Making ‘Mechs with Johannes Heidler, Associate Developer for ‘Mech Design at CGL

BattleTech is a massive universe spanning hundreds of planets with larger-than-life characters, but at the center of it all are the massive walking war machines we know and love. ‘Mechs make the BattleTech world go ’round, and there’s nobody at Catalyst with more passion for ‘Mechs than Johannes Heidler, Associate Developer for ‘Mech Design. They don’t call him the ‘Mech Guru, but they really should.

Anyway, ‘Mechs have always been the most fascinating part about BattleTech, so I had to reach out to the guy in charge of designing new ‘Mechs and variants to see how that process actually worked. I had a few other pointed questions too, which you can read about in our interview below. Enjoy.

Sean (Sarna): Thanks for being interviewed. You have a fascinating position at Catalyst and one that I’d really like to dive into. BattleTech is more than just ‘Mechs, these giant robots are a big part of what captures our attention. Tabletop players collect them like Pokemon, and they’re the star of the show in every video game. 

They’re a big part of BattleTech and it would be really interesting to learn more about how ‘Mechs work. So to start us off, please give us your name and also who you are at Catalyst. 

Johannes Heidler (Catalyst Game Labs): Right, so I’m Johannes Heidler. Ray calls me Jo. I have trouble pronouncing that, but please feel free. I’m part of the German faction of people associated with BattleTech, but I don’t actually come out of that tradition. I spent my youth in Australia and got into tabletop gaming then. Warhammer was followed within a week by BattleTech, and I just fell in love with TRO: 3025 because it was like all the aircraft encyclopedias I read as a kid, which I just devoured. 

So I started off in the English-speaking world and when I came back to Germany in 1998, the Internet was already well established, and one of the very first websites I ever hopped onto was Mordel’s, which still exists now—that’s actually one of the dinosaurs of BattleTech. Scott, who runs Mordel’s—who is Mordel—is also part of the MUL Team and part of the BattleTech circuit.

But that’s basically gone around full-circuit. We’re looking back at 25 years of activity online, and that’s where I really got my start. Obviously, I left my gaming group behind going back to Germany and stuff like Warhammer is not very single-person-sitting-infront-of-a-computer friendly, whereas BattleTech always was because it was always about the lore and it was always about playing with ‘Mechs, but also designing ‘Mechs or just doing the whole comparison thing.

You said we collect ‘Mechs like Pokemon, but it’s almost like a set of trump cards where you just compared, this is the fastest ‘Mech, this one has the biggest guns, stuff like that. BattleTech was always a very internet-friendly hobby. 

I got my start with Catalyst in 2008 when I got recruited to do record sheets because of constructive errata that I’d posted on the forums. Initially, we were just going to release PDFs of the record sheets that were missing them. I think TRO: 3060 was going to be our first project, and it was still going to be pre-Total Warfare. You know, the HeavyMetal Pro with the Gargoyle outline of the armor pips? But then suddenly we were told to wait, and then the project became doing all the Total Warfare-style record sheets from scratch from the beginning as a PDF release.

I was involved in that from the very first moment. And it just went on from there that recordsheets then impacted back on future TROs that were being done. And via the MUL team, which I also was part of from the very beginning because of the recordsheet work. I was also recruited into the Technical Readout: 3085 into the Fact Check team, which was basically the MUL plus a few others. I got to write my first TRO entries in that.

A couple of years later, I kind of missed Technical Readout: Prototypes, but when they did 3145 I’d already outed myself as sort of a fan of MechWarrior: Dark Age. I really liked Mage Knight when that one was released—that was the last time I really was part of a live circuit gaming group in Germany back then. But I really loved how you could extrapolate from Dark Age game pieces back into classic BattleTech. Obviously there were also a lot of very well-documented builds that could extrapolate the rest.

So I was asked to do all the stats for 3145. That was the first time I had a little project team because I like farming out units where I wasn’t doing active research or didn’t have an active idea. I really like getting other people in because it won’t work as a one-man show.

In the following years after that—after Herb stopped being the line developer—BattleTech felt like it was in limbo, but I’d actually worked very directly with Ray getting Technical Readout: 3150 out. He did all the editing and layout for that, and Jason Schmetzer actually was the main lead for the TRO. So the first compilation, 3145, I was just part of a project group, but 3150 was basically just Ray and I sitting down late at night trying to piece it all back together. I think that’s where my current position basically had its start. I have a very good working relationship with Ray. 

I’d been doing more and more TRO work and sort of like an advisory function for other projects where I was not directly developing them. And so the Rec Guides came along and we basically did that from the ground up from the very beginning.

In the meantime, Catalyst has refined its processes a little bit and we’ve got these—I don’t think it’s a secret, even though it was never announced to the public—we’ve got the associate developer seats; Joshua Franklin for Alpha Strike, Keith Hann for Play Design, Joshua Perian for Digital Products, David Kerber as Line Editor, Phil Lee as Editor of Shrapnel,  Eric Salzman is doing Fact Check, and I am doing ‘Mech Design. The title may be ‘Mech design, but it just means all TRO work.

We’ve got the universe and the lore, but on the gaming side, all the game units would probably go through me these days. 

Sean: Well, before we get into the specifics of your position, we have a couple of background questions. Starting with the most important one, which is obviously, what’s your favorite ‘Mech?

