein is not responsible for the collapse of the Alliance. The power struggle
between Liberals and Expansionists remains the cause of the collapse.
2) Patriotism to the USA, or France or Liechtenstein DOES mean there was a significant alternative to being a Liberal or Expansionist. When the cards were down and you didn't know who to trust, you have your countrymen. Therefore, when Admiral James McKenna parks his warships in orbit and says "stop fighting, I'm the boss now," he isn't the only alternative to surrender to. He isn't the only source of law and order, i.e. stability in those crazy, topsy-turvy times that most citizens would crave.
3) Patriotism to the USA, or France or Liechtenstein also means Admiral McKenna's fleet might not be so cohesive. His power base to say "I'm the boss now, baby," is weaker. Would you respect McKenna if half his fleet left to defend their home member-states?
And thus I present to you...
The Fall of the Terran Alliance and Some Other Alternate, Future History Stuff I Thought Of While Drunk Last Weekend
From 2237 onward, increasing outrage at the Expansionist/Liberal seesawing lead to opportunistic local politicians inflaming national patriotism and suggesting secession. So as the Alliance soldiered along with about the same foreign policies that produced the Inner Sphere we all know and love, it was beginning to fragment internally. 2245 signaled the death knell of the Terran Alliance's power when a major nation, Brazil, seceded. The Liberals were in power and used Brazil as an example of how bad the Expansionists (the minority party) had screwed things up - now the Alliance's own member-states were leaving. The Liberals would set things right and win Brazil back with love and generosity - vote Liberal! The Expansionists won a few more votes than the Liberals by painting the Liberals as limp-wrists who were destroying the Alliance. Vote Expansionist and win back the colonies! Vote Expansionist and crush Brazilian rebels!
In short order, Britain and then the USNA seceded (At the time, the USA had been renamed to the United States of North America - per the Kurita Sourcebook - to appease other member-states in the Americas who did not want to be perceived as part of a continent-spanning Yanqui Empire). They had rabid nationalists in local power and bailed when Brazil gave them the opportunity. They were quickly followed by the secessions of Gran Colombia and Argentina. (Gran Columbia and Argentina would've had the honor of providing the bulk of the troops to "crush the Brazilian rebels," i.e. fight their rabid Brazilian neighbors who scared Gran Columbia and Argentina more than the Alliance Parliament.) These "second wave secessions" caused the collapse of the Expansionist government and lead to a period of relative normality for years, back to the old Liberal/Expansionist seesaw without further secessions.
In 2271, a third wave of secessions was kicked off as Brazil, the US, and Britain successfully and peacefully annexed near-Earth Alliance systems and even planets in the Solar System, like Mars. (Many near-Sol colonies had been settled primarily by one terrestrial nation or another, a result of influence of the various member-nations within the Alliance. These colonies often yearned to rejoin the mother country.) This triggered the first significant Expansionist-Liberal violence as the Expansionists launched terrorist attacks against the Liberals (who were firmly in power and had allowed the annexations to occur.) Canada also seceded in this period in an apparent grudge secession over the forced separation of Quebec in 2090. (Which, Canada contended for nearly two centuries, was pointless when Quebec left Canada - already a Terran Alliance member-nation - to join the Terran Alliance.)
The worsening violence in the Alliance was often driven by politics surrounding the seceded nations but, oddly, rarely involved the seceded nations. The Alliance avoided warfare because the secessionists often had to build their militaries from scratch. This lead the secessionists to acquire cheap, potent means of building a dangerous military: i.e. they bought and/or built a lot of weapons of mass destruction first, then got around to training conventional military units. As border skirmishes had demonstrated battlefield competence and savagery by the secessionists, no political leader (Expansionist or Liberal) wanted to ponder the bloody war that would result if the Alliance tried to forcibly reintegrate the seceded nations. Bloody wars were bad for reelection campaigns.
In 2310, matters came to a head in the Alliance when a popular Liberal candidate for Prime Minister - the only adequate candidate the Liberals could field - was assassinated. Private armies of respective political parties clashed in the streets of Geneva. Regular Alliance Army units were drawn into the fighting insofar as that barracks and bases were torn apart by units with mixed political loyalties.
And into this firestorm strode a giant: Admiral Jane McKenna of the Alliance Navy (alternate history butterfly effect: James McKenna got an X-chromosome wiggler from dad instead of a Y-chromosome, hence Jane instead of James). She had been a willing recipient of Expansionist arms build ups "for the fabled day when all of Terra was re-united" and now used many of the weapons and warships purchased with those budget increases to bloodily squelch the fighting. She evaporated a few uninhabited islands with orbital bombardment and, when firefights continued to rage on some military bases, evaporated them, too. The Alliance became real quiet as McKenna announced The Way Things Would Be Run From Now On.
While many Alliance citizens welcomed the end of turmoil McKenna brought with her, more than a few local politicians were pissed at the lost opportunities she represented. China, Mexico and India had been particularly hoping to capitalize on the turmoil between the Liberals and Expansionists, primarily to squeeze additional protective tariffs and subsidies for their domestic industries. (Flashback to the 2200s: Many secessionist nations found they were in very poor economic positions when no longer in the Alliance's huge free trade zone. They had to bump their workweeks to 25, 30, and even 40 hours - and that wasn't overtime! - and eliminate subsidies, etc. that artificially supported their industries. After decades of literally hard work, the seceded Terran nations were lean, mean economic powerhouses that grossly outperformed Alliance industries. The solution to protect Alliance industries from this competition was, of course, protective tariffs and subsidies, but for varying political reasons they couldn't be applied too strongly. China and India had hoped to raise them further by aiding one political party or the other.) Led by China and India, a slew of nations seceded from what was still the Terran Alliance. Like other secessionists before them, they brought very few military units with them.
McKenna, military dictator and mastermind of a military coup, saw disaster looming before her. With the secession of the Alliance powerhouses China and India, the Alliance might fragment completely. The military dictator of the Alliance sought an unsurprising military solution: she started bombarding China and sent in the Marines.
Other seceded nations responded to McKenna's rhetoric about reuniting Terra under one banner. Britain, a seceded nation that had staked its economic future on interstellar trade (for example, Rudolph Ryan's Ice Cartel was a British-flag shipping operation) had built a small but potent fleet of real, dedicated warships to match the arms build up of the Alliance Space Navy. When Admiral McKenna started to (apparently) act on her rhetoric by attacking China and India, Britain also acted. Its warships burst out of the Earth-Luna L2 "pirate" point and caught the bulk of the Alliance Navy in "low and slow" orbits over Earth. The Alliance warships were deeply involved in supporting the small Terran Alliance Marine Corps and thus completely unready to defend themselves in what was purely hypothetical until July 11th, 2310: a warship-on-warship battle. Worse, the Alliance Navy was ill trained for this role as it was expected to defeat primarily armed merchantmen of the sort that had been seen in the Rim Worlds Rebellion. Britain, on the other hand, had done little but expect to fight the Alliance Navy (only other thing: anti-piracy patrols for the huge British merchant fleet). The raging battle in space became a messy confusion of panicked merchantmen, divided Alliance loyalties and mutinies where ships swapped sides several times in the battle, and seceded terrestrial nations sporadically sending reinforcements of aerospace fighters to aid the British. Three centuries of near-Earth space infrastructure were almost wiped clean as warships fired at any signal in an ECM haze and decoy-filled environment (or just for giggles).
When the smoke cleared, no faction could field a significant space force. "McKenna's War" was relegated to primarily ground-, sea- and air-campaign when the regrouped Alliance military forced confrontations on the ground. In a way that would've made past generations of generals jealous, McKenna's War was "over in time to have the boys home for Christmas."
On the other hand, 5 months of 24th Century warfare on a heavily armed, heavily populated planet sucked a$$.
