Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

[RomanesEuntDomus]

So, I just "acquired" a copy of BT, and I love the opening cinematic. "Hey, look, we're going to the stars, we've got this neat Star League to make it all peaceful.... oh. Not so peaceful...." Turns out there's only an eternity of carnage among the stars, and the laughter of thirsting Clanners.

The opening cinematic and the music is really good. From time to time, when I fire up the game, I watch it, even though I've watched it so many times already.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Everybody points at Fallout for the "War. War never changes" meme, but BattleTech is the poster child for "humanity never changes". A thousand years into the future, we're still hard at work screwing each other over for the pettiest reasons.

It's one of those things I love about the setting. They could very well have made it so each faction was composed of a different species of aliens. They could have gone full Star Wars up on this bitch, Death Stars included. But no, they stuck with humans (goddamn birds notwithstanding) and no superweapons. Any wars being fought are fought on the ground and every planet has a price paid in vehicles, ammunition, spare parts and blood. And the moment one faction starts getting a bit too big for its britches? The others gang up to take it down to size. Want an eternal war setting? That's how you do it.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Everybody points at Fallout for the "War. War never changes" meme, but BattleTech is the poster child for "humanity never changes". A thousand years into the future, we're still hard at work screwing each other over for the pettiest reasons.

It's one of those things I love about the setting. They could very well have made it so each faction was composed of a different species of aliens. They could have gone full Star Wars up on this bitch, Death Stars included. But no, they stuck with humans (goddamn birds notwithstanding) and no superweapons. Any wars being fought are fought on the ground and every planet has a price paid in vehicles, ammunition, spare parts and blood. And the moment one faction starts getting a bit too big for its britches? The others gang up to take it down to size. Want an eternal war setting? That's how you do it.

I particularly like how they ensured that their ground-based battle system has a very good reason not to devolve into slugfests between WarShips or orbital bombardments:
WarShips existed, but they have been functionally been wiped out in the distant past. Nuking planets is possible, but whoever does that will really come to regret it.

The setting is beautifully crafted to make sure that there aren't glaring issues like "Why don't they just nuke the shit out of each other?" They did. For hundreds of years in the past. To a point that everyone went "This is a terrible idea and if we don't stop, there will be nothing left to fight over."

BattleTech is one of the most finely crafted settings and it gets barely any recognition for it from the outside...

 

[robobobo]

Was. Was one of the most finely crafted settings. Went down the drain real fast with the jihad and dark ages stuff.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Was. Was one of the most finely crafted settings. Went down the drain real fast with the jihad and dark ages stuff.

I'll give the Jihad one thing: it reminded the people in-universe what happens when total warfare (the concept, not the rulebook) is executed to its fullest extent. After a 4th Succession War that was downright civil compared to the previous ones, a by-the-books-or-we-will-kill-you Clan Invasion, and a FedCom Civil War without any worlds being wiped out, people were getting a little complacent. The Blakists did a very good job of showing everybody that their prosperity and civility was only fleeting.

And, as I mentioned before, while the Dork Ages were indeed silly because of mech clix, they left the Inner Sphere in a much more interesting place than it was before by ~3150. Instead of a neat pie chart, there are actual borders and minor powers and smaller conflicts that can be even more interesting than the Succession Wars. Even the Clans evolved from "mostly homogeneous but with some quirks" into factions with their own individual identities.

 

[TFT-A9]

I'll give the Jihad one thing: it reminded the people in-universe what happens when total warfare (the concept, not the rulebook) is executed to its fullest extent. After a 4th Succession War that was downright civil compared to the previous ones, a by-the-books-or-we-will-kill-you Clan Invasion, and a FedCom Civil War without any worlds being wiped out, people were getting a little complacent. The Blakists did a very good job of showing everybody that their prosperity and civility was only fleeting.

And, as I mentioned before, while the Dork Ages were indeed silly because of mech clix, they left the Inner Sphere in a much more interesting place than it was before by ~3150. Instead of a neat pie chart, there are actual borders and minor powers and smaller conflicts that can be even more interesting than the Succession Wars. Even the Clans evolved from "mostly homogeneous but with some quirks" into factions with their own individual identities.

