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What makes Battletech, Battletech?

BT is rather different from other sci-fi settings such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and Babylon 5 in the sense that many of the most commonly used sci-fi themes (or tropes, if you prefer) do not exist in the canon universe. Some of the themes NOT present in Battletech include:

Anti-Gravity
Warp Drive
Teleportation (other than what Jumpships can do)
Energy Shields
Sentient Machines (although BT comes really, really close on this one)
Anti-Matter
Nanotechnology
Alien Civilizations*

*The novel Far Country, that atrociously written unwanted stepchild of the Battletech library, has gone noticeably unmentioned by the powers that be for many years. In any event, the primitive "aliens" of that story are so far removed from the Inner Sphere that the events of the novel literally have no bearing on the rest of the universe.

So then, other than the obvious (mechs, lasers, starships) what are some of the themes that DO exist in Battletech?

Faster-than-light travel
Faster-than-light communication
Real-time communication over interstellar distances
Time Travel (always due to accidental misjumps, apparently)
Cyborgs
Alien Creatures… and Dinosaurs!



Anyone care to add to either of these lists?

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New Horizons Battletech campaign homepage: http://www.heavymetalpro.com/forums/vie ... 10&t=22137

The Expanse Battletech campaign homepage (currently defunct): http://www.heavymetalpro.com/forums/vie ... hp?t=17910

Japanese Space Samurai.

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Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

Not called that in Star Wars either. Its counterpart is hyperdrive. That same term might have appeared in BattleTech somewhere (Kearnu-Fuchida Hyperdrive)

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[i]You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights errant, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it.[/i]

[url=http://www.mekwars.org][u]MekWars[/u][/url]

Themes of BattleTech:
Futuristic feudal lords
Mechas

_________________
[i]You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights errant, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it.[/i]

[url=http://www.mekwars.org][u]MekWars[/u][/url]

Mystic/Psychic powers aka Ghost Pilots as in the old Kell stories.

Clones/Genetic Engineering/Doppelgangers

Supersoldiers

_________________
Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

Things present in Battletech:

- Life on other planets
- Interstellar travel via jump drives (quantum teleportation?) with long recharge times
- FTL burst communications with limited real-time capability
- Mechs, battle armor, exoskeletons, non-AI robots
- Kilometer-long space warships with enough firepower to blast a planet into nuclear winter (no Death Stars, but effective enough)
- Lasers, particle beams, gauss weapons, plasma weapons
- Highly miniaturized fusion power and energy storage capable of tremendous energy output (Cray has a whole dissertation on this)
- Environment domes on hostile worlds
- Eugenic cloning (Clan trueborns) and cybernetics
- Ablative armors made of handwavium-unobtainium alloy

Things absent in Battletech:

- Realistic "real world" weapons and armor
- "Blasters", "phasers", etc.
- Wet navies (for the most part, except on water worlds)
- Antimatter, black hole drives, and other ultra-exotic gadgets (for the most part, Battletech's technology is actually grounded in real ideas today)
- Quickly available "go fast" FTL travel (like ST's warp drive or SW's hyperdrive)
- Common real-time FTL communications
- Teleportation (except for jump drives)
- Energy shields (except for a few limited examples like Operation Blue Shield)
- Terraforming (may have happened in early eras of CBT, Lostech in the present)
- Artificial gravity
- SENTIENT life on other planets (for the most part)
- Unified (or mostly unified) human society (a key of many sci-fi backgrounds)
- Realistic economies and believable plotlines
- Realistic cockpit conditions and related engineering in Mechs (one of my peeves)
- Religious, supernatural or psychic phenomena (for the most part)

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Be careful what you wish for. I might let you have it.

Oh, it gets mentioned and discussed by TPTB. In public, even, over on CBT.com.

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

See "A Time of War" Tech Levels A through C, and Support Vehicle Rules of Same Tech Level.

Yes the Ranges are limited for game play in BattleTech, but the ranges were also based off the ability to penetrate Armor...

Take MGs,
Yes, a M2 has a range safety zone of IIRC 2000 meters, but its standard shell IIRC only has a 50% chance of penetrating 10 mm of rolled steel armor at 90 meters. LRMs are Redeyes, and SRMs are TOWs (without wires).

The Current Era Weapons are in BattleTech... what isn't is rules that do them justice... unless you look at the RPG.

Doncaddh, I think you are a bit mistaken, but if you see the game in that terms then good for you.

Let's see things not in BT:

Robots or droids similar to how they are shown in Star Wars or other Scifi settings.

