Did you know the Locust IIC is over 40 points in Alpha Strike? The Fire Moth Prime is close to 30, and there’s even a Kit Fox that’s 40 points. My point is, it’s hard to find a cheap Clan ‘Mech to round out a 200-point Star. Even Elementals are around the same point value […]
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Ugh. I’m sick again. The very first party I go to after recovering from COVID I come down with… something. I tested negative for COVID-19, but my friend tested positive the very next day, so maybe mine was a false negative and I actually caught COVID for the second time in less than a month. […]
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July is not traditionally a particularly busy month for BattleTech, with Gen Con usually taking up all the oxygen until August. However, we seem to have gotten a blockbuster month for BattleTech news, so I won’t waste time. We got a lot of ground to cover, so let’s hop to it! New BattleTech Products From […]
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Many moons ago, I toured the globe to ascertain the current status of the world’s giant stompy robots. What we found out was that humanity made some decent progress towards making its first true ‘Mech, but hadn’t quite arrived at the future promised in the 31st century. Can’t really blame ‘em since the Mackie didn’t […]
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So it’s been a few years since I wrote an article that compared BattleTech’s autocannon rounds to high explosive pancakes, and while it was a fun piece to write, something has always bothered me about it. There were a lot of responses, all of them from folks much more knowledgeable than myself about military ballistics […]
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(update 2017-11-21: The campaign was cancelled early.) MegaBots has returned after their first ever successful international giant robot bout with yet another Kickstarter aimed at creating the world’s first Giant Robot Fighting Tournament. You might remember MegaBots from their longstanding feud with Japan’s Kuratas creators, Suidobashi Heavy Industries. The two titans of robotics finally came to […]
Read More →It’s finally happening. The fight of the century between America’s MegaBots Inc. and Japan’s Suidobashi Heavy Industry for the title of world’s greatest giant robot maker is about to happen. Or more accurately, it’s already happened. The fight has yet to be aired, but the duel between the Eagle Prime and the Kuratas has actually […]
Read More →After 2 years of waiting, it’s finally going to happen: giant robots from Japan and America will engage in Solaris-style combat to determine which nation is the greatest ‘Mech builder on Earth. You may remember from our previous articles on current technologies that mimic those in BattleTech that MegaBots Inc., the builder of the formidable […]
Read More →BattleMechs, the giant, hulking kings of the battlefield, have been a cornerstone of the BattleTech universe since its inception. Powered by fusion engines and controlled by neurotransmitters, these enormous walking tanks have always been more science fiction than science fact. But what if I told you that’s no longer the case? In the BattleTech universe ‘Mechs […]
Read More →At the heart of BattleTech is… well, really, a space opera unlike any other. But right beside the heart (maybe the left ventricle) is the traditional Sci-Fi focus on futuristic technologies. Giant robots, powered by fusion engines, bristling with lasers and advanced particle weapons, being flown around in spaceships that zip from planet to planet, […]
Read More →Historically, rocket munitions have always been more effective when fired in swarms. From the 15th century Korean Hwatcha rocket propelled arrow launcher to the MLRS or Grad rockets of today to the Itano Circus prevalent in ’80s Sci-Fi anime- and by extension, BattleTech. Rocket swarms can be brutally effective- if a not very efficient means […]
Read More →Ever since Jules Verne and H.G. Wells enticed citizens and warmongers alike with talk of energy-based beam weapons, mankind has been struggling to catch up to its own imagination. And naturally, BattleTech is chock full of it – mainly in the form of lasers, and mainly seen from the view of a 1980s-era war game […]
Read More →I follow world geopolitics pretty intensely. I credit epic, political space opera settings like Dune and, of course, BattleTech for my many years of interest. I was browsing some of the latest Russian shenanigans in Ukraine and Syria when I saw a Russian armored vehicle that made me wonder if they’ve been buying from Quickscell. […]
Read More →BattleTech has a lot of amputee characters. Morgan Kell, Justin Allard, Kael Pershaw, Anastasius Focht/ Frederick Steiner, and Grayson Carlyle for instance; driving ‘Mechs is a dangerous business. But in the novels, most of the prosthetics were fairly advanced from a modern viewpoint. The characters could typically receive biofeedback and simulated nerve induction similar to […]
Read More →Did you know that powered active camouflage has been around since World War 2? Perhaps inspiring such things as the Star trek cloaking device, shift suit from Predator, and of course the Chameleon Light Polarization field from BattleTech, clever military planners used what was later called Diffused Lighting Camouflage to reduce the visual signature of […]
Read More →Remember Drake and Vasquez’ smart guns from Aliens, or the surgically invasive exoskeletal hardware from Elysium? As opposed to ghost rings, reflex sights or lasers, they provided a passive targeting system to increase the accuracy of their operators, and decreased their battle weariness. In case of the Smart Gun, the fluff said that it had a […]
Read More →With both the challenge and acceptance videos from the MegaBots crew and team Suidobashi numbering nearly ten million views in little more than a month, it looks like this good-natured rivalry is turning more heads than just those belonging to us big stompy bot fans. Especially with BattleBots back on the air… which, of course, brings […]
Read More →“Military Artificial Intelligence Arms Race Could Soon Develop if Preventative Measures are not Taken.” Many people don’t realize that (as far as we know) the current generation of Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) are in fact, flown by rated pilots; only by a (hopefully) secure data link from several hundred miles away. Flesh and blood […]
Read More →After their unsuccessful Kickstarter in October of last year, the Oakland California-based MegaBots Inc. seems to have done the best thing they could do to stay active in the public arena. They picked a fight. In late June via video, Andrew Stroup and Gui Cavalcanti challenged Suidobiashi Heavy Industries to a duel- A batchall, if […]
Read More →I’m sure most of you at least remember that there was a pair of Robot arena combat shows in the latter half of the 1990s called Battle Bots and Robot Wars. Each week, a number of amateur and professional propellerheads would get together to do battle within one of three weight classes. The shows were […]
Read More →On October 15th, Aviation Week received exclusive access to Lockheed Martin’s Revolutionary Technology Programs unit; specifically regarding a new Compact Fusion Reactor (CFR) program lead by Aeronautical Engineer Thomas McGuire. McGuire and his team make a claim that uses a lot of phrases like “holy grail” and paradigm-shifting. How compact? The containment vessel in test […]
Read More →Growing up amidst the popularity of both the giant robot craze and the never-ending advancement of technology in both the military industrial complex and commercial avenues- I keep waiting for life to imitate art. Over the years even private individuals have taken a swing at constructing real stompy robots with some pretty mixed results at […]
Read More →Aliens, HALO, Gears of War, (of course) BattleTech, Edge of Tomorrow, and a whole lot of other science fiction properties feature powered strength-enhancing suits in a utility roll before being used in combat. I believe the idea goes back to Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel Starship Troopers, but it’s really only been in the last fifteen […]
Read More →Robots. Robots everywhere. In fact, according to Scott Hartley, co-founder of 5D Robotics and one of its senior research engineers, the US military could be outnumbered by them ten to one within ten years in an interview he recently gave to Computer World. Whether there will be a significant number of ground combat robots like the MARS […]
Read More →I never really heard about this piece of obscure lostech until I began reading up on some of the Star League materials. Even then the Chameleon LPS wasn’t really widely known due to high classification: The system was used by mainly special operations forces until the Word of Blake used the lostech to develop mimetic and stealth armor. […]
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