Though bolstered with heavy armored units created years before at the Expansionists' urging (for the reunification of Terra, of course), the Alliance military was still oriented for suppressing rebellions and guerillas. It was not suited for a grinding war of attrition. (And 5 months of 24th Century warfare was a grinding war of attrition). On the other hand, the smaller militaries of the seceded states (especially the ad hoc militias of recent secessionists) might've had the orientation and training for such a slugging match, but lacked the resources. In the end, the Alliance probably would've won a limited victory (stopping short of nuclear exchanges, which no one would win). Its hours of preparatory bombardment of China and India had crippled the military and industry of those nations and other, older secessionists had bled out their air support destroying the Alliance Navy. Recovery seemed unlikely.
Except for a new weapon system the US unveiled in the deserts of Western China to stop the first armored thrust that the Alliance had pinned its hopes on "for bringing a swift conclusion to the war." (i.e. Ending the war in a few days). This new weapon system was the result of a joint, top-secret effort by a dozen of the US's top weapons manufacturers and leading companies in fields as diverse as electronics and metallurgy. It was:
The Battlemech.
(Oh, shut up. So I pushed the tech level a little - a century - ahead of FASA's. BT must have battlemechs, or it isn't BT.)
The US battlemechs did horrible, awful things to the shocked, unprepared Alliance armored units. The entire Alliance armored corps was routed. Divisions of tanks were left burning in the desert while only a handful of the new "mechs" were destroyed.
Indeed, when the screaming and the squishing was over, the US observed that many more of its new war machines had failed due to mechanical problems than succumbed to enemy fire. (And on that note, artillery was bumped up to the top of mech units' $hit list. Of 23 battlemechs destroyed by Alliance troops, 19 were destroyed by concentrated anti-armor artillery fire. Incidentally, over 200 broke down to the extent they were not combat-ready, though most were back in action in a few hours, and virtually every mech suffered a failure of some system or another.)
McKenna's War was prolonged because the ability of the combatants to destroy far outweighed their ability to build. Factories simply couldn't shift to a war footing fast enough and when they did, their output was a pitiful fraction of what was destroyed on a daily basis. The handful of US battlemech regiments simply couldn't be everywhere at once and often took weeks to replace the spare parts a few days' maneuvering and combat chewed up. And the Alliance fielded a LOT of troops. They took a lot of killing to get all dead, not infrequently needing more bullets and power cells than a secessionist military unit
had.
Though largely a terrestrial campaign, the billions of colonists that claimed loyalty to one side or another provided considerable industrial support to both sides. The Alliance marshaled its colonies "to liberate Terra" with a planned "Spring Offensive" (to take place in March of 2311). The secessionists, particularly those with several colony planets, took a different tact: let their colonists launch invasions of Alliance colonies. These invasions were hastily organized affairs that began in late November 2310 and bore a resemblance to Theodore Kurita's counter-attack in the War of 3039. Had the
Alliance dug in its heels instead of retreating in shock, the confused, spur-of-the-moment invasions probably would have failed. Instead, vast amounts of supplies and troops the Alliance colonies were preparing were lost or scattered. Communication delays and early reports scared the Alliance's leaders, and shook the morale of the public when the reports leaked. It was an unintentional bluff, but it worked.
This was enough to convince Admiral McKenna that it was time to call for a peace treaty. She recognized the war had unified the remains of the Alliance as much as it was going to unify, and further fighting might be rough on her career prospects. Lynch mobs of families who had lost sons and daughters and all that.
The Christmas Peace Treaty (of 2310) brought a formal peace to Terra and the solar system. It recognized the independence of all the secessionists (and some new ones that bailed after the December 17th Armistice), some of their gains (the Alliance lost a few planets when colonial governors surrendered in a panic), and stabilized borders. No reparations were exchanged, and now everyone could get on with the task of rebuilding.
Or consolidating their tyrannical (but public-approved) grasp on power, in the case of certain Terran Alliance leaders like Jane McKenna, who shall remain unnamed to avoid embarrassing her.
Within a year, near-Terran space was at war again. The fledgling interstellar nations around Terra had taken the opportunity to snap up Terran Alliance and secessionist planets, particularly those more than a jump from Terra. This was a group of uncoordinated wars between individual Terran and interstellar nations. In all cases, well-populated colonies ended up in the hands of the side the colonies favored. Wars for contested planets ended more rapidly when the colony favored the Terrans, because a terrestrial nation of a few hundred million citizens could often bring more wealth, industry, manpower, and firepower to bear than a loose merchantile association of a dozen colonies. Colonies with smaller populations tended to be won by Terrans even if the locals did not like them; industrial base and national wealth mattered more than loyalties.
The "Terran Wars of Aggression" of the 2312-2320 era served to strengthen the central government of many fledgling interstellar nations. Shiro Kurita's Alliance of Galedon, for example, swelled as planets joined willingly to gain the protection offered by Kurita's military machine. (Which, as an example of why Terrans often won contested planets, stripped its military cupboards bare to field 50,000 officers and soldiers when it launched its first interstellar invasion in 2303. Major Terran nations like Brazil, the Terran Alliance, and Britain often deployed several expeditionary forces of 50,000 soldiers apiece simultaneously, and this without touching garrison or reserve units.) Lucien Davion was inspired first by the aggressive rhetoric of Jane McKenna and later the Terran Wars of Aggression to form the Crucis Pact. The Tamar Pact and Protectorate of Donegal nearly doubled in size while the Federation of Skye industrialized to compete with the Terrans.
Without the separation of light-years to complicate espionage, most Terran nations quickly acquired copies of the key technologies that made mechs possible. Indeed, the US actively sold mechs to its allies and worked with Britain and Brazil to build improved models so an edge could be maintained over (primarily) the Terran Alliance military. In 2323, the nascent Draconis Combine simply purchased technical specifications for key parts and processes used to build battlemechs from cash-strapped India. In a similar deal, China sold the wreckage of several US mechs left from McKenna's War to the Free Worlds League. (China and India were suffering messy post-independence economic depressions akin to our history's post-USSR Russian economic meltdown. They would do almost anything for money.) As of 2330, both interstellar nations are only fielding test units of battlemechs. Other interstellar nations still lacking battlemechs are fielding upgraded weapons and improved armor and ECM derived from mechs for their conventional vehicles. Anti-mech infantry tactics also abound, but many of them are flawed for lack of testing against real mechs and even those that work require nearly suicidal troops.
The current decade, the 2330s, is considered the second decade of continuous peace since the so-called Terran Wars of Aggression. However, it's only peace on a large scale. Most large nations, Terran and interstellar, are persuading independent colonies to accept their "protection" and "aid", if not outright conquering them. Many planets end up with nominal independence but their foreign and even internal policies are usually asserted by the nation asserting hegemony over them. These confederations of conquests closely conform to the definition of true empires: central, powerful states ruling over vassal nations (Britain even refers to its current holdings as its "Third Empire".) Richer colonies are contested, of course, often by proxy forces derived the contested colony's own population - brother against brother, the tragedy, the humanity, and all that. The only sign of the major nations struggling for the colony are company-sized groups of "advisors."
Even nations that are technically democratic-champions-of-the-common-man like the US and Crucis Pact are annexing neighbors with bayonets, usually driven by lobbying efforts of large corporations or trade cartels. There have been instances
when the USMC was deployed as all but mercenaries for large corporations.
GEOPOLITICS
If you're motivated enough, bust out the House sourcebooks and try to map out the many different interstellar nations around in 2330.
Now fragment the Terran Hegemony and hand out its systems to a dozen Terran nations. A majority of systems near Sol are held by just two of them: the Terran Alliance and the USA (which had dropped the "North" from its name) hold 67 of the 102 worlds within 1 jump of Terra, with the remainder split among China, India, Britain, France, Brazil, Argentina, and Canada. This should not be taken as indicative that the US and Terran Alliance are the only super powers. Britain has a large number of Imperial possessions strung out through what would be Lyran space (aka the British Arm to the annoyance of non-British
locals), including some newly settled colonies Britain founded on its own. There's a reasonable chance the Federation of Skye, boxed in by its neighbors and threatened by the Combine, may seek a union with the naval powerhouse Britain. Brazil may only have two systems within 1 jump of Sol, but it has a lot of colonies and imperial possessions running through what would be the Capellan March (aka the Brazilian Arm). Mixed in among the Brazilian and independent worlds are French and Argentinian planets. France is also snapping up worlds in the Crucis Pact. The USA, apparently sensing future entrapment (or just
being an a$$hole) has declared a Manifest Destiny and is settling what it calls "the American Arm", which means it is basically overrunning the Free Worlds League. (Now, arguably, the FWL was settled by a lot of North Americans, and the US is making a lot of progress by playing on lingering loyalties. But there are a lot of FWL planets that were settled by peoples without a single root in the Americas.)