Other things like non-military related space travel, beyond of the collar mentions and then some how everything jumps right back to the military setting.

Generation ships (aka sleeper ships)

More space station and other such items, very limited but plentiful in other settings.

Just a few things I have noticed...

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

If you mean, "Lengthy, novel-based discussions of people using civilian ships," yes, such things are rare in BT. The best example was probably Melissa Steiner's flight and near-capture during the Warrior trilogy, and that's a rare one.

However, the importance of civilian spacecraft underlies all discussions of interstellar trade in the House Sourcebooks, House Handbooks, Field Manuals, Explorer Corps, BattleSpace, DropShips & JumpShips, Strategic Operations, and A Time of War. 90% or more of all spaceflight in BT is civilian in nature, even if it is "off screen."
Literally speaking, correct. The Magellan probes of the 2020s established high c-fractional flight (68% of light-speed, IIRC), putting their habitable worlds within one generation of Earth by slower-than-light fusion spacecraft. ISP2 and JHS:Terra discuss colonies rumored to have been established by slower-than-light spacecraft launched in the 21st Century, but they technically were not "sleeper" ships (the only "sleeping" was done by frozen embryos, if you believe ISP2) or generation ships (the flights being only decades long and using one set of crew.)

But those slower-than-light interstellar flights remain the stuff of rumors in canon publications (JHS:Terra) and tabloid material otherwise (ISP2).

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

Sooooo there is a spacer culture out there, only we never get to see it, or understand how it interacts with "local" populations (read: Combine Police State) and/ or yocal homebodies (i.e. Mainstreet Outback)?

I still get crabby when I think how anyone whom travels seems to give up half their live(s) to the boredom of the Exercise Room on-board a DropShip . . .

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[url=http://www.hitbox.tv/hmpgoose]Goose - The Egyptian God of Frustration[/url]

"He closes his eyes and remembers the night splattered with brightness, the sudden flare of erupting fuel, the mad chase as, supersonic, he bobbed and weaved among the hills and valleys of the Ozarks, the laws on his tail, burning for home …"

Spacer culture? Most "spacers" appear to be a lucky few planet folk who sign up for some work on DropShips or JumpShips for a few years. There's no abiding ship-only culture in BT, no more than the usual navy-vs-landlubber stuff.

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

I don't think that is accurate.

In the Free Worlds League, each space ship is a sovereign "planet" lead by its captain. That and other things I have read have caused me to see a world of generational ship ownership, where some people, especially the JumpShip crews, never set foot on planets.

And then there are the Diamond Sharks/Sea Foxes that live their lives in their trading convoys, and those lovely Scandinavian traders in the eastern periphery.

Based on what I have read, there are three main cultures, not including the asteroid and deep outerTerransystem dudes. JumpShip operators and crews, MANY of the smaller of which are family or corporate owned. Space Stations would also fit in this idea. Those would have generational crews in a lot of cases, people who never set foot in a high gravity situation outside of a grav deck. They would REALLY know how to fly in low gravity and people like them would be loved by the recruiters for the null-gee football recruiters. DropShip crews and passengers, military or civilian. People who spend a long time flying in space, but are almost always under gravity since the ships are boosting to or from planets. Many of these people feel at home in space, but in reality they are mere visitors as far as the JumpShip people are concerned. And the planet people, those who just plain NEVER see space.

So you have Lifers, Visitors, and Never Gonna See Its.

_________________
Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

Historical: Operation Klondike has something contradictory. Lessee... ALONE IN THE DARK, page 39:

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[i]You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights errant, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it.[/i]

[url=http://www.mekwars.org][u]MekWars[/u][/url]

Now that, sir, is an excellent example of a spacer culture. I stand corrected.
Post-Jihad, post-War of Reaving, yes, the Sea Foxes become the epitome of Spacers. I was thinking of earlier eras, but that's another good example.
Jarnfolk have strong roots to their little huddle of planets; the ship-owning families seem to grow on the planets, where they have their households (if you believe ISP2), and then "fara í víking" (go on wealth-garnering expeditions.) I'm sure you'll find childbirths and people spending decades on the ships, but it's not necessarily a lifetime gig.

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

The Pentagon spacers were broken to heel by the return of the Clans. I don't think that spacer culture lasted long thereafter.

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

Where does it say they were broken to heel?

I would think the Snow Ravens as an example would see them as kindred spirits and absorb them...and then USE them rather than bring them to heel.