Johannes: Don’t have a very simple answer for that, because a ‘Mech can be a thousand different things. Aesthetically, visually, in terms of what personifies BattleTech to me, the answer is very easy: it’s the Summoner. The Summoner is BattleTech. 

One of the images that captured me in the very first week of ever discovering BattleTech was the color plays by Steve Venters in The BattleTech Compendium. I thought the Timber Wolf was always really boring. The Mad Dog was really evocative, but the Summoner, with its battle-damaged arms and its asymmetrical visuals, was definitely that sort of thing that really hooked me. 

I started BattleTech in 1996, so it’s fair to say that I am a Grognard in some ways, but it’s very much the Clans. And I think the whole lore of the BattleTech universe wouldn’t work without the Clans at all, which is a very controversial thing for me to say as a German. Hardly any of the Clan sourcebooks got translated into German, because there was a big editorial by MechForce Germany back in the day that just says, you know, “the Clans are space Nazis,” but we won’t get political today.  I see where they’re coming from. I view my hobby apolitically because I want escapism for my hobby.

The Clans gave BattleTech aliens without aliens. Robert Thurston‘s novels were also a big part of that because well, Stackpole did the whole universe-building and then did the whole Battle of Tukayyid thing and showed the Inner Sphere perspective on the invasion. Thurston, unlike any other person, really showed us the protagonist as a Clanner. I mean, you were in his head, you were looking at him and you followed him through the Jade Phoenix trilogy. But it all felt off, it all felt alien. It felt like a different universe and I love that. And I love that about BattleTech. 

You asked me about my favorite ‘Mech and I go off on that.  In terms of game pieces, it would still probably be a whole bunch of 3050 OmniMechs. I love the Nova for the Prime and the A. The other configs are not my thing. 

Sean: But the B is so good!

Johannes: The B is good value, yes. I think the Mad Dog A is an MVP of games, but I think the most consistent and probably my favorite OmniMech of 3050—don’t laugh—it’s the Gargoyle. 

Sean: Okay, I’m not laughing. 

Johannes: It’s just the perfect trooper. It’s overbaked to be a trooper, obviously, but it’s great. You look at the Clan Wolf sourcebook and it feels like half the touman is Gargoyles. So it’s a very common ‘Mech even though it’s 80 tons. It just works so well, and it kept on getting really good configurations in all the upgrades ever since. It’s the one ‘Mech that can basically not go wrong unless you take the B. 

Sean: Even I would put the B over the Prime configuration. 

Johannes: The Prime is even cheaper. And the Prime has a function. I’ve got a pet theory about the Prime anyway. If you look at the old Solaris 7 rules, it’s all guns that shoot every single turn in the Solaris 7 dueling rules. So it shoots four times in a turn, and it’s got the heat sinks to sink them. It felt like the Solaris 7 build.

But anyway, Summoner in terms of character, and Gargoyle in terms of what really works on my table.

Sean: Alright. Would 3050 be your favorite era of ‘Mech design or do you prefer the more modern age?

Johannes: We live in a land of milk and honey right now. No, this is it. Like mid-Dark Ages to what we’re doing right now with ilClan is just it in terms of really getting all the cutting-edge things, all the interesting builds, and also getting all the chaff out of the way.

We have the XTRO series, we got all of that out of our system. I think the Rec Guides really did go for a sort of new kind of purity. In terms of ‘Mech design, I think I’m in a really happy place right now. The era that I really like spending time in is the Clan Invasion, so it worked out with the two Kickstarters.

Sean: It is a good era. Plus, we’re getting to all that old, weird stuff like the Falconer recently got redesigned, and we had the Penetrator a while ago. We’re still getting those lesser-known designs as well in the current era and I like that quite a bit.

Speaking of all these redesigns, Brent, Randall, and everyone I’ve spoken to say they all have a list of ‘Mechs that they want to be redesigned. What is on your list?

Johannes: All my favorites are done. The Spirit? I really like the Spirit. The Spirit is a totally overlooked ‘Mech. It’s actually a really, really good second-line light ‘Mech, and it looks very 3067ish. 

Sean: Very. 

Johannes: So I think it’ll win from a redesign. 

Sean: Man, you don’t see that one come out very often—or at all. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a mini for this. 

Johannes: The mini is small. That’s actually one of the few kitbashes I did do, into the Spirit 2 as well, which is one of the most lopsided ‘Mechs with all its guns on the left side. 

Sean: Well, sometimes the Clans like just putting all their guns in their dominant arm.

Johannes: Yeah. 

Sean: Okay, now that we’ve gotten all the favorites outta the way, let’s get into your job. What exactly is being head of ‘Mech Design? Do you go into the nitty gritty of designing ‘Mechs? Or are you kind of in a supervisory role where you have other people send ‘Mechs to you? Or is it a combination of both? 

Johannes: It’s a combination of both. The Rec Guides took four years to fully complete, and every single piece of stats went through me. I didn’t design them all, but I have various layers of teams, and I reviewed all the stats and tweaked the ones that needed to adhere to the vision that Ray and I developed.