Currently, most military actions only involve a few companies of foreign infantry and light armor vs. local militias/guerillas. A squad (lance) of mechs is a moderately rare addition to a normal unit of "military advisors"; a company of armor is somewhat more common. On the other hand, the industrial plenty of the period (vs the Prime timeline's 31st century) is obvious: a unit of advisors, even a single company, will often have its own jumpship, and soldiers are much more highly valued than their equipment. Militaries of the day are wasteful in a way that would make 3025 militaries cringe.
These small units are at odds with the large militaries Terran nations can field, but those huge armies are mostly pointed at other Terran nations. Further, the use of big militaries would probably start a political career-endangering war. If it's only advisors, it isn't a war, it's a domestic problem that nation X is helping out with a few advisors. Yes, that's it. Advisors....
Something worth noting is that 2/3 of humanity lives within one jump of Terra, though human colonies are known to be as much as 1000 light-years from Terra.
MILITARIES
Militaries use level 1 Inner Sphere technology (feel free to use level 3 non-technological rules, such as optional tactics and maneuvers). Except where noted below, level 2 technology is not available. Yes, this does mean the tech of Battletech: 2300 is probably (much) more advanced than FASA's 2300's technology. Note altered weapon and equipment rules listed under mechs.
A majority of nations field conventional vehicles, infantry, artillery, and atmospheric (conventional) fighters. These are as effective against mechs as normal level 1 units can be.
Fusion power is the norm; IC engines are rare in militaries outside of utility and civilian vehicles.
Aerospace fighters are only fielded by Terran nations and the Capellans. ASF's with both excellent atmospheric and excellent
space performance are a late-22nd century Terran Alliance breakthrough. Interstellar nations make do with armed shuttles for space combat and atmospheric fighters for planetary combat. Argentina has an outstanding aerospace fighter force, partly because it lacks warships.
*The only construction rule regarding ASFs is that autocannons, artillery and machine guns are useless in space. Their projectiles are too slow to be effective at normal space combat ranges. They are occasionally mounted on ASFs with ground support missions.
On the subject of warships, warships are fielded by most Terran nations and major interstellar nations. Other nations and independent colonies make do with "armed merchantmen" (for which I haven't work out rules). Terran nations generally field about a "division" of warships (4-6 warships) if they only control a "handful" of planets. The major powers like Brazil, the Terran Alliance, etc. field several dozen warships of larger size and many more armed transports. Britain is the first nation to field a "100 warship" fleet, though it does this by keeping some obsolete warships in service when they should be scrapped and fattening out its roster with corvettes. Warships are capped at 2.5 million tons as usual, but current shipyard and technological limits make anything over 1.5-1.8 million tons highly impractical. In fact, there are no effective warships over 1-1.2 million tons. The white elephants in the over-1.2 million-ton range have been built by Britain, the Terran Alliance, Gran Columbia, and China. They are the warship equivalents to the 3025 Charger. They have enormous crews, poorly thought out weapon arrays, sometimes thin armor, and are always slow (1/2 thrust). The British King George XI and American Cuba-class battleships (both about 1.2 million tons) are superior to the ineffectual "dreadnaughts", with outstanding maneuverability (2/3) and better armament.
Actual rules for warships are as follows:
*Use Inner Sphere technology
*No lithium-fusion batteries
*Sails are four times as heavy as normal and have half the integrity (minimum 1)
*Only normal armor is available, except British warships, which may use ferro-aluminum armor.
*Thrust is limited by fusion drive technology: warships up to 500,000 tons may have 4/6 movement, decreasing by 1 thrust per
500,000 ton bracket above 500,000 tons.
*Naval autocannons are not available - single impulse chemical propellants cannot sling projectiles fast enough to effectively engage space targets.
*Naval gauss rifles are available.
*Ships cannot mount normal autocannons and machine guns, even for point defense roles.
Rules for jumpships:
*As dropships are immature currently, build "conventional jumpships" as warships
*Tonnage is limited to 500,000 tons
*Thrust over 2/3 is rare; 1/2 is the norm
*Use the above sail rules
*Docking collars will be almost unknown; the jumpships will carry their cargo internally and use 100- to 200-ton small craft to ferry cargo to the ground
Dropships are a young technology (introduced in the 2500s in the Prime timeline). Spheroid and aerodyne dropships are limited
to 5,000 tons. Aerodynes under 1000 tons and all spheroid dropships can land and takeoff vertically (without damage, in the case of the aerodynes). Aerodynes over 1000 tons need landing strips, which are frequently not available even on developed planets (the thickness of concrete strips to handle multi-thousand ton dropships is ridiculous)...and wheeled landing gear for vehicles over 1000 tons is considered impractical anyway. (The dropships begin looking like millipedes, with incredible numbers of wheels under much of their length). Large aerodynes thus are currently amphibians. The damage wrought by VTOL-landing spheroids over 1000 tons is beyond the scope of cheap materials like concrete to resist, so they frequently land
in water, too.
Battlemechs are also a nascent technology. Their use in McKenna's War was their baptism of fire and subsequent use in "colonial disturbances" has not resulted in refined tactics. For the most part, they are used as tanks, albeit funny-looking, tough tanks. The USMC probably has the most advanced tactics for utilizing the full potential of mechs, especially their all-terrain capabilities. This is partly because the USMC frequently encounters irregular opponents rather than stand-up conventional battles. Even the USMC tends to use them as tanks - it primarily uses infantry and light APCs in
most of its actions. Most other militaries deploy the mechs to combat regular armored forces or fixed defenses - rare
occurrences in the colonies. Due to a lack of jump jets, mechs tend to emphasize a humanoid appearance with hands for maximum rough-terrain mobility. Additional thinking supporting the widespread use of hands is that if you're not going to put hands on the arms, you might as well reduce the arms to ball turrets - there's no point to lower arm actuators, resulting in Riflemen-type mechs. The combat engineering utility of hands is also considered a major benefit of mechs over conventional vehicles. Finally, while mech designs are numerous and every inventor tries to build a new Super Mech in their garage (like the early years of tank development), nations actually only field a handful of designs to cover a majority of roles that current military doctrine considers mechs useful for. Mechs and mechwarriors are hot stuff in the military, like airplanes and their pilots in and after WWI. They are not, however, gods to be worshipped (they disagree, of course).
As noted above, mechs are generally level 1 critters. The exceptions are:
*No jump jets. (The idea of jump jets is regarded as a silly, comic book idea when suggested. Most researchers don't even consider them any more than they do transformable mecha or other anime ideas. Mechs are really viewed as legged, agile tanks in BT: 2300.)
*XL engines are available at 4 times the normal price to: Brazil, the US, and Britain. Only the US deploys mechs with XL engines; the others have designs with XL engines mired in budget battles. XL engines *occupy no side torso crits.* They are the next step forward in fusion engine development and will probably fully replace standard fusion engines in all war machines by 2400. Generally, XLs are used to increase movement rather than to free tonnage for weaponry. Doctrine currently considers the minimal acceptable movement of XL-equipped mechs to be 5/8 and designs that sacrifice mobility for firepower are derisively referred to as "land dreadnaughts" or "artillery practice."
*Autocannons are completely non-standard:
AC/2: 4 tons, 1 crit, 60 shots/ton, no minimum, considered a MG when used against infantry, otherwise normal
AC/5: 6 tons, 2 crits, 24 shots/ton, no minimum, considered a MG when used against infantry, otherwise normal
AC/10: 10 tons, 5 crits, 12 shots/ton, inflict full damage against infantry, otherwise normal
AC/15: 12 tons, 6 crits, 8 shots/ton, 15 damage, 6 heat, range 1-4/5-8/9-12, inflict full damage against infantry
AC/20: 8 crits, 6 shots/ton, inflict full damage against infantry, otherwise normal
*Terminology. The assault mech weight class is referred to as "super heavy" mechs. Mechs are far more often referred to by their roles: scout, fast attack, main battle mech, etc., and these only have vague weight classes assigned to them.