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Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

Operation Klondike. The Ravens weren't "the aerospace Clan" then. The pre-Clan warlords wrecked much of the spacer assets during the Pentagon civil war, and then Clans Burrock and Widowmaker were tasked with breaking the major spacer groups in Dagda. The Clan's spacer culture was wrecked before the Clans really came to power.

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

Something else that is missing in BT, well in a fashion so to speak...is the merchant ships like you see in Star Wars, aka things like the Falcon and others, these are seen in Star Trek as well, along with B5...BT has them, but they are nothing more then dropships that have to have a jumpship to travel around outside of a solar system...where as other scifi settings have the merchant ships doing their thing with out the need for the extra ship...maybe BT needs a little more of these kinds of merchant ships and while that kind of "breakthrough" would be universe changing, it would be a likely avenue of research...

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

No, Karagin. DropShip & JumpShip combination is the universe changing breakthrough. The other you are referring went out of fashion during Age of War. I recommend you, and anyone else interested, to check out entry of Aquilla-class Transport in Experimental Technical Readout (XTRO) Primitives Volume 1. And to answer the obvious question: that 'Ship dates back to year 2148.

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[i]You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights errant, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it.[/i]

[url=http://www.mekwars.org][u]MekWars[/u][/url]

Karagin has a point from an out-of-setting perspective: there's no do-all private little starship. You need a JumpShip plus a secondary ship, be it small craft or DropShip. Not even small WarShips or sub-compact core vessels can land on a planet.

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

Well...there IS the Bug-Eye... But even though it flew like a DropShip and such it was never really a proper trading ship due to its mission. hehehe.

As for JumpShips, there are many in private ownerships, and a LOT of them owned by small family corporations. AKA tax shelters. They would be good for the trading family kind of job. Have a family spacecraft (JumpShip) with the parasite ships (DropShips) ferrying stuff to the planet or the space station near the jump point.

But yes, the old school JumpShip arrives and boosts to planetary orbit where it commences trading model died with the Star League's JumpShip-DropShip standardization model. Probably their way of keeping the Periphery in check. Allow them to build small space craft, but not anything that could jump, to keep them reliant on the Terran Hegemony for interstellar trade.

In the really old days, pirate points would be a LOT more commonly used by traders who would jump into a system and then move into planetary orbit to do their trading. Time is money and all that.

With the Star League JumpShip-DropShip model, trading stations at the jump points are going to be more common, with ships jumping in system, doing their trading, and then leaving again. Time is money. Leave in-system cargo moving to small craft or locally-owned DropShips, all of which are going to be a LOT more common than interstellar transport ships. Of course in the Davion Outback or in the more primitive areas of the Periphery there just won't be much infrastructure for that so the JumpShips will have to sit around twiddling their thumbs while the DropShips go back and forth between the planet.

_________________
Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

Never recalled many mentions of jumpships orbiting planets...the books and stories almost all said the jumpships stayed at the jump points to recharge the sails etc...And Medron I think you missed my point. I am referring to ships that can jump from system to system WITHOUT the need of the jumpship and land on planets, like the ships in SW and B5, the small to medium sized tramp freighters and such.

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

JumpShips stayed at jump points after the development of the DropShip in 2470. For 360 years prior to that, JumpShips functioned more like WarShips and made the transit from jump point to planet, then dropped short ranged shuttles to the ground. See "DropShips & JumpShips," page 4. (Or is it page 6?)

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

I will check the book, I still think that the game is lacking some thing by not having the small tramp freighter/merchant ships that are common in a lot of other sci-fi settings.

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

ST-46 Shuttle not small enough for ya?

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[i]You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights errant, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it.[/i]

[url=http://www.mekwars.org][u]MekWars[/u][/url]

That's not what he was referring to Matti.

_________________
New Horizons Battletech campaign homepage: http://www.heavymetalpro.com/forums/vie ... 10&t=22137

The Expanse Battletech campaign homepage (currently defunct): http://www.heavymetalpro.com/forums/vie ... hp?t=17910

And deliberately so. BattleTech's original writers applied some firm restrictions to the setting that set it apart from others, like: No aliens. Regressing technology. A society in decay. No easy star flight.

The restrictive features of JumpShips gave BT a unique feel different from Star Wars, Star Trek, Traveler, Star Frontiers, and other settings. BT isn't a setting where you just jump in your Century Eagle and go gallivanting across the universe, it's one where you spend a week transiting to the nigh-immobile Heighliner, which needs a week to recharge its drive for a single jump rather than being able to wander easily across the galaxy.