So projects like that I will be having a close look at. It’s not exactly micromanagement, but it needs to adhere to whatever I’m going for in the project. I really like people within the guidelines and the framework that I give them to come up with their own stuff. But that framework at times will just nail it down almost completely. It really depends on what the unit is and what function it has.

Beyond that, we don’t really have a lot of active projects that do a lot of stats right now, except for Shrapnel. Phil definitely comes to me to either create stats or look at the stats that others have made, and with projects like that, where I really have no direct… well, either the entries or the ideas for the entry will come from me and obviously then you’ll have the framework again.

Otherwise, I’m not involved with that at all, and I just try to enable people. I will see where the universe starts breaking—if the build is too outlandish or too alien to its own faction, its era, or its mission statement. If I spot something like that, I will try to make it work and suggest what can be done to easily fit the vision of the writer while still kind of meshing with everything else we did.

We were trying to build up an autonomous record sheet team. You had Dave Nawton on a couple of weeks ago—he and Kodiak, those two are really doing record sheets by themselves these days, but we coordinate together.

Sean: You mentioned that there’s a process to making a new ‘Mech. What exactly is the process to go from, “We need a new ‘Mech,” to, “Here’s the finished TRO?”

Johannes: Well, the secret is we don’t need any new ‘Mechs. We’ve got thousands and thousands and thousands of ‘Mechs. I was saying on a recent Tuesday Newsday that any piece of stat can be boring or it can be poetry. Whatever new thing we do, I tend to want to have a hook of some sort. Some sort of reason why we need to have this new unit or why this new unit would be cool. 

It’s never going to be, “Look how good this abstract jumble of stats that we put on the table.” That is never the reason. Ever since the first TRO, 3025, nobody can tell me that anybody ever thought that the Quickdraw was a good idea. Or the JagerMech. I think 3025 was actually very creative in terms of presenting flawed designs that are clearly not optimized. I’m not quite sure that everybody was quite as aware of what they were doing in 3050 or 3055.

Sean: Other than sticking Gauss Rifles and ER PPCs onto everything.

Johannes: That works, but that syndrome was really exacerbated in 3058. And then it, you know, calmed down. For whatever flaws 3060 and later TROs may or may not have, I think both the really wonky and the really optimized had ended by that time.

And these days we never go for optimal efficiency, but we will hardly ever go for a flawed build. I mean, there is the 3085 take on the Targe that Ken Horner came up with, which could blow off its own legs just by running. That’s creative and wonderful, but we do have the XTRO series for all the really funny stuff. 

So these days it’s neither about that nor about optimization nor about presenting flawed things. These days we have a heritage to be mindful of. Which was obviously a huge part of the first volume of the Rec Guides—that’s what we were beholden to. It took us months to find the new format for the classics—like the previously Unseen with the four-page spread and two sets of stats—very deliberate because we also have a variant section. 

We wanted to have a new bottom line for the ‘Mechs in the 32nd century. They needed to have the same feeling as BattleTech Second and Third Edition when you open the box and compare them to other well-established ‘Mechs. Not the best ‘Mechs, but the well-established ‘Mechs, have a very similar quality in comparison to their peers on the battlefield. That was one of the mission statements. The other one is these are the most iconic ‘Mechs ever. They need to kick ass.

That’s what we arrived at—WYSIWYG: ‘what you see is what you get variants’ of these iconic ‘Mechs that fulfill that feeling of being extremely lived in. They feel like the monuments of the Classic BattleTech era. Don’t need to be the best, they just need to feel how they felt back in 1985. And the other set of variants tended to be either very, very good, or they had a special in-universe hook that they had to cater to.

Sean: I noticed some of those second variants—that are very, very good—are essentially just Clan-tech versions of the normal, 3025-era ‘Mechs. But could you give me an example of one of those variants that has a special hook to it?

Johannes: Well let me just open it. I know that one of the Ostrocs is essentially built with the same components as the Ostwar in 3085, and I pushed for it very hard to not get any better. It’s probably one of the worst baseline ‘Mechs that we present in full stats. I don’t think anybody’s really aware of that, but anybody who just flicks through the old TRO: 3085—which might’ve been forgotten at this stage—and comes across that ‘Mech might go like, “These are clearly related.”

That’s the sort of thing that I took a lot of care with. Even though the Marauder is probably one of the worst perpetrators of being an almost Clan-tech ‘Mech, it’s very deliberate. Because we did leave some hooks for where we are going with the shape of the universe in the next couple of years within the TRO itself. That has an in-universe aspect to it, but it also comes down to sort of like a common sense bottom line of where the game might go. 

The split tech between Clan and Inner Sphere has long been completely artificial and serves no function for the game anymore. It was really cool back in 1992 when you had very lopsided battles, which was part of the charm of BattleTech for maybe most of the nineties. But these days, realistically, proliferation would have been more advanced a long time ago. 

I was quite proud of the 3145 book, and even then I tried to show that proliferation. And one of the comments that was—it wasn’t a complaint—it was just a matter-of-fact comment back when that project was discussed more than 10 years ago. Somebody said the Steiner part of it was all good, a nice mix, but that we completely forgot the advances that were hinted at in XTRO: Steiner; namely, engine tech going up to Clan tech.