*Few nations can build mechs over 55 tons. Over 55 tons, bipedal vehicles simply gain a whole new level of complexity that gives engineers and manufacturers headaches. Heavier mechs require more maintenance, more attention, have narrower design margins, require more expensive materials and tighter tolerances - a combination of requirements few nations can meet and produce effective war machines. (Results are comparable to or worse than to the original US mechs, which were 100-ton behemoths that had a half-life to breakdown of 100km. While mech technology has advanced, few nations have invested the massive effort into the engineering problems of heavy and super heavy mechs. The US's original mechs worked as well as they did because they had enormous amounts of cash thrown at every problem their pre-War testing revealed.) The US has not shared its research into heavy and super heavy mechs partly because such mechs are currently viewed as dead-end hangar queens (it has switched to 50-55 ton mechs like other nations) and partly because the US Army keeps hoping to field effective super heavy mechs. Currently, only the Terran Alliance, China, and the US can (but do not) build super heavy mechs, while Brazil, Britain, and France can (but do not) build heavy mechs. The vast majority of combat mechs are 40-50 tons, with light mechs (used more as highly mobile combat units rather than scouts) hovering in the 15-25 ton range.
*The Free Worlds League is the only nation building quadrupedal mechs, and the only one capable of building them. Though quads have unique issues, they aren't particularly challenging ones to overcome and because quad mechs avoid some of the difficulties of bipedal mechs, interested nations could probably develop their own quads easily enough.
*The short range of BT: 2300 weapons compared to RL weapons is ascribed to super armor (at more than a weapon's effective
range, shots simply bounce off or ablate harmlessly from super armor; at lower ranges, it's still hard to concentrate damage adequately to penetrate the armor) and integral super ECM (which accounts for plummeting accuracy as targets move more than a few hexes away.)
*Orbital deployment of mechs is not yet possible, nor seriously considered yet. They are currently deployed by landed dropships or large shuttles. Research into deployment is emphasizing larger "walk on, walk off" dropships to get away from the current large shuttles (which can only carry 1-2 mechs, often in strapped down, prone positions).
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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SSFSX17
08/13/02 12:50 PM
209.233.16.47
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I.... like it! I'll buy THAT for a dollar!
I'm guessing that ClanTech is totally out of the question, unless you implement some kind of freaky alien race that has many parallels to humans except that they are more fixated on war, thus having better war technologies but poorer electronics.
Lousy good-for-nothing mortals. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
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Cray
08/13/02 01:12 PM
64.83.29.242
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Clantech...give it another century. Technological advances are occurring more rapidly in this setting than in normal BT.
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
08/13/02 01:18 PM
4.35.174.250
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But I'm not industrious enough to draw up the map. Anyone else feel like doing it?
And ship design. In the 2300s, the Compact Core is the norm? Why not a less efficient KF hyperdrive somewhere between CC and the standard jump-core?
And what about these obsolete vessels? Are they to just be more poorly designed, or d'ya have rules for them, too?
How about a "space fighter" to be the counterpart of fusion-powered conventional fighters in space for nations that don't have true aerospace fighters? Or would that be too goofy?
-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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Cray
08/13/02 01:45 PM
64.83.29.242
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>And ship design. In the 2300s, the Compact Core is the norm? Why not a less efficient KF hyperdrive somewhere between CC and the standard jump-core?
I figured something between a compact core and standard was the norm, but I went with compact cores because of the existing rules support for them. With docking collars being rare and lithium fusion batteries not developed, compact cores won't be too expensive. However, there is room for improvement when dropships reach maturity and jumpships can be simplified down to inexpensive standard BT jumpships, which (I figure) approximates the "historical" development of jumpships.
>And what about these obsolete vessels? Are they to just be more poorly designed, or d'ya have rules for them, too?
No rules (yet), but somehow "less effective" - supposedly ships like the Aegis, Lola, and Vincent saw a considerable number of upgrades during their careers. The Aegis was supposedly improved considerably in the Reunification War. Something along the lines of heavier or less damaging weaponry might be the case.
>How about a "space fighter" to be the counterpart of fusion-powered conventional fighters in space for nations that don't have true aerospace fighters? Or would that be too goofy?
No, not all. I speculated "armed shuttles" were the norm for nations lacking true aerospace fighters. I'd figure you could just design a normal aerospace fighter, with the restriction its only atmospheric capabilities were re-entry and a controlled landing.
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
08/13/02 06:54 PM
4.35.174.250
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>>>I figured something between a compact core and standard was the norm, but I went with compact cores because of the existing rules support for them. <<<
Not too hard to make your own rule, though.
Say the new core takes up 70% of the ship's mass and evenly splits the difference between standard and compact cores in cost.
>>>With docking collars being rare and lithium fusion batteries not developed, compact cores won't be too expensive.<<<
Well, that is unless you use the *original* cost tables.
How aboout some kind of a "Heavy Shuttle" bay, like 1000 tons, holding a craft (dropship) up to 1000 tons?
>>>Something along the lines of heavier or less damaging weaponry might be the case.<<<
Speaking of weaponry -- are you going to tweak that at all, or are we going to be stuck with AT2's weapons?
>>>No, not all. I speculated "armed shuttles" were the norm for nations lacking true aerospace fighters.<<<
I rather thought you meant small craft with guns.
>>>I'd figure you could just design a normal aerospace fighter, with the restriction its only atmospheric capabilities were re-entry and a controlled landing. <<<
Or that it has no atmospheric capabilities. Like the Vengeance, it "may not operate in an atmosphere."
-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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Cray
08/14/02 07:25 AM
64.83.29.242
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>How aboout some kind of a "Heavy Shuttle" bay, like 1000 tons, holding a craft (dropship) up to 1000 tons?
Sounds peachy.
>Speaking of weaponry -- are you going to tweak that at all, or are we going to be stuck with AT2's weapons?
AT2 suited me because, as noted, I probably won't be using the setting. Shadowrun or Everquest will likely lure my group away. If you use the setting, feel free to customize it.
>Or that it has no atmospheric capabilities. Like the Vengeance, it "may not operate in an atmosphere."
Sure, that works. Shades of B5.
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
08/14/02 12:28 PM
4.35.174.250
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I might just use this setting. My 2995 group more or less evaporated and it might be time to do something else using the remaining players...
...and this setting has so little of the badly flawed FASA matierial...
-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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Cray
08/14/02 12:41 PM
64.83.29.242
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If you're going to present copies to others to read, you might want to use the one on CBT. I touched it up a bit while conducting some required censoring of naughty words.
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
08/14/02 12:47 PM
4.35.174.250
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Eh. Yes. I think I shall.
-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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Cray
08/14/02 01:03 PM
64.83.29.242
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You shall...use the CBT draft because the semi-censored language in this draft might offend your readers?
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
08/14/02 01:51 PM
4.35.174.250
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>>>the semi-censored language in this draft might offend your readers? <<<
Not likely.
Personally, I think both language filters and the CBT rule about bypassing them are silly, but it's a company board. What are you gonna do?
-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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MacLeod
08/18/02 06:28 PM
166.90.34.108
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Dude, this is sweet! The whole thing has a gritty feel that just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy!
About the 'Mechs... do they have a rather 'used' look like the ones from Heavy Gear? Or are they nice and shiny? I think making them gritty and battered like Gears would be cool - it adds more character. 
Drugs don't kill people, pancreatic cancer kills people.
... and whoever heard of a drug that causes pancreatic cancer?
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Cray
08/18/02 07:04 PM
12.91.139.51
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>About the 'Mechs... do they have a rather 'used' look like the ones from Heavy Gear? Or are they nice and shiny? I think making them gritty and battered like Gears would be cool - it adds more character
Well...no mech is more than about 20 years old, and all the 20-year old mechs have pretty much been scrapped in favor of newer models. New models are emerging annually and mech production would make the Successor States drool with envy.