But those "restrictive features" do, as you said, cause the game to "lack something."

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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

"Woo, that was bracing! They don't like it when you shoot at them. I worked that out myself." --Mal, Firefly

"Going bonkers from EI or DNI is pushing it. I mean how many Crusaders or Super Wobbies are sane to begin with...." --RockJock01

But now you have this artifact (or was it Traveler-like?) of any campaign not centered around garrisoning this one planet will have the PC aging on-board a DropShip, just waiting for the next jump. It adds flavor, yeah, but the Aging Table on pp.333AToW can be spooky . . .

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[url=http://www.hitbox.tv/hmpgoose]Goose - The Egyptian God of Frustration[/url]

"He closes his eyes and remembers the night splattered with brightness, the sudden flare of erupting fuel, the mad chase as, supersonic, he bobbed and weaved among the hills and valleys of the Ozarks, the laws on his tail, burning for home …"

Having the flavor is fine, having away around it makes for a more exciting game. Yes, I can see that being able to jump into your StarFox and poof in 20 minutes ship time you are on Timbuktu enjoying Mai Tais and the wild night life can be a big departure from waiting the week to get the sails recharged and then week journey from the jump point to the planet...and I can see how having that allows for things like smaller garrisons since the folks on the planet would have plenty of time to get ready. BUT with the advances in the game as far as tech goes, would it not be something that someone in the brain trusts like NAIS or the Combine version, which we have yet to get a name for, or any of the other House super secrete brain factories, would be looking into...just feel that the lack of these type of craft or as you said Cray, the limits placed on merchant ships does in some ways limit things. How to get around it or not is up to the players and how they want to play the game. As has been said each of us play the game differently then each other. I have seen folks graft over Traveller rules for space travel or the D6 SW rules or just make things up as they go, and they enjoy themselves, which is key.

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

Well, in my Human Sphere, the devastation of the Jihad forced the survivors to build smaller WarShips, back down into the sub 100kton range. They didn't have the Inner Sphere-wide resources that made the Star League Battlewagons possible and so built WarShips the size of DropShips, and a number of THOSE can land. So in the Human Sphere you CAN board a ship, launch and fly up to the Null Point between the planet and its moon, and then jump out in a matter of hours, aiming for the Null Point one system over, and be back down in a matter of hours, raiding and pillaging to your heart's content.

And some of the ships are armed merchants.

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Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

At least it's not as bad as is case with WH40k. Though on that game humans occupy many times bigger space than all of BattleTech systems/worlds together: one campaign less than a lifetime conquered Empire of Man 1000 worlds.

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[i]You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights errant, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it.[/i]

[url=http://www.mekwars.org][u]MekWars[/u][/url]

Now that brings to my mind one finnish RPG: Heimot

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[i]You know what they say, don't you? About how us MechWarriors are the modern knights errant, how warfare has become civilized now that we have to abide by conventions and rules of war. Don't believe it.[/i]

[url=http://www.mekwars.org][u]MekWars[/u][/url]

to bad next to noone here can read and understand finnish

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typos and spelling-mistakes are property of the finder. english is not my mother-tongue.

Medron it is not the same thing. You still need a third party to make the jump from system to system.

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

Yes, even with Civillian "WarShips" (another failing in nomenclature along the lines of AeroSpace "Fighter") you still need Small Craft or DropShips that make the surface to orbit run.

No Ships jumping into the system at pirate points and then making the day or less transit to the planet and landing to offload its cargo. but then again, most sci-fi settings have jump or warp ships that stay in the black ocean or in orbit while in system ships/surface to orbit vessels shuttle the cargo to the surface...

Funny I seem to recall ships like the Falcon and others in SW that can both land and jump into hyperspace and carry cargo, same thing in B5, must be the exceptions to the rule for those settings...and even with the bigger ships staying in orbit they can still jump and don't need to wait days to recharge and in many of the other settings older warships and other older military craft are sold to civilians to be used for all kinds of purposes, something that BT doesn't do, and when it does get mentioned, it is a one off moment then forgotten.

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

B5 is about a public transportation system: You may need shoes to get on board, but you're not driving the bus . . .

_________________
[url=http://www.hitbox.tv/hmpgoose]Goose - The Egyptian God of Frustration[/url]

"He closes his eyes and remembers the night splattered with brightness, the sudden flare of erupting fuel, the mad chase as, supersonic, he bobbed and weaved among the hills and valleys of the Ozarks, the laws on his tail, burning for home …"

Actually, it IS the same thing, and you do NOT.