I remember when I was talking to Ray about it and we were really thinking where should we be going? And when we were still discussing which baseline stats to show, it was really either we go completely pure IS tech or we go complete Clan tech. And so the second set of stats will be a lot of Clan-tech stats or advanced mixed-tech stats where you see the different corporations have different tech on their hands and are advancing quite a lot.

I think Tharkad is the only one who builds full Clan tech at this stage, and it’s not one of the biggest companies. But like, Defiance will have the engines we forgot in 3145, and it’ll have lasers and missiles. And I think GM has lasers and PPCs. You’ll see they’re almost there, but not quite. Ideally, we are moving towards a universe where the game designers—should they want to—can decide, okay, we’re going to have a new bottom line of BattleTech and it’ll be centered around Clan-tech level stuff. 

In terms of hooks, the Valkyrie for instance is very convoluted in regards to Project Phoenix and Word of Blake’s hostile takeover in the Jihad. Ultimately, their variant became a hook for the new baseline, when in-universe battle damage to the facility was used as a reason to change the chassis structurally, and the visuals back to Classic. We did not want to undo Project Phoenix. It’s a thing, an in-universe thing. We fudged a lot. Certain factories that had been retooled to produce Phoenix designs went back—the Archer 4M and 4M2 are good examples of that. But the stories told around Project Phoenix exist. They’re part of the universe.

I think the stats we tweaked for the longest were the Marauder, because, you know, Ray has a thing about Marauders. Which I actually fully agree with, it’ll probably be my third favorite ‘Mech ever. And the Locusts, I think we focus on Locusts and Wasps. the Stinger just kind of automatically came to be, but just trying to look at what had been done with Project Phoenix, trying to push the envelope, trying not to push the envelope too far. We conceptualized a lot of the tone and the feel around the Marauder, the Locust, the Wasp.

Sean: Well in that vein, I wanted to know what ‘Mechs have you personally redesigned or designed from scratch yourself? 

Johannes: It’s hard for me to pinpoint anything because I was so deeply involved in the process of both other contributors’ and my own designs. I may have had a hand in some accidental winners. The Jade Phoenix is the only thing that I have been wanting to push for different projects since 2016. The Hammerhead was a reaction build to what we ended up having for the ilClan—for the Wolves and Sea Foxes—which were author-driven. They served a function for Hour of the Wolf and the ancillary novels to that.

I had been aware of them since at least 2018, but they’re very expensive, they’re not BV optimized—they are the opposite of BV optimized. They couldn’t be more expensive if they tried. So I thought to myself, what sort of anvil would I want to create that has a bit of resilience and costs very little compared to what it brings to the table? And the Hammerhead was a really quick and dirty build. It built itself, really. I feel it’s somewhat of a fan favorite. At least from what I’ve seen around various forums.

Sean: I like the Hammerhead a lot. I feel like it’s designed for the bare minimum of firepower in favor of maximum stamina, which appeals to my trooper-‘Mech sensibilities.

Johannes: Yeah, pretty much. And then to keep the BV reasonable; I love the ER PPC and I will always veer toward that over the Large Pulse Laser, especially on non-jumping ‘Mechs. But here I actually chose the Large Pulse Laser because of the Battle Value. 

The ‘Mech that I probably spent the longest time on was the Alpha Wolf. God, I spent a lot of time on it. I talked to Luke Robertson, who’s one of our Clan experts. He does a lot of Clan sourcebook writing, but he’s also really good at designing ‘Mechs. He did the Ghost Bear ‘Mechs as well, and he was one of my sounding boards. Chris Wheeler is always a sounding board on any alternate configurations that I do. And the person known as Greekfire on the forums also did a lot of design work with me and we spent a lot of time discussing the Alpha Wolf in ridiculous details. Was it gonna gonna be 85 tons? Was it gonna be 90 tons? What did we want from it aesthetically? And ultimately we wanted to create a 32nd-century Mad Cat. 

The two reasons it ended up being 90 tons are: it is unattractive to put jump jets on it and it has one extra heat sink in the engine. And the build with the Stealth Armor is so optimized—that was actually a tiny little detail that did push us over to 90 tons. And that’s just an example of how we really discussed that ‘Mech in detail. 

So yeah, those are some of my personal favorites out of some of the new ‘Mechs where I had a hand in designing them myself. They all had more going for them than just what was on the page.

Sean: When you’re going in to create these ‘Mechs, is it more important to have their backstory fleshed out, or is it more important to start from the numbers side of a ‘Mech? Or do some ‘Mechs get made with both at the same time?

Johannes: Either or. There are some overarching things that we look at. Ultimately, it became clear that all the new ‘Mechs were going to be Clan-centric because that’s where the story was going with the trial on Terra and the destruction of the RAF. When I asked, “Can I also put Republic ‘Mechs in there?”, I just got a no. It was just a clear decision to just put in one ‘Mech from every Great House and one for the Periphery in terms of non-Clan ‘Mechs. The last bit of of Rec Guides that focus on the second Kickstarter, they’re a different story, they had a different sort of planning style going for them.

But some ‘Mechs are purely tabletop-driven, and I would argue that the Wolf ‘Mechs that we all got going into the project, are a good example of that. Creating a batch of Jade Falcon ‘Mechs to be the foil to that was important. And even though I had basically no input into Tamar Rising, I’d like to think that at least I suggested the planet Alyina and I put those ‘Mechs in there specifically to be an enclave of production capability for whatever purpose might come next. That’s the sort of thing that’s definitely an idea for a whole set of TRO entries. 