No doubt mechs serving with "advisors" away from proper motorpools for months at time get a bit ragged around the chrome trim.
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
08/19/02 01:20 PM
64.83.29.242
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A look at the demographics, material wealth, and setting of BT:2300.
POPULATION DISTRIBUTION
I noted in my first BT:2300 post that 2/3 of humanity lives within 1 jump of Terra, though human colonies were known to be as much as 1000 light-years from Terra. I also noted elsewhere that there were 102 settled planets (and somewhat fewer systems) within 1 jump of Terra. Can I put somewhat firmer numbers on humanity's population?
Hell, yeah!
I figure Terra's population was fairly stagnant through the 21st Century (The UN says it will be. Trust the UN. The UN is your friend.) stabilizing at about 9 billion people by 2100. Then, BLAM! Star travel! Colonies! Elbow room! And most of all...no television! No bowling alleys! No computer games! Without modern forms of entertainment on colony worlds (and a practical value to having kids: free farmhands in 3-4 years!), I figure populations began growing again at a respectable pace, say doubling every 40 years (slow for pre-industrial society, rather quick for the information age). To keep the numbers simple, let's start this population boom in 2130, about a decade after the first interstellar colony was settled.
It's now 2330. Given 200 years, the human population doubled 5 times. That means a 32-fold increase of population from 9 billion to 288 billion. Per prior notes, that means 192 billion humans are within 1 jump of Terra, or an average of 1.88 billion per habitable world. Readers: I recommend you invest in the construction industry and real estate.
You can extrapolate a couple of factoids from those figures. Over 600 worlds were settled in 2235; another century has passed. It wouldn't be beyond the pale to estimate 1500 to 2000 planets have been settled by 2330, especially when the frantic pace of the 2172 to 2235 period saw 500 new colonies established. Let's say...2040 colonies have been established in 2330, including near-Terran planets but not Terra. I'm the writer, I get to pick these numbers.
This leads to a quick estimate of average populations throughout the rest of human space. 1938 planets have 96 billion people, indicating an average population of not quite 50 million humans per inhabited planet.
Wow. Is anyone else thinking of clichés about rabbits and reproduction?
I'll be more specific yet. As I said, 2/3 of humanity and 102 colonies are within 1 jump of Terra. I'll be creative and say the people in BT:2300 refer to these planets as the "Core Worlds," just because that's a fun sci-fi cliché. Beyond the Core Worlds and out to 500 light-years is the Inner Sphere, where another 30% of humanity and, um, 1038 colonies reside. About 3% of humanity is in the Periphery spread across exactly 1000 more colonies. (So I like round numbers. Piss off. Write your own alternate history.)
Further subdivisions. At 180 light-years from Terra, most stellar cartographers mark what is called (for obscure reasons) "The Mason-Dixon Shell." However odd the name is, it is does represent a quite sharp change in population. 2/3 of the Inner Sphere's population (20% of humanity) lives between the Core Worlds and the Mason-Dixon Shell. The remaining 1/3 (10% of humanity) lives between the Mason-Dixon Sphere and the Periphery. The Periphery is also divided, though this division is rarely recognized in the Core Worlds (it's all BFE to them). Most Inner Sphere and Periphery dwellers recognize "the Deep Periphery" as an endless zone beginning at 1000 light-years from Earth. An insignificant fraction of humanity lives in the Deep Periphery (currently) and no more than a several dozen colonies are thought to be out there.
Over half of the colonies of the Inner Sphere beyond the Mason Dixon Shell are "secondary" colonies, settled not by Terrans but by humans from Terran-settled (a.k.a "primary") colonies. More than 75% of the Periphery worlds are secondary (or tertiary, or more) colonies. The Deep Periphery's exact breakdown is uncertain, but it is suspected to actually be mostly primary colonies.
Extrapolations from the above facts and figures:
For one thing, the obvious thing, is that the adventurous souls who leave the green hills of Earth for the wilds of colonial planets ain't as adventurous as the History-Discovery-Learning Channel documentaries make them out to be. Oh, they wanted to flee the wild political unrest of Terra alright, but they didn't want to flee civilization. They want to go someplace with TV, internet access, and hot showers. Hence the long-established colonies of the Core Worlds have the lion's share of humanity's population.
Second, the limit of human sanity when it comes to being cooped up with thousands of other colonists and their screaming brats in a jumpship in low/zero-G is 6 weeks, or 6 jumps, or 180 light-years from Terra.
Third, based on the supposition of a large number of primary colonies in the Deep Periphery, it would seem that more than anyone else, Terrans just want to get the urge to flee the [heck] away from other humans. Most colonists usually appreciate having a few neighbors when times get rough, so secondary (and tertiary, and so forth) colonies aren't as common in the Deep Periphery.
Fourth, at least 2/3 of humanity's industrial base and economy (in fact, something like 85% based on flags like steel and jumpship production) are in the Core Worlds. Sustaining such a vast urban population takes more industry, infrastructure, and wealth than living in a log cabin.
Fifth, a lot of Core Worlds are getting crowded. A firsthand glance at media reports (and propaganda from interstellar nations, and my first BT:2300 post) might suggest Terran nations are only after colonial taxes, consumers, resources, and/or women. This would be because the most newsworthy Terran "aggressions" are caused by Terran corporations that *are* after colonial consumers and (almost literal) captive markets. However, the real driver is population pressure. The Core Worlds (and Terra) need more elbowroom.
I mean, have you seen how crowded the highways of New Earth and Procyon are getting around the cities? Those Inner Sphere colonists might only have, like, one donkey cart per mile of 8-lane superhighway. It's a crying shame. (Or so Core World inhabitants tend to think.)
Yes, the Core Worlders are spawning and heading to a colony near you. That the targeted colony might have 100 million inhabitants already and a well-developed industrial base is irrelevant. The Core Worlds have over 1 billion apiece. 100 million is nothing, just some forward deployed construction teams to build the arcologies and superhighways for the Core Worlder colonists.
After reading all that, some questions for you when it comes to writing adventures:
1) Do you want to be on the side with the bigger divisions?
2) Do you want to be play the underdog?
3) Do you want to recreate the thrill of the Outreaches Rebellion when the mighty Terran (Alliance) armies were defeated by farmers with hunting rifles and shoulder-fired rockets built in toy factories?
4) Do you want to be on the side that can afford to give small units their own jumpships?
5) Do you prefer to be the faceless soldier in the big army doing his patriotic duty, or the heroic defender of an entire (small) planet?
Further things to keep in mind:
A thought experiment. Take a...oh, how about a Potemkin-class warship. Fill up its hard points with 25 Mammoth-class dropships. Figuring 1 colonist per 10 tons, each Mammoth can haul 4000 colonists. The Potemkin can haul 100,000. Wow, you're thinking, right? Now, the question for our readers at home: how many of those Potemkins does it take to move 1 billion colonists to a colony 1 jump away in the space of a year?
To keep a perspective on the answer, keep in mind how many warships (and the Potemkin is a warship) FASA's Inner Sphere, FASA's old Star League, fielded.
Now, what is the point of this thought experiment?
Well, in BT:2300, the shipping capacity to move humanity's excess population to new colonies *exists.* Humanity's population will increase by 288 billion in the next 40-50 years and, while many will stay on their current planets, the shipping capacity to move billions of people a year *exists.* And this without tapping the normal cargo transports.
Do you see the point of the thought experiment yet?
There's three, really. One, it's a comment on raw industrial capacity of BT:2300 (compared to either real life or FASA's BT:3025). Two, since this sort of population growth extrapolation probably gives an answer that's within the same a ballpark as FASA's historical population growth, it's a commentary on the industry that existed in the 2300s of FASA's timeline, too. Leading to comment three (rather unrelated to BT:2300, but worth making): it gives an order of magnitude estimate on just how mind-numbingly destructive the Succession Wars were for the Inner Sphere.
AN ERA OF WEALTH AND PLENTY
On Terra, on the Core Worlds, and well-populated Inner Sphere worlds, humanity lives in an age of material wealth that would curl your hair. Or make you spin in your grave (it's 2330 AD, after all).