The idea that war is in any way supposed to be civil and countries/people are supposed to hold back is kind of fucking retarded IMO

If you're at war with someone the point is to end the war as quickly as possible preferably with the capitulation of the other side, and whether that capitulation comes from using diplomatic channels to make them realize they're absolutely fucked and would be better off surrendering, or going full Mongol and mercilessly butchering planets full of people until the other side gets the fucking picture is largely irrelevant. Nothing about war is civil, nothing about war implies there are rules that need to be followed, everything in war is a matter of what is more likely to bring the war to a swift close with minimal casualties on your side and a victory condition and honestly nuking the everloving shit out of your enemy from orbit beyond their ability to even retaliate, and doing it in such rapid succession that they are immediately on the back foot and begging you to stop is pretty fucking sound from every standpoint but a humanitarian one and if you give a good god's damn about humanitarian behavior in a war you're fucked in the head.

Of course the Blakists were goddamn retarded about how they did it, but the Clans have always been and will always be fucking morons who romanticize and exalt something that is supposed to be terrible, preferably brief and hopefully seldom. Make war terrible enough, people start treating it as a serious goddamn problem and start doing their damnedest to avoid it altogether instead seeing it as an opportunity to gloryhound and collect commendations or plunder stuff or throw political enemies into the meatgrinder. War should not stop until it comes right to the doorstep of a nation's leadership and burns their house down with them inside.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

So, I just "acquired" a copy of BT, and I love the opening cinematic. "Hey, look, we're going to the stars, we've got this neat Star League to make it all peaceful.... oh. Not so peaceful...." Turns out there's only an eternity of carnage among the stars, and the laughter of thirsting Clanners.

While HBS's Battletech does have its warts, the opening movie is one of the best thumbnail sketches of the setting since MW3. The music is also gorgeous, with an interesting leitmotif that makes me think of Firefly.

The idea that war is in any way supposed to be civil and countries/people are supposed to hold back is kind of fucking retarded IMO

If you're at war with someone the point is to end the war as quickly as possible preferably with the capitulation of the other side, and whether that capitulation comes from using diplomatic channels to make them realize they're absolutely fucked and would be better off surrendering, or going full Mongol and mercilessly butchering planets full of people until the other side gets the fucking picture is largely irrelevant. Nothing about war is civil, nothing about war implies there are rules that need to be followed, everything in war is a matter of what is more likely to bring the war to a swift close with minimal casualties on your side and a victory condition and honestly nuking the everloving shit out of your enemy from orbit beyond their ability to even retaliate, and doing it in such rapid succession that they are immediately on the back foot and begging you to stop is pretty fucking sound from every standpoint but a humanitarian one and if you give a good god's damn about humanitarian behavior in a war you're fucked in the head.

Of course the Blakists were goddamn retarded about how they did it, but the Clans have always been and will always be fucking morons who romanticize and exalt something that is supposed to be terrible, preferably brief and hopefully seldom. Make war terrible enough, people start treating it as a serious goddamn problem and start doing their damnedest to avoid it altogether instead seeing it as an opportunity to gloryhound and collect commendations or plunder stuff or throw political enemies into the meatgrinder. War should not stop until it comes right to the doorstep of a nation's leadership and burns their house down with them inside.

Except that's not how it rolled, especially during the First Succession War. You had people, facilities, entire planets reduced to ash and cinders solely to deny them to your opponents. Things went so far off the fucking rails it caused a major backslide in technological prowess. Remember, this was the time period in which the Kentares Massacre occurred, and that was just the most notable incident.

This is why the Inner Sphere and concurrently, the Clans, developed unspoken rules about warfare by the time of the Third Succession War. A scorched earth policy meant nobody won.

 

[TFT-A9]

While HBS's Battletech does have its warts, the opening movie is one of the best thumbnail sketches of the setting since MW3. The music is also gorgeous, with an interesting leitmotif that makes me think of Firefly.

Except that's not how it rolled, especially during the First Succession War. You had people, facilities, entire planets reduced to ash and cinders solely to deny them to your opponents. Things went so far off the fucking rails it caused a major backslide in technological prowess. Remember, this was the time period in which the Kentares Massacre occurred, and that was just the most notable incident.

This is why the Inner Sphere and concurrently, the Clans, developed unspoken rules about warfare by the time of the Third Succession War. A scorched earth policy meant nobody won.

The problem with brutal wars being repeated is that it never really goes all the way to the top, and the assholes who kick shit off are left alive to kick shit off again and it's not like they really care because it's not their asses on the line. If Luthien got turned into a glowing green glass graveyard for DC nobility every time the Kuritans started their shit maybe they'd all sit the fuck down and have a long fucking thinking spell about the direction their nation took. (this is why I think Turtle Bay was almost funny and kind of karmic tbh)

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

The problem with brutal wars being repeated is that it never really goes all the way to the top, and the assholes who kick shit off are left alive to kick shit off again and it's not like they really care because it's not their asses on the line. If Luthien got turned into a glowing green glass graveyard for DC nobility every time the Kuritans started their shit maybe they'd all sit the fuck down and have a long fucking thinking spell about the direction their nation took. (this is why I think Turtle Bay was almost funny and kind of karmic tbh)

You could say that about reality, not to mention a number of fictional settings. Sometimes the real bastards are the ones calling the shots, and they never get taken to task.