And we also have things that just come out of the stats, and then we even have examples where the visuals are the impulse. The Regent was an Anthony Scroggins drawing that he did on 4chan or something. This is a bit of fun. 

But then we have the ‘Mech that I said, “Look, we need a Steiner medium ‘Mech, just go,” and I got the Rawhide back. I think the designer probably was looking at the Griffin and I was looking at it thinking, “Oh, look, this is vaguely related to the Scourge.” Well, it’s got the AES arm with a weapon on it, and I asked for the artist to take the Scourge as inspiration, so that’s where I put it in-universe. That all shaped itself, and then the writer was somebody else and just went with that and created their own story. 

There’s a lot of freedom for the writers in terms of fleshing out the lore or even creating new hooks, and I will be looking at that, thinking, “Okay, let’s tweak the stats to accommodate for that,” or, “Let’s make sure the artist gets the story that this is connected to in-universe.”

Every ‘Mech has its own story, and there’s lots of good fun there. Yeah, working with the artists was very exciting in the Rec Guides because the whole art department also completely restructured itself around the Kickstarter, and then in the years after that, the processes advanced just so much more. These days everything would go through Anthony Scroggins, but in the Wild West days of trying to get the Rec Guides to accommodate for the Kickstarter but also get some new content, I think it’s the only time in my life where I had the chance to work with a few artists directly and get a few things going. 

But it’s such a pleasure to work with Anthony. You know, in the little box above the cockpit of the Blood Asp? 

Sean: Sure?

Johannes: Anthony put that there because I told him to try to give it some sort of visual hook that underneath all its skin, it initially started off as a Kingfisher rebuild. This is the lore from 3060—which the picture in 3060 clearly ignored—and it’s the only bit of actual lore we had for the Blood Asp.

So we put the Blood Asp tentatively in Snow Raven space, while also reintroducing the Kingfisher. And there’s a tiny little box on the torso above the cockpit of the Blood Asp, which is vaguely the same sort of box that’s on top of the chunky body of the Kingfisher. 

Sean: Oh yeah, I see it! 

Johannes: It’s just wonderful working with Anthony. We were scrambling to get some sort of crazy or original build with a Crossbow T—you know, the T configurations are the ‘what you see is what you get’ configurations—and we were looking at it and I noticed, look, it’s got that little blip in 3058 that could be a laser pod of some sort. Why don’t we make it a Large Laser? So I asked Anthony, “Look, when you do the Crossbow, can you just give it a really, really big Artemis IV sensor?” So suddenly we have a Large Laser Crossbow variant. We had a few fun little things like that. 

Sean: So you’ve got some fun ‘Mech stories. Do you have any controversial ‘Mech stories? Were there any new designs or redesigned variants that created conflict within the team?

Johannes: Not to a great extent. You know, we were all working on the same thing. I mean, they convinced me not to use that really weird Shadow Hawk variant as one of the baseline models for the TRO. You know, the one that moves four/six and has five Thunderbolt 5 launchers instead of an LRM-5?

Sean: No, but It sounds like a weird one [ed. It’s the SHD-5R, and yes, it’s weird].

Johannes: I kept it as a variant because I liked its quirks so much, but it’s less a case of being controversial more of having a team to be a sounding board. I mean, initially, we had a lot of to-and-fros, what’s the right way to take it? Clan tech or really lived-in feel or something like that? 

We would have lots of detailed discussions on aspects of the stats, especially of the classic ‘Mechs. We had discussions about some preordained aspects of ‘Mechs, like the Wolf ‘Mech being so very expensive. I mean, it’s nothing that we were not aware of, but instead of trying to go back on that because there’s no reason to we, instead, we’re looking at supporting it with stuff like the Hammerhead or Alpha Wolf. And then 25 Rec Guides ultimately grew to 33.

Poor Aaron. Aaron Cahall was always trying to reign me in. Initially, it was 24, and then Kickstarter two came out before we’d even finished with the 24. At least it was announced before we finished with the 24. And all the works I’d been doing with the classics in the meantime also then went back into Kickstarter too. And then it became 30 and then it became 32, and then I told them a couple of months later, “Guys, in order to fill out the page count of the print compilations, we need one more.” And that’s when I felt Aaron’s pulse rise through the screen. Buddy, he suffered through it. 

Sean: Do you know what that last ‘Mech was? 

Johannes: The last ‘Mech? I think it was more like a whole bunch of tanks. I still wanted to essentially cover 3039 entirely apart from a few non-combat units. I think the Packrat is the most painful omission, but even that’s just, you know, a scout car.

But if you look at it, the return of interest on Rec Guide 33 has been great because it’s filled with tiny little pictures, but all of them were created new, and CADs were done up for most of them. I’m sure that Catalyst cannot possibly have made a profit on that, but in the big picture, it worked out. 

I don’t know when the Viper came out, and that was actually Keith Hann‘s pet idea. Well, no, I came to him and said, “I know you dug up that old drawing.” You know the story of the Viper?

Sean: I know the Viper, but not the story behind it.