Sometimes it's the amount of effort (or lack thereof) that goes into little things. Today, you don't blink an eye at dropping your butt into $100 swivel chair with 10 pounds of steel in its frame; the steel was squirted out in a 50-ton charge from a blast furnace that yields thousands of tons annually and rolled/stamped into its final shape with a few man-hours of labor. That same 10 pounds of cheap carbon steel is not only as fine as any steel made in the ancient world, it would feed a farming family of ancient Rome for years and take hundreds of man-hours to produce. In 2330, more computing horsepower than existed on Earth in 2001 might go into yesterday's completely passé "psychedelic smoke" jumpsuit. That awesome computing power is harnessed just to model gas and fine particulate dynamics for a swirling multi-colored smoke display across the jumpsuit. It took 3.37 man-hours of labor to build, from the first extrusion of fibers for the fabric to that last bit of shipping and handling. How many man-hours went into building all of 2001 AD's computers?
Sometimes it's in the numbers. How many homes per TV were there in 1950? How many TVs per home were there in 2000? How many square meters of video walls/roofs/carpets are there in a 2330 skid row apartment, and how many video plates and video chopsticks are there in the apartment's kitchen? Or how about comparing a nice middle class 1700AD home - 2 rooms, no carpeting, 8 people in there - with a nice middle class 2000AD home (2000 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, even a huge room for the family's *carriages*). The 1700AD home is a 2000AD hovel, at best a fixer-up studio apartment.
BT:2300 is three centuries in our future. Grasping what that means for character's gear is probably most easily imagined by hitting the glittery high points: every wall a video screen (it's just video paint), every toilet has a heated seat with a fast self-cleaning surface (no need to lift the seat! dribbles just roll right off!) and sensors embedded in the seat and interior to monitor to your health (no need to go to the doctor to give stool samples - just e-mail your toilet's daily scan to him!), your pocket computer effortlessly secures movie/plane/jumpship/dinner tickets, provides an answering service as a face-to-face secretary (or just imitates you…is it you, or is it your Sony Pocket Secretary?), your car has one of those new autopilots (they only took 400 years - 1900 to 2300 - to perfect) but only stores enough energy in its batteries to shoot a few pounds of bacon to a jump point because it has a wimpy (but cheap and economical) 125 horsepower electric motor...in each wheel...your generic Sears jumpsuit is lighter than a jogging suit of 2000 AD, but it will keep you comfortable in any temperature from freezing to 90F (before it kicks on its climate control), and it protects you from casual abuse as well as 2000AD football padding, is self-cleaning and odor resistant (though not so much as your underwear - the Fruit-of-the-Loom NoSkid underwear line is very popular with bachelors) and has a dozen pre-set colors it can change to at the touch of a control.
LIVING CONDITIONS
The Core Worlds have many similarities that would be obvious to outsiders even if the inhabitants froth and rant about little nitpicky differences (which side of the road is driven on, whether mayo or ketchup is preferred on french fries, music preferences, etc.) Terra is a good example of a heavily populated Core World (despite technically not being a Core World). With 10.7 billion inhabitants and (effectively) no "Third World" standards of living remaining, it is one big America or one big Western Europe.
On Terra, where land becomes less useful for farming or recreation (i.e. deserts, Antarctica and landfills), cities sprawl out in vast suburbs and exurbs. Large road networks for (electric) personal cars lace the area, and slow moving traffic (with speed, if not steering, regulated by traffic control computers) is normal around rush hour. Near more useful or pleasant land (everywhere else), cities build up into arcologies and use extensive public transport (primarily busses and light rail). Private homes tend to be larger and multi-floor in the suburbs compared to 20th Century homes, while apartments in arcologies make up by having all services available for delivery in under 15 minutes.
Power is cheap and plentiful, and almost entirely from fusion power systems. The only significant source other than fusion is hydroelectric (dams are still used for flood control and since they're there, electrical generators might as well be added). Off-grid homes use cheap wind and solar, and most homes and apartments include backup power supplies worth several hours of power, if not more. (Since potent batteries are used extensively in energy weapons and cars, potent batteries are cheap and plentiful enough to go into homes. No one need do without air conditioning or TV when eco-terrorists fighting heat pollution destroy another municipal fusion power plant). Further, utilities, communications, and transport are basically immune to the weather and natural disasters. The idea of apartment blocks collapsing from piddly 8.0 earthquakes or power being lost due to an ice storm is ludicrous, a thing of the 21st Century when people were still at the mercy of weather. Homes in the wilderness can surround themselves with clouds of mist to protect themselves from wildfires and are fire-resistant even when made of wood.
Of course, this means proportionally more people die from stupidly exposing themselves to the elements than in the 20th Century. They're safe in their homes, but their cars can still fall over washed out bridges and they can still freeze to death in blizzards, and they just don't understand that no matter how many times they watch "Real People Dying Horribly in the Wilderness" on FOX.
TRAVEL
Travel. Air traffic only dominates long-range travel when crossing oceans because of the higher passenger capacity and lower cost of 500kph bullet trains. Wealthier travelers with strong stomachs (to handle the freefall) use suborbital shuttle flights. Large stretches of central North America are still amiable to private cars - the population of the continental US and Canada have only approximately doubled since 2001, so there are interstates that (almost) never see gridlock. The same holds for Africa and Brazil, though Siberia (called "the last great hope for the road trip" in the 22nd Century) favors trains.
Because of Alliance security procedures that even secessionist nations retain, the government knows who you are, where you live, and what you're up to. Not only does this make law enforcement a matter of computer searches to find suspects and quickly cross-reference them, it makes booking planes, trains, and automobiles (taxis) and shuttles a very easy task. Check-in is a matter of flashing your ID, giving a quick corneal and DNA scan in the security check points, and passing over your luggage, which will be quickly and accurately scanned by automated systems (as opposed to minimum wage workers). Traffic control makes flight and train delays extremely rare, as does tolerance of bad weather.
Further, transportation networks are everywhere. Rail lines are cheaper to lay and aircraft cheaper to operate than in the 21st Century - the 24th century is a time of easy movement (if the government lets you). In short, there's always a plane or train or shuttle meeting someone's schedule, give or take 15 minutes, and just-in-time universal booking databases means it's almost certain you can get on the right flight. A wealthy person can probably go anywhere civilized on Earth in 2 hours with no notice (allowing half an hour at each end for driving to/from the spaceport and check-in, plus an hour's flight.) It is unusual for anyone to need to spend more than 6 hours traveling anywhere on Terra.
Indeed, the huge volume of jumpship traffic near Terra means that a person who can pay for the shuttle and jumpship passage can usually leave their home with no advance notice and visit relatives on any Core World in under 8 hours. (The Terran Lagrange points, aka pirate points, are favored jump points so weeklong journeys to the "standard" jump points are unnecessary and, in fact, quite unprofitable). Many interstellar travel agencies take advantage of the vast number of jumpships in the Inner Sphere to quickly transfer passengers (who pay through the nose) between jumpships on shuttles, allowing basically "on-demand" or ad hoc command circuits, covering a jump or more every day. Interstellar communication is erratic, so arranging *fast* long-range travel is likewise erratic. Most interstellar shipping and passenger lines adhere to one (or more) of several "on-demand travel" protocols, which basically means when one of the lines' jumpships arrives in system, it provides its planned route, schedule, and available berths to local traffic control. Arriving travelers can purchase berths on a first-come, first-serve basis, though the protocols also allow money to talk. This system often means day-long delays in the Inner Sphere and is rarely faster than normal, scheduled jumpship travel beyond the Mason-Dixon Shell.
COMMUNICATIONS
With effective telecommuting technologies, few people need to leave their homes. This is especially true in arcologies, where food and goods can be ordered from the home and delivered to the home. It goes without saying that the information infrastructure is incredible. (Optical) landlines still give far more bandwidth than wireless, enough to offer a wide range of communications and any of millions of channels and computer sites to any user. Wireless networks use infrared laser light, but cannot compete with the stability and bandwidth of landlines. On Terra, the idea of broken communications links is literally the stuff of horror movies - it simply doesn't happen. One can always get out voice communications, even if the usual hyper-realistic video isn't available. Communications are too robust in the 24th Century to be bothered by natural disasters.