Space travel in the Human Sphere is based off the fluff of the Mammoth and the Behemoth, the one is too big to enter atmo, and the other is the biggest that does so. So any ship approximately the size of a Mammoth or smaller can enter atmo. Fill the cargo bay of a Conquistador with a jump drive and it can still enter atmo AND jump. Having a jump drive does not magically make you incapable of entering atmo.

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Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

In this case, it's truly not about size. 3/5 is needed to reach escape velocity of a 1G world. If the Behemoth had the engines for that kind of thrust, it could do it.

_________________
New Horizons Battletech campaign homepage: http://www.heavymetalpro.com/forums/vie ... 10&t=22137

The Expanse Battletech campaign homepage (currently defunct): http://www.heavymetalpro.com/forums/vie ... hp?t=17910

Not according to the fluff of the designs in question.

_________________
Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

The idea, Merdon, is have the ability to a)land, b) take off again and c) jump from system to system without the need of a jumpship. NO dropship in BT can do this. Yes the Behemoth and Mammoth are the biggest and yes they have their draw back, but neither of them can leave the system they are in with out the aid a third party ship. Other settings have large cargo ships that can not land, yet they can orbit the planet they are traveling too, then using shuttles etc...unload and reload. These same settings have smaller merchant ships, some roughly the size of BT dropships, to include the Behemoth and Mammoth classes, who can land, unload, reload, and then take off and jump out of system WITHOUT the need of the third party. What I am trying to suggest is that IF BT had this as well as the third party element, then things would be more flexible and less static.

I am not suggesting the need to have world size jumpships or things like super battle-stations, I simply suggesting that someone somewhere in the BT universe would be interested in making KF engine smaller and with a possible goal of making it so a dropship can have one without needing the jumpship and at the same time away could be discovered to allow a jumpship to recharge while in orbit and jump from the same spot as well.

And many sci-fi settings do talk about the ships needing to reach certain speeds or parts of space near a planet, before they can jump to hyperspace or light speed or what ever they call it, so even then there are limits that can still apply to having smaller craft being jump capable.

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

Seriously? You are bring up this? When has this game given fluff any amount of credibility? IF we followed the fluff, certain mechs would have died off years ago, and the Javelin or was it the Jenner would have rules for it being to top-heavy as suggested in the fluff of the original non-edited by Nystul's mis-handling of the law suit TRO3025. The fluff is fun and interesting and wonderful at given character but it is not the rules.

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

I seem to remember that the KF drive has size (and more relevant SHAPE) limitations (long and cylindrical) that would preclude it from being in a small ship capable of planetfall. Now, could a dropship have a secondary module it leaves in orbit like the hyperspace ring that the jedifighters used in the second starwars movie?

THAT I could see...

Massing in at a few kilotons, it is a thruster array, a jumpsail, and a single collar that the parent dropship mates with. No "ship" facilities at all, merely an attachment that the ship "puts on" to make jumps.

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Big Nick, the Chainsaw Assassin
[i]Making Bad News Worse since 1980[/i]
[b]What... There's only ONE of you?[/b]

Karagin. The WarShips that are smaller than around 50kton can do EXACTLY as you say. Jump in, land, and do their thing, then leave and jump back out. No third party required. EXACTLY what you are looking for. As for fluff, if you don't want to follow it, that is your choice. I do follow it on my table and in the Human Sphere.

Chainsaw. As I remember, the smallest allowed KF drive is around 2.5 ktons, which means a minimum WarShip size of around 5 ktons and a minimum JumpShip size of around 2.5 ktons. Yes. That is smaller than a LOT of DropShips. I aim you towards the very small Bug-Eye which was specifically designed to slot in with merchant DropShip traffic so as not to be noticed.

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Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?

But that is a jumpdrive that has not been ruggedized for atmospheric landings, and crammed into a ship that was the pinnacle of SLDF technology to the point that it's own entry made it out to be the shizzle. Figure that it has every compactness dirty trick in the book, and the NEXT smallest jumpship is the Explorer. That guy was a bit big to be a dropship too...

Figure it can't happen for the same reason you can't have Dropship LAMS. Just because you can make 10% of the dropship's mass into "conversion equipment" doesn't make it sprout arms and legs.

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Big Nick, the Chainsaw Assassin
[i]Making Bad News Worse since 1980[/i]
[b]What... There's only ONE of you?[/b]

What warships can do this? Are you referring to the Bug Eye? I believe that ship is no longer an official ship for play in the game, but if you can show me a section or page in the rules that allows a jump drive equipped warship to land on a planet in Battletech, then take off again and then jump, then my point is mute.