Johannes: The Star League Viper, because there’s like three different Vipers. That used to be the outline of the record sheet armor diagram. Everybody always assumes it’s a Crusader, but there was actually an illustration in the hand folders of FASA when they closed up—Keith Hann has been preserving photos of them—and it was just labeled VP1 Viper. And it took me a long time to see that it had a snake head, which I never saw on the record sheet. I just could never visualize it.

That was sort of like a pat on our own backs that we got the project done, that the Viper was included very late in the run-up. So that’s another favorite of mine, even though I had basically nothing to do with its creation. Apart from reducing the number of different variants to five after Keith sent me nine.

But beyond that, I gave him carte blanche for that. It was a nice piece to close the whole thing off with. That and the MechWarrior 4 Hellhound.

Sean: The Hellcat? 

Johannes: Yep yep. Ultimately, we’re looking for any sort of hook, and I think I’m gonna get too nerdy if I try to lay out my reason here. Should we give it a try?

Sean: This is the place to do exactly that. 

Johannes: Okay. Some things have come out in the past that are not really well preserved. I think I have it on a hard drive somewhere, but when I was pulled in 2008 to help out with record sheets, they were still in the process of going through the various TROs with Heavy Metal Pro software, even though that was already anachronistic because Total Warfare had just recently been released. 

I think either they released up to 3055 or maybe even 3058. We were going to do 3060, so yeah, probably 3058. The initial set of 3055 sheets had the Hellhound sheets. They were all very weird in the first place. If you remember, the Hellhound 2 was the new Project Phoenix version of the Hellhound in 3055 Upgrade.

The original Hellhound sort of got just new weapons on it. The Hellhound 3 and the Hellhound 5—If you look at the builds, it’s basically the same standard engine, the same sort of general shape, not as the 3055 Upgrade Hellhound 2, but as variants to the original 3055 Hellhound. 

But the Hellhound 4, it’s just weird! It’s 6/9/6 and has really weird weapons. And back when they did the record sheet with Heavy Metal Pro, it lacked any arm actuators. Looking back, it was probably sort of a wink-to-the-camera, breaking-the-fourth-wall homage to the MechWarrior 4 Hellhound.

MechWarrior 4 at the time was already almost a decade old, so I used that as a hook for this new sort of Hellhound. We did the game stats that was basically another ‘what you see is what you get’ concept off the in-game art but based on the Hellhound 4, which is the Hellhound 6 variant in the Rec Guides. That’s the sort of really convoluted thinking of trying to honor all the sources. 

Because at the end of the day, I don’t think anybody’s going to impress me with a cool new build ever again. We’ve got 40 years of history of BattleTech now. There’s so much stuff still out there that had official status at some time or was at least associated with official BattleTech. Trying to find all these little hooks and put them into a context that makes sense and basically resurrects them—now that’s something that I feel is a very deep genuflection towards the history of BattleTech. That really gets my juices flowing. 

If we ever re-release a record sheet for the 3055 Hellhound 4, I will go back to the really old record sheet that I don’t think anybody has apart from myself on a hard drive—and I will look because I was the person who corrected it to have Hellhound arms when it was released in Total Warfare—and retcon it back be the Hellcat picture. That’ll be the future: we correct it twice over. And that was a little spiel just to show you how crazy I am.

Sean: Fair enough! Are there any other ‘Mechs you can think of off the top of your head that are still awaiting their official rebirth? Like the Hellcat?

Johannes: So maybe Ray will chop my head off for just laying it out there. The two sources that I have very little qualms about going to and pulling right back into canon—because we’ve got a whole history of that happening nonstop—Stardate and BattleTechnology. At the time, the two official BattleTech magazines.

They had full licenses and they were working with FASA. They probably gave all the writers different independent contractor agreements from whichever publisher, but it was all official circuit. So I’ve got those two sources. They have an apocryphal status—like Sarna will have them as apocryphal—but to my projects, they are still pretty much primary sources.

That said, they were fan-driven at times, especially in BattleTechnology 7 and above, but I’m fan-driven. So whatever I take from that has to have some sort of merit, some sort of impact. And yes, there are still a few ‘Mechs and builds out there that did have an impact on actual canon that still aren’t fully back in canon.

But you know people with a thorough knowledge of those magazines will have already found a lot of those units. I mean, 3075 with the Titan II—I had nothing to do with that, that was before my time—but the inspiration was straight out of BattleTechnology (and so was what feels like half the Age of War section).

One of my favorite and probably most overlooked things is the Shillelagh missile tank in 3145: Kurita. That was actually a really good tank in Stardate that I think had largely been forgotten by the time it was put back into 3145, but those are the obvious examples.

Matthew Cross—who’s both a CAD artist and a writer—and I love to geek out about MechWarrior 2 to 4. There’s so much stuff hidden in there that I’ve got a lot of that in canon now, but not all of it. But I need to be careful with some of these things to always make sure they serve the universe that we have going forward. 

There are a few examples of where I thought everybody would get it and I don’t think a lot of people did. And then I just created something that was not to everyone’s liking. The best example is probably the Gladiator-B out of Shrapnel. That’s the slower Gladiator, slightly better armored, a lot slower, huge amount of pod space, not a lot of space to put stuff in. That was just all in-universe references. And I saw a lot of negative feedback because one of the hooks was that you remember in the Blood of Kerensky trilogy in the trial that Phelan had when he fought against Vlad and Phelan was in his Lone Wolf Daishi, and he fought against an Executioner. The way it was described, it could have been a Dire Wolf configuration, which, to my surprise, everybody assumed.