Interstellar communications are more erratic and use a "pony express" system of jumpships. However, in the Core Worlds, it is still very fast and almost regular. Most jumpships pull in some extra money from communications companies by carrying high bandwidth communicators linked to datastores. Like on-demand travel, the communications companies have protocols for participating jumpships. They let the company know their travel route and pick up messages, video programs, data packets, etc. and deliver them when they jump to their destination. Unlike passengers, there is no need for bidding wars - the jumpships' datastores are almost bottomless. Because of the heavy jumpship traffic in the Core Worlds, news can spread from one end to the other in hours. Jumpships leave and arrive at Terra several times every hour - every arrival from a different system is another receiving site for news from another Core World. Thus popular video programs (like Married, With Children, the third remake, or INN daily news) may be seen in their nightly installments on every Core World. (The traumatic 18-hour "blackout" of New Earth in 2322 due to an unusual period when all shipping lines' schedules accidentally came together to prevent a ship from visiting New Earth for 18 hours got into the history books.) E-mail to interstellar business associates is more often limited by how often the recipient checks her e-mail than how often the e-mails are sent.
Military ships also operate as mail ships, particularly when they visit less-populated systems. Core World militaries usually have a few dedicated "mail ships" (sometimes called "early warning" or "alarm" ships) charged and ready to deliver news on a moment's notice. Which brings up the issue of military response time. Current Core World military doctrine holds that it is impossible to surprise and isolate another Core World, and this is reasonably true. A full invasion fleet that arrives at pirate point is almost certain to scare off one of the many merchant ships (one that had a charged or nearly charged KF drive) or a waiting enemy military ship. Enemy reinforcements (particularly "rapid deployment forces" that sit at jump points) may arrive in literally minutes. On other hand, if the invasion fleet is potent enough, luring in enemy reinforcements is a good way to gather the enemy for a defeat in detail. Or so theory holds.
ALL THE ABOVE APPLIED OUTSIDE THE CORE WORLDS
The Inner Sphere parallels the Core Worlds on most aspects, though jumpship arrivals are usually measured in arrivals per day rather than arrivals per hour. This impacts interstellar travel and communication.
On the other hand, most Inner Sphere colonies within the Mason-Dixon Shell demonstrate well-developed planetary infrastructures. Power, communications, planetary travel...most of these grow out of coherent colonial planning and far more organized than those of Terra, or even the Core Worlds. The flipside to this is that many of those services are monopolized when they are privately owned, with all the associated ($$$) problems that come with unregulated monopolies.
Beyond the Mason-Dixon Shell, quality of infrastructure degrades. In many cases, "secondary" colonies could not afford the vast sums necessary to build all the services during initial settlement and pared them down. Roads, for example, tend to drop in quality and quantity beyond the Shell in favor of less expensive rail and water transport networks. Weather-vulnerable satellite networks replace higher bandwidth, more reliable fiber optic networks. Power may be entirely local - each homestead will have its own wind and/or solar arrays, though the wealthy may have their own fusion power plants. When populations fall below 100 million, it is not a given that transport to any point on a planet is available in hours. Indeed, days and (?!?) animal or off-road vehicle caravans may be necessary. Search and rescue teams cannot be depended on to pull you out of a raging river...and speaking of raging rivers, flood control beyond "build your house on high ground, you durn fool," may be unknown.
The Periphery follows the trend of generally degrading quality of life, though there are exceptions built around well-funded colonies. None approach the Core Worlds, but there are some well-developed, well-populated Periphery planets that compare well with Inner Sphere capitals.
The Deep Periphery is largely an unknown. Mostly founded by Terrans, there are probably some very well developed Deep Periphery planets that are trying to stay the heck away from the noise and danger of humanity. Others were probably just settled by separatists and survivalists and remain backwards for lack of population.
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 (08/19/02 01:25 PM)
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masdog5
08/19/02 02:08 PM
205.213.145.201
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Thats long, but alot better thought out then my alternate future. If you write any fiction based on this, I'm interested in reading it. I have always wondered how Earthbound nations would compete for an interstellar empire.
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Cray
08/19/02 02:32 PM
64.83.29.242
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>I have always wondered how Earthbound nations would compete for an interstellar empire.
Against a semi-realistic interstellar empire, the only way they could manage it is by becoming an interstellar empire.
The defining issues are population, national wealth, and technology. For example, the US is the (distant) third most populous nation on the planet. Compared to nations with similar standards of living (Britain, France - the US has ~4.5x their population), the US has considerably more muscle to flex. Compared to nations with bigger populations (there two: India and China, with 3.5 and 4.5x the US's population), the US's much greater per capita wealth keeps it in the economic lead and, if it decides to, in the military lead.
If an independent planet had Earth's population and the US's per capita income and technology, the US...no, the Earth as whole - would be just so much scum to be bullied. An interstellar empire is just an extension of the issue: 25 planets with 25 billion people between them is a lot of economic muscle compared to a single planet. An earthbound nation of several hundred million people just cannot compete. Hence I say: for an Earthbound nation to compete with an interstellar empire, the nation has to become an interstellar empire itself.
Either that or have dramatically higher technology. The US, c2002, could smack around a dozen planets with 1902 century technology (assuming it could reach them, of course). Reasonably, the same should hold true for, say, the US with 2330 technology vs many colonies with 2230 technology, but in BT the difference in technology between centuries isn't all that impressive. L1 mechs designed in the late 2400s still have battlefield utility in 3067, nothing like the difference between tanks of 1918 and tanks of 2002.
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 (08/19/02 02:47 PM)
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masdog5
08/19/02 05:03 PM
205.213.145.27
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'but in BT the difference in technology between centuries isn't all that impressive...'
If anything, wouldnt it be the reverse in bt? As it says in pretty much every book that FASA has come out with, there has been a technological slide since the 1st Succession war that has been hard to pull out of.
If a pre-amaris veteran SLDF regiment were to take on 3025 era veteran mech regiment,would the SLDF regiment have the advantage in that battle?
Now in the case of the Terran nations being interstellar empires, how would the colonies be ruled? Would the be equal partners in their respective nations(ie. representation in government, voting rights, etc) or would they make the same mistake that many colonial empires have in the past?
Will we also be seeing the return of spheres of influence as the terran nations attempt to gobble up the young interstellar nations?
Edited by masdog5 (08/19/02 05:05 PM)
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Greyslayer
08/19/02 05:23 PM
216.14.192.226
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Is there any thought to using AI forces as well? I am sure the US would've developed effective routines to create automated forces if they had battlemechs by the early 24th century.
Greyslayer
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Cray
08/19/02 05:40 PM
12.91.127.55
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>If anything, wouldnt it be the reverse in bt?
The changes are rarely sharp whether you're climbing in technology from the 2400s to the 2700s or sliding from the 2700s to the 3000s, so I stand by my statement: "but in BT the difference in technology between centuries isn't all that impressive..."
>If a pre-amaris veteran SLDF regiment were to take on 3025 era veteran mech regiment,would the SLDF regiment have the advantage in that battle?
Yes, the SLDF regiment would have the advantage. I was just indicating the 3025-era regiment (or 2400-era regiment) wouldn't be useless ("battlefield utility," was the term I think I used), unlike a 1918-era tank regiment vs a 2002-era tank regiment. A pair of 3025-era mech regiments would have a reasonable chance of taking the SLDF regiment.
On the other hand, a pair of 1918-era tank regiments would be slaughtered by a battalion of 2002-era tanks. The only problem the 2002-era tanks might have is an ammo shortage.
>Now in the case of the Terran nations being interstellar empires, how would the colonies be ruled?
Depends. Colonies founded by Terran nations are simply direct extensions of the nations - US colonies would be US states. Quite a few Core Worlds voluntarily joined a major power - in the example of the US, those colonies are full states. (The political implications are amusing: the US, pop. 600 million, admits Mars, pop. 1.2 billion as several states, then Procyon, pop. 2 billion. How does power in Congress change?)