(Forget the Combine. None of the Great Houses really have clean hands in this. At least with the Clans, you could only sustain being an asshole as long as you could defend yourself against the Trials of Refusal or Trials of Grievance brought by other Clan warriors pissed because they were being tarred by association.)

 

[Corn Flakes]

The problem with brutal wars being repeated is that it never really goes all the way to the top, and the assholes who kick shit off are left alive to kick shit off again and it's not like they really care because it's not their asses on the line. If Luthien got turned into a glowing green glass graveyard for DC nobility every time the Kuritans started their shit maybe they'd all sit the fuck down and have a long fucking thinking spell about the direction their nation took. (this is why I think Turtle Bay was almost funny and kind of karmic tbh)

The problem is actually getting there to do it. Four Succession Wars popped up and grounded to a halt before anyone could get to the other's capital, and even when they threatened to get there, there was more than enough advance warning to move the capital. The Clans did it... with the element of surprise, massive technological advantage, armies that weren't depleted from multiple Succession Wars, and ComStar backing them up.

The scale and travel mechanics of BattleTech simply don't allow for that sort of strategy to work. You either try to do a deep push and get engulfed and destroyed by the enemy, or you try to push a front and lose steam. Travel is also very slow (it can take weeks to go from a jump point to a planet), and WarShips were only just beginning to be deployed again when the Jihad popped up.

 

[TFT-A9]

You could say that about reality, not to mention a number of fictional settings. Sometimes the real bastards are the ones calling the shots, and they never get taken to task.

(Forget the Combine. None of the Great Houses really have clean hands in this. At least with the Clans, you could only sustain being an asshole as long as you could defend yourself against the Trials of Refusal or Trials of Grievance brought by other Clan warriors pissed because they were being tarred by association.)

Oh it was just an example, they're all absolute fucking shitheels really

 

[Corn Flakes]

Except that's not how it rolled, especially during the First Succession War. You had people, facilities, entire planets reduced to ash and cinders solely to deny them to your opponents. Things went so far off the fucking rails it caused a major backslide in technological prowess. Remember, this was the time period in which the Kentares Massacre occurred, and that was just the most notable incident.

This is why the Inner Sphere and concurrently, the Clans, developed unspoken rules about warfare by the time of the Third Succession War. A scorched earth policy meant nobody won.

It gets even trickier in the case of the Inner Sphere because there hasn't been a single one-on-one conflict in that setting since the Cold War. So no one could ever commit to fully destroying an enemy, because your other neighbor would attack them the moment they thought they sensed your forces were massed far enough away from their border. That's basically the entire reason the Inner Sphere looks like a pie chart: it guarantees you always have two enemies flanking you, so any large-scale war you get into is guaranteed to be a two-front war.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

It gets even trickier in the case of the Inner Sphere because there hasn't been a single one-on-one conflict in that setting since the Cold War. So no one could ever commit to fully destroying an enemy, because your other neighbor would attack them the moment they thought they sensed your forces were massed far enough away from their border. That's basically the entire reason the Inner Sphere looks like a pie chart: it guarantees you always have two enemies flanking you, so any large-scale war you get into is guaranteed to be a two-front war.

Yup. Also, the point you made about distances and transit time in Battletech holds true.

And then you have Comstar fucking with things to keep everything at a low simmer...

 

[Snekposter]

There's a reason the Fourth Succession War was so fucking devastating to the Cappies and Dracs. The Dracs got double-teamed by the Lyrans and Fed Suns, the technological base and officer corps of the latter operating in excellent synergy with the industrial base and transport fleets of the former, and the Cappies had to deal with their no.2 and no.3 spooks being Davion plants, one of whom would manage to successfully seduce their insane leader's daughter into forming the St. Ives Compact. Then again, "Hey, you're the only one in your family on Sian who isn't insane and because of that you're probably safer off as a Davion client on St. Ives instead of here" isn't exactly the worst marriage proposal, mostly because of how undeniably truthful it is.

Also, keep in mind it isn't just the weeks of transit time for a DropShop to travel from a jump point to a planet, but the week or so it takes for a JumpShip to recharge, as well as K-F drive interference making mass movements difficult. You also have the 30 LY range, which is about peanuts as far as space goes.