This is going to be hella geeky, but I used that as the baseline. And then I filled that with other hooks, like anybody who ever played MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear’s Legacy, one of the most infamous missions is the underwater mission where you get a pre-made Executioner and it gets dropped in the water and you have to slog yourself through what feels like a hundred submarines and a company of ‘Mechs. It was just really horrible, but also a really evocative mission. And that’s half of the fluff of this Executioner-B. 

Maybe there are not so many fans around anymore who really get that, so I think I might have been overindulging in that TRO entry. So that’s always something to be mindful of. And I never want to be off the deep end. That’s why it’s also really important to have a team and get other people to bring their ideas into projects like these.

We’ve got lots of new ‘Mechs in the Rec Guide Volume 2 that were done by others and I basically just approved them. It’s really important to get the whole spectrum of ideas in there because nobody is just gonna be the entirety of any sort of project.

Like even the Jade Phoenix, which was the only thing that I had nailed down before even starting the project. Lance Scarinci, one of the one of the writers of the Rec Guides, he did the Hierofalcon. I did tweak his Hierofalcon a little bit, but also then I went back to the Jade Phoenix and tweaked that a little bit in terms of armor distribution and stuff like that, so they would be siblings. Cross-pollination of ideas is really, really important. 

Sean: Speaking of weird ideas, I’m wondering, were you involved in any way with the Hell’s Horses QuadVee ‘Mechs? That’d be the Boreas, the Harpagos, the Arion, the Notos, and the Cyllaros.

Johannes: The Boreas is a Herb design that came from XTRO Republic, a series of three XTROs, which were the first things that were mine, so to speak, as a developer. 

So no, I wasn’t involved in the first Vee that came out in 3145. I told you I did all the stats; in fact, they are the exception. It was clear we had to have some QuadVees in the Dark Age materials because QuadVees had been mentioned in the lore. I assume they were done by Herb himself because he was the line developer at the time. 

So I assume they were his. I don’t know. Paul is the usual suspect. Paul Sjardijn. He would have been a usual suspect of his fingers and that. Is the next question going to be how come they’re so suboptimal as a game unit, compared to how completely over-the-top powered Tripods are?

Sean: No, I just wanted to know exactly where the design philosophy came from with these ‘Mechs. They’re just so bizarre! And there was already pushback from BattleTech fans against Land-Air ‘Mechs, which never came back even though they were some of the oldest designs in Battletech. Suddenly we have these QuadVees, which seemed like an analog to Land-Air ‘Mechs, but even weirder and worse.

Johannes: Yes, I would agree on both of those counts. The whole concept seems even more anime than Land-Air ‘Mechs. But best as I can remember, and I never saw the primary source and I think I was told this more than 10 years ago, there’s like one line in one bit of canon Dark Age lore about the Hell’s Horses now building QuadVees which got us into the position of requiring QuadVees.

I think QuadVees are a funny idea. I don’t mind them at all, especially since they are ostensibly worse than either Quad ‘Mechs or vehicles. Well, you can argue about the effectiveness versus vehicles, but they certainly have a lot of empty space and not a lot of payload for their mass. 

I told you ‘Mechs can be poetry or they can be that can be boring. There’s a whole other aspect where I would sound even crazier than before if I told you about how they speak to me, they tell me a story, and they have a beauty. They can have a beauty of their own. I don’t think QuadVees will ever really do that to me. 

Some technologies have like hidden layers. I had this huge battle armor phase that culminated with TRO 3145 really having a lot of new battle armor. I was really surprised to see how many different layers you could get at with battle armor construction. I think we’ve been there and done most of that. I don’t think there’s much more to do with battle armor. That’s why the Rec Guides only had less than a handful. 

But then you have stuff like ProtoMechs and now QuadVees, and you see within a few test builds, okay, these are the parameters of what I can do with this technology, and there’s not going to be a heck of a lot of variation in there. QuadVees are very much in that sort of category.

Tripods, different story. I mean, Tripods are so heavily associated with the Republic of the Sphere that they don’t have the brightest of futures. I really haven’t talked this through with Ray at all, but there’s still stuff to be done with tripods. I can guarantee you that whichever avenue Ray lets me I will be trying to put out a few more tripods in the next couple of years.

Sean: So: no QuadVees, but yes tripods. 

Johannes: There’s one. 

Sean: There’s one QuadVee? 

Johannes: Yeah. 

Sean: Okay. 

Johannes: Yeah. I mean, we’ve only got one weird QuadVee, so I’m pushing the envelope on that just a tiny bit. It’s not gonna be very special, but it’s still a QuadVee. 

Sean: I also wanted to ask about the Kintaro since we recently saw its return at Gen Con. However, I’ve been looking at the variants of the Kintaro on the Master Unit List, and the vast majority of them seem to be extinct by the ilClan era. Should I take this to mean that we’re likely to get some Kintaro variants in the very near future?

Johannes: That’s what I was going to talk about before when you asked me about the Penetrator, I think. We kept up with the miniature releases while we were doing the Rec Guides, but we needed to draw a line somewhere. So the very few non-Kickstarter ‘Mechs that had come out in the time that we were still finishing up planning, they are the exception to the rule.