"Conquered" colonies are a different matter. They range from protectorates (where the internal policies are left alone, but the colony's foreign policies, trade, and defense are handled by the "ruling" nation) to commonwealths like Puerto Rico in the US (where the US Constitution sets guidelines for local laws, the US handles defense, diplomacy, and trade, but PR doesn't get a vote in Congress...on the other hand, neither does it pay federal taxes.)
The "conquered" colonies are called "conquered" (in quotes) rather than outright conquests because, technically, conquest is naughty, dirty thing to do. You saw what happened when Iraq invaded Kuwait - that attitude hasn't changed much in 2330.
Instead, see, on the target planet, a political party with no, absolutely no ties to a major Terran nation (really, swear on a stack of bibles, no ties) arises and declares that "aligning interests with [the Terran nation it has no ties with] would be good for [the colony's] best interests." After a snazzy advertizing campaign (absolutely not funded by a certain Terran nation) and lobbying local politicians (absolutely not with money from a certain Terran nation), votes and referendums are held that declare the colony to be a protectorate/commonwealth/best buddy of [a certain Terran nation]. Depending on how resistant the colony's leadership is to this, this vote might actually be in the form of a coup "by a reform party/rebels aiming to stamp out corruption/bringing family values/endorsing a Godly lifestyle to the colony." Then the fighting, screaming, and bloodshed begins between the new party/rebels and loyalists who don't want to be annexed by [a certain Terran nation]. Of course, this strictly involves only competing colonial groups.
[A certain Terran nation] has absolutely nothing to do with this "internal conflict." Though, of course, it sympathizes with the rebels/political party advocating an alliance, so it may send several companies/regiments/divisions of military advisors, particularly if the friendly rebels/political party have the upper hand and "invite" [a certain Terran nation] to provide military assistance "for the duration of the emergency."
Terran nations are pushing for written alliances/protectorates/commonwealths/statehood rather than unofficial "spheres of influence" because the former is harder to dissolve than the latter - an amazing number of 2330s politicians have read their history books. Hence Britain boldly refers to its new possessions as "The Third Empire," while the US makes no bones about declaring overrun colonies to be "protectorates" (with a rubber stamp from the local planetary government, of course).
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
08/19/02 11:21 PM
4.35.174.250
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...probably blocks the use of true automated weapons systems.
Just IMHO.
-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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Cray
08/20/02 07:54 AM
64.83.29.242
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>Is there any thought to using AI forces as well?
I'm taking my cue from BT as much as possible, which means no real AIs or autonomous drones to speak of (as reasonable as they'd be by 2330).
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
08/20/02 04:28 PM
216.14.192.226
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The SLDF used automated warships as well as automated defences on their bases at times. Such examples as CASPAR already exist in the Battletech history. I was wondering if you were going down that line and if so would land units like tanks be that way as well?
Greyslayer
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Cray
08/20/02 05:43 PM
12.78.119.188
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Caspars were introduced in the 2600s or 2700s. Automated weapons are, per BT habit, rather a ways off. Personally, I could believe they'd be around in 2300, but that's a RL extrapolation, not BT.
Feel free to add automated vehicles if you use the setting (in whole or part).
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
08/20/02 05:50 PM
216.14.192.226
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I am mucking around writing up some rules for a Necromunda-styled game using something akin to AI Protomechs. The player plays the 'controller' of the force. I am also still trying to get the rules down for the campaign I am planning or at least writing up.
Technology is such that at some stage humans are going to realise that a AI will do a better job at following orders and doing the just plain fighting (I'm not saying they would do a better special forces job but certainly in a stand-up fight they would). I'm almost through the 'pseudo-rules' for the Protomunda world. The other one is a little harder to balance.
Greyslayer
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Moloch
08/20/02 05:57 PM
67.224.53.101
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In reply to:
quick 12-hour Everquest session rather than play this setting. Dang EQ addicts.
/salute
Hello, my name is Torth Thistleborn. I played a 50th level wood elf rangeron Erollisi Marr. Im a retired EQ addict.
*support group* Hello
I liked EQ =) Infact, Im reading an EQ message bored at the same time as this ROFL  Im gonna have to read this BT universe another time, sounds very interesting.
Popular Bumper Stickers
“Keep honking: I’m re-loading”
“If you don’t mind, please eject now: that Mech is a **** to salvage"
“I ran out of room to stencil all the Mechs I’ve killed, so now I just go by regiment’s wiped out.”
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Moraelin
08/21/02 10:40 AM
194.114.62.66
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In reply to:
On the other hand, a pair of 1918-era tank regiments would be slaughtered by a battalion of 2002-era tanks. The only problem the 2002-era tanks might have is an ammo shortage.
Actually, my guess is that they'd have pretty much zero problems. Unlike the BT universe where even an assault rifle can slowly shave the armour off an assault mech, layer by layer, an 1918 tank doesn't have anything that can even scratch a 2002 battle tank, nor the speed to outrun it. Nor the weapon range to play from a safe distance, nor the targetting systems to engage in long range warfare even if they could.
So basically if we're talking strictly tanks-vs-tanks, without the infantry support, the 2002 tanks wouldn't even need their laser range finders or anything. A single 2002 main battle tank could just race to point blank and destroy the 1918 tanks at a one-shot-one-kill ratio with impunity. That's a lot of tanks destroyed before it finishes all ammo on board. (Even the HE rounds it carries can blast an 1918 tank to bits.)
Heck, strictly speaking they wouldn't even need to use their main gun. At point blank, a soviet 14.5mm heavy machingun using tungsten core ammo can go straight through some 25mm (.985 in) of steel, which is more than most 1918 tanks had. (The machinegun and its ammo are based on the early WW2 PTRD anti-tank rifle, so it was useful against tanks even later than 1918  ) So again, basically the 2002 tanks could make swiss cheese out of the 1918 tanks even without firing the main gun at all.
Or for that matter, a modern APC could handily defeat a few 1918 tanks without too much risk.
Which is why I find setups like BT or WH40K a bit hard to believe. If you expect me to believe that for thousands of years technology stood still... dunno, that never happened even in the dark middle ages. If you compare armours, weapons and formations, you see _some_ progress every century throughout the middle ages. A unit from 1000 AD would have likely made mincemeat out of a unit from 500 AD from the same area.
Humans are like that. They like to tinker with stuff. They like to try new things. A lot don't work, but every now and then someone comes with some crazy idea that does work.
---
Moraelin - The proud member of the Idiots' Guild
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Greyslayer
08/21/02 04:36 PM
216.14.192.226
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I don't know every few hundred years barbarians beat the supposedly superior in technology races. There is alot to be said for fighting at the same level (ie mellee combat) and being aggressive.
By your theory
- the Mongols would never have defeated the Chinese at all.
- the Mongols would never have smashed the Islamic Empires, nor been able to burn some of the greatest book repositories of their time.
- the vikings would never had been more than a buzzing noise
- the goths and visigoths would've failed in crushing parts of the Roman Empire.
- Washington would've been beaten by the Brittish (based on average technology).
Technology can be defeated if the style of combat is similar. A .50 cal MG can 'defeat' a MBT, albiet very rare. Examples have been shown that destroying periscopes on certain tanks and leaving them 'blind' can 'destroy' the unit. Its like a battlemech having both sensors hit and not being able to move. Other examples like the using of paint rounds on vehicles you could never usually defeat can in fact produce the same results.
Its not always the level of technology but how you use it.
Greyslayer
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Bob_Richter
08/21/02 05:10 PM
4.35.174.250
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...is that you're assuming the barbarians were INFERIOR in technology when, in fact, they were SUPERIOR in both technology and warfighting techniques.
This is a state of affairs that is no longer truly possible, and you will never see civilization overrun by barbarians from the hinterlands.
-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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Greyslayer
08/21/02 05:36 PM
216.14.192.226
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'in fact, they were SUPERIOR in both technology and warfighting techniques.'
Which points are incorrect?
'and you will never see civilization overrun by barbarians from the hinterlands.'
Thats right no more Vietnams, no more Zimbabwes, no more 'lower tech' groups overrunning 'higher tech' groups .... Uh-Huh.
Greyslayer
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