And as I'm sure all you Civil Wars League fans will state, yes, you actually managed to take a decent chunk off the Lyrans while they were distracted by the Dracs... until you ended up handing them back during a retreat thanks to the Lyrans succesfully faking offensive preparations. Perhaps your only notable accomplishment aside from not undergoing yet another civil war at that time.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

The idea that war is in any way supposed to be civil and countries/people are supposed to hold back is kind of fucking retarded IMO

If you're at war with someone the point is to end the war as quickly as possible preferably with the capitulation of the other side, and whether that capitulation comes from using diplomatic channels to make them realize they're absolutely fucked and would be better off surrendering, or going full Mongol and mercilessly butchering planets full of people until the other side gets the fucking picture is largely irrelevant. Nothing about war is civil, nothing about war implies there are rules that need to be followed, everything in war is a matter of what is more likely to bring the war to a swift close with minimal casualties on your side and a victory condition and honestly nuking the everloving shit out of your enemy from orbit beyond their ability to even retaliate, and doing it in such rapid succession that they are immediately on the back foot and begging you to stop is pretty fucking sound from every standpoint but a humanitarian one and if you give a good god's damn about humanitarian behavior in a war you're fucked in the head.

Of course the Blakists were goddamn retarded about how they did it, but the Clans have always been and will always be fucking morons who romanticize and exalt something that is supposed to be terrible, preferably brief and hopefully seldom. Make war terrible enough, people start treating it as a serious goddamn problem and start doing their damnedest to avoid it altogether instead seeing it as an opportunity to gloryhound and collect commendations or plunder stuff or throw political enemies into the meatgrinder. War should not stop until it comes right to the doorstep of a nation's leadership and burns their house down with them inside.

You are correct under the assumption that it's an isolated 2-party struggle and one side can overwhelm the other so quickly and so conclusively that it never has to fear reprimands for its actions ever. This is however unfeasible for several reasons:

• There is always more than just one enemy for any nation.
• The speed of conquering is severely limited.
• The frontlines are so wide that you will be invaded somewhere on your own turf.
• You will never fully defeat even the one enemy you pick to fight (assuming it's another major house and not... like... the Isle of Skye). They will take revenge.

This is neither true in BT nor IRL, partially for different reasons.

You need to keep in mind, the Lyran Commonwealth doesn't invade the Draconis Combine just to be able to doodle a blue circle around a former Combine world on their starmap. They want something and while I'm unsure what it is in the actual lore, I doubt it's resources (those float around all stellar systems for free). What you want is: accessible resources (ie: already built strip mines and processing plants), general infrastructure, production capabilities, labour force and access to farmland (which would be one of the rarest commodities in all of this). And you want a stageing area for your army to defend your frontlines.
None of this can be used if you just nuke the shit out of a planet and turn it into a wasteland.

Additionally, nuking the shit out of a planet means that any other nation will do the same to you. This is something that nations (irl and in BT) learned the hard way. IRL, it was both world wars that taught us that all-out-war with ever improving weapon systems do horrible things to whatever place you try to take over. In BT, it was the Tintavel Massacre that marked the turning point. Tintavel was a massive war of attrition fought with nuclear warheads and despite not being the first time this happened, it marked a point where people realized that if this shit continues, every planet will be a useless wasteland by the time they are done with their slapfights.

Even from a purely strategic point of view (and ignoring all aspects of humanitarianism) this is incredibly bad:
It means you lose a shitton of military assets and you get nothing valuable in return. It's literally the trenches of WW1, it's a giant meatgrinder that consumes men and material and all you gain is a few yards of frontlines that have no use whatsoever outside of being bombed by an enemy that just dug in a few yards further down the frontlines - but now on a stellar scale.

Up until Tintavel, the IS didn't give much of a shit, there's a scene in Futurama where Bender litters, Leela tells him to take better care of the planet and he replies "why should I? It's not the only one we got" and that kinda sums up the IS and their attitude, too. Then Tintavel happened and everyone realized that with an attitude like that, it was a race to the bottom.

The Ares Convention ironically did something that you also allude to in your post:
Rules for warfare legitimized it as a political tool to realize one's ambition. When you know that your enemy won't go all in with nuclear hellfire, you can attack him at your leisure. War became far less destructive and maybe smaller in scale, but also something more common.

With the break-down of the Star League and the first Succession War, focus of war changed from "I want something" to "I want something and if I can't have it, I'll smash it, so no one can use it against me" until the IS relearned their lesson (and incidently, grew so weak, they would not have been able to continue even if they wanted).