The very last thing was the Thunder Hawk. And in fact, we’d already mapped that out to be a Shrapnel release, but then included it at the 11th hour. When we released it, that was the cutoff line. Anything else after that? No, we don’t have a set plan, and it’s a bit of a relief, really. There were a few ‘Mechs where we really had to sidestep established canon to bring them back into the 32nd century. 

Some of the most egregious problems were actually caused by the Clan Invasion Kickstarter. The Rec Guides are all set in 3250 and it states, “Oh, we haven’t had Warhawks in centuries in the Inner Sphere,” but we have to have them because the minis are out there. So that’s why we now have a Sea Fox perspective on Warhawks still existing in Scorpion Empire space.

I mean, there are a few two steps in there, and there are a few resurrected ‘Mechs in the Rec Guides that would not have been resurrected had we not had the need to include them because of the Kickstarters. So, longwinded, no, there isn’t anything planned for any of the other boxed ‘Mechs.

But, I’ve been talking to Wanji Lau, the project lead for the pilot cards of the box sets. I’ve come around to it. I think whenever there’s a need for him to have a variant that has some sort of relevance, and we don’t have a prior variant that fulfills the need for relevance, then I might be moved to develop a new variant with him.

We don’t really know how to release them yet. It’s been semi-public that the MUL may get a new website and there might be plans for a lot more content in the medium-term future for the MUL, so that might be one way of getting things out to the public.

In the meantime, we do have record sheet releases for the box sets whenever they appear, they’re just on the Classic BattleTech website. As for the Kintaro, you’ll just have to see. 

Sean: Okay. Well, did you have anything else that you wanted to maybe preview here? Any other subjects you want to just dive into?

Johannes: Honestly I don’t have anything for you that I can show you in terms of preview. The Rec Guides were such a central project, and they are done and dusted. Apart from that, it’s just the general work that I get to do with Phil Lee for Shrapnel, and we don’t want to spoil any of that.

Beyond that, I can’t really tell you about future projects because they haven’t congealed yet. There’s still some sort of debate on what the future of TROs will hold at all. Because they are really a product of their time, and now they are a product of the fact that they’ve always been a beloved tentpole series of BattleTech. But we don’t really need any new ‘Mechs, I always come around to that.

What I think might be in terms of content, not in terms of form, not in terms of how we’ll present it or where we’ll take it in the future. But in terms of content, I think the thing that most interest me is what we did with Technical Readout: Irregulars and Technical Readout: Golden Century; little PDFs, or maybe print-on-demand products. They both had 25 units in them that served to flesh out just a tiny bit of history and a tiny bit of a specific place at a specific time. I immediately have half a dozen really—what I think—cool ideas for things to be able to do with that.

But ultimately, we are at a crossroads here where we really have to think about what we want of Technical Readouts in the future. My ideas hold no weight here because they’re almost fan ideas, but I’d love to see something not beholden to the BattleMech Manual, which is what the Rec Guides were beholden to.

I’d love to see something that consolidates all the Word of Blake‘s secret weapons. I’d love to see some TRO material for the established parts of Wars of Reaving in a strictly historical setting. And I’d love to elaborate on Golden Century. 

So those are just a few immediate ideas. I actually do have quite a lot of drafts in my hard drives, but there’s no specific plan for any of that at the moment. My work is just low-key supporting whatever TRO work needs to be done for other people’s projects and then also working as, like, a third-tier writer for a little bit of sourcebook stuff.

Sean: That’s a good answer for me. And that’s all the time we have! Thanks so much for sitting down to chat ‘Mechs, it was a lot of fun.

Johannes: Thanks for giving me all this time. I think it’s no secret I came to you because I really appreciate what you do with your interviews that get published on Sarna, but I really enjoy that you have a whole series going and I really enjoy that it’s in the print medium. I really appreciate your work, Sean, and I hope you keep it up.

Sean: Oh, thank you! 

Johannes: And beyond that, I guess what I can share is I don’t really have an avenue where I can geek out about a specific variant of a specific ‘Mech or what the hell was I thinking when I went off that. And we’re doing an interview now and you’re asking me about it and then I just wouldn’t even know where to start. 

But I am on the forums. I guess I can be found on Discord, even though beyond this interview, I really don’t like Discord. But if anybody is really upset or really happy with anything, or it’s just really curious about some specific detail and can, you know, put up with somebody going as nuts as I just did when we talked about the Hellhound. Just, don’t be a stranger. You can always approach me and ask me about stuff. 

Sean: Alright, perfect. Who knows, maybe I’ll just come back and ask you about some of the crazier ‘Mechs later. 

Johannes: Please do. 

Sean: Maybe the Kintaro when that arrives. 

Johannes: I don’t know what you’re talking about. 

Sean: Haha, sure. Well, I think that’ll be it for me. Thanks again for being interviewed.

Johannes:  Thanks Sean, thank you very much. That was a lot of fun. 

Thanks again to Johannes for sitting down to talk ‘Mechs and BattleTech with me! And if you’ve got any ‘Mech questions, be sure to post them on the BattleTech forums.

And as always, MechWarriors: Stay Syrupy.