What I am looking for I have stated, the lack of simple small ships that can jump from system to system without the need for the third party ship aka the jumpship, is something that BT is missing and I feel is needed since the technology would be a tremendous boon to merchants and the military as well as expanding the realms and control of the house leaders. Also note here, I limited the idea to merchant ships aka the dropships, I did not say that fighters or small craft needed this kind of tech, which can be seen in other settings, i.e. the X-wing or some of the shuttles from Star Trek, I don't see BT at that level for small single crewed ships having such abilities.

As for the fluff, I like it, never would not like it, but once I realized that it and the rules were apples and oranges, it became character building for the items it talked about and seeing how TPTB can re-write every time they want to, to fit their "new" out look on the game that alone should tell you it is not that important to playing the game. I am sorry that we are not seeing things the same way on this, but that too is good thing, since it shows that the game is big enough and flexible to allow for different out looks.

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

Something else I noticed that is missing or not shown in any large extent, smart AI. SW has this in their droids and other robotic life-forms, and in B5 you have the decent AI in a lot of civilian apps, same in Star Trek, yet BT doesn't show AI or even advanced computers very often, and when they do nothing seems very far beyond what we have on the drawing boards currently. I wonder if having this kind of tech would change the game or not?

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Karagin-

Darkness is a friend of mine. Sometimes I have to beat it back, or it would overwhelm me. Shirley Meier

[url]http://karagin12.livejournal.com/[/url]

The Wookiee, he's not wearing any pants!

[img]http://www.heavymetalpro.com/countries/mil-army.gif[/img]

The next smallest that we know of. Of course, with the NEW rules that no WarShip can be under 100ktons, which yes does take the Bug-Eye out of the rules, the current rules do not allow DropShip-sized WarShips.

Of course, I don't use the current rules because they don't match the fluff of the universe and to me, fluff is more important than the rules and where the rules and fluff conflict, the rules should be altered to allow what is canon to be able to be played.

And in the newest iteration of the rules, there is a simple statement that any WarShip that enters atmo is destroyed. This is compatible in my mind with the new rule that no WarShip can be under 100ktons. So...yes, a ship larger than the Behemoth, that ITSELF is too large to enter atmo and is destroyed when doing so, would be destroyed entering atmo. Yeah. That sorta hits hits "well DUH" threshold.

Where I run is in the much smaller area, the Bug-Eye-scale WarShips going up to Mammoth-scale WarShips, ships that are small enough to enter atmo. And the idea that a jump drive may be too fragile to enter a gravity well isn't going to fly either. WarShips make their OWN gravity wells when they hit their drives and go up to one gee acceleration, never minding the combat maneuvers they undertake while taking fire from enemy ships...and the drives still work.

In short, I've taken an area where there ARE no rules, never have been, and may never BE any, but where there is canon ships IN that class, and coming up with rules that make them as useful as they say they are. A Bug-Eye can act like a DropShip, more importantly it acts like the most common merchant DropShips. Therefore, it can land, because merchant DropShips land. There isn't a rule covering that, so I invented one. In short, a Mammoth-scale or smaller ship can land, unless for some reason it is designed NOT to, ala the Vengeance. The smallest jump drive is 2.5ktons (per official rules), therefore any ship between 5ktons and around 52 or so ktons can both land AND carry a jump drive. This is a House Rule, only because there are no rules covering that area, but it is a House Rule that matches the known canon examples of ships in the BattleTech Universe.

This is the rule I use for the Human Sphere, which results in exactly the kind of ships you are looking for, the ships that land and jump and land again all on their own. The following is an example of one of the common ships in the universe:

http://www.pryderockindustries.com/huma ... ere%29.htm

As for smart AI, there IS some, though all of it is Star League stuff that nobody understands anymore. The Caspar drones. Whatever keeps that Valkyrie plant building BattleMechs after three hundred years. Security bots that hover around, looking for trespassers. Star League Beagle Probes that learn the tactics of their enemies and learn to project what they will probable do. Some of these are smarter or dumber than others. They are all much smarter than anything we have access to now, except as a rare bit of Lostech.

_________________
Medron Pryde - The Great and Terrible
[img]http://faileas.greywolf.googlepages.com/WOTD.png[/img]
[url=http://www.pryderockindustries.com]P.R.I.[/url] - The home of BattleTech programs and files
"I'm gonna Tea Party like its 1776." - Medron Pryde
Who is John Galt?