BT uses Realpolitik masterfully as a foundation for their setting. When BPL Tex says that BT is GoT before GoT even was a thing, he's absolutely right.

The problem is actually getting there to do it. Four Succession Wars popped up and grounded to a halt before anyone could get to the other's capital, and even when they threatened to get there, there was more than enough advance warning to move the capital. The Clans did it... with the element of surprise, massive technological advantage, armies that weren't depleted from multiple Succession Wars, and ComStar backing them up.

The scale and travel mechanics of BattleTech simply don't allow for that sort of strategy to work. You either try to do a deep push and get engulfed and destroyed by the enemy, or you try to push a front and lose steam. Travel is also very slow (it can take weeks to go from a jump point to a planet), and WarShips were only just beginning to be deployed again when the Jihad popped up.

The concept of MAD only worked on earth cause the duration between the start of an all-out nuclear war and the end of an all-out nuclear war would be like an hour or so.
Both the USSR and the USA were capable of reacting to a nuclear strike within minutes of it launching towards them and most nukes would be on their way in retaliation before the first barrage even hit. All thanks to sub-orbital ICBMs and bases around the globe to deliver bombs to every fucker that gets twitchy.

By comparison, travel times in BT are so ridiculously long, it's like a soviet nuclear first strike against the USA would use a horse cart to transport the nuke. You wouldn't even have an element of surprise, cause FTL communications are still a thing in BT (and one of the reasons why war became less "scorched earth" I presume).

In short, it seems weird that war -something utterly uncivilized- would use rules, you'd think it would always be as savage as possible to overthrow your enemy, and that is not that far off the mark. But when you look at Earth's history, you'll quickly see that war had rules, even before nucelar war was a thing. The Geneva Conventions started out as a pact to help drowning soldiers after a sea-battle, just cause everyone agreed letting thousands of people die a horrible death. Then people agreed to treat POWs with dignity. In WW1, fighter pilots would not shoot an enemy if he ran out of ammo and became defenseless. In WW2 German pilots would escort heavily damaged allied bombers out of German airspace on occasion. German U-Boat commanders radio'd in the position of British sailors marooned after their ship sank (and only stopped after those utterly disgusting assholes in the British high command used that to sink the U-Boats via airplanes in retaliation). Certain types of weapons aren't used cause they are deemed "unfair" and "cruel".
In that regard, the rules of war in BT are absolutely sensible.

 

[Snekposter]

Speaking of the Geneva Conventions, as a German I'm sure you'll be tickled pink to hear the Space Germans still adhere to them, or at least as much as possible given the Succession Wars allow.

As to the submarines bit, talk about cheeky to call up a guy and tell him you just sank some ships of his. Oh, and now its his job to pull those drowning guys out of North Atlantic waters. You can try to make convoy raiding clean, especially submarine raiding but at the end of the day you're shooting at ships full of valuable cargo, and your only shot at getting away clean is to sucker punch a ship full of civilian merchant mariners, and if you're using torpedoes to do that there's not going to be a whole lot of uninjured survivors. "How unsporting of those English to bomb our submarines after their crews almost certainly already radioed in the presence of a submarine and we verified that a submarine of ours just put a bunch of guys into the water, not all of them alive." Not sure why you're expecting forgiveness for blowing up a ship just because you told the Brits there were survivors.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Yeah, complaining that the other guy took advantage of your honorable behavior is silly. The entire point of acting honorably is accepting risk or a handicap for the sake of your moral imperatives, even if that imperative is simply "follow the rules".

Going back to BT and total warfare, the Successor States (and everybody else except the Blakists, apparently) learned through the Succession Wars that no loss is permanent and no loss is so severe it cannot be afforded because they're all large enough to bounce back, either by themselves or through political skullduggery. If they lose that BattleMech plant to the enemy they might be down a production line for Dervishes for a decade or two, but they can recapture it later either in a concentrated push for that factory as part of a border skirmish, or as one of many objectives in a wider offensive. The Ares Conventions (and the culture they fostered even after being repealed) made it so infrastructure is treated like a flag to be capture as opposed to a resource to be denied.

By the way, I'm trying to think of Steiner war crimes and nothing is popping up off the top of my head. I'm sure they had some, but they have been surprisingly well-behaved on that front. Their big issue seems to be mostly just incompetence in the higher ranks.

 

[Capsaicin Addict]

There's a reason the Fourth Succession War was so fucking devastating to the Cappies and Dracs. The Dracs got double-teamed by the Lyrans and Fed Suns, the technological base and officer corps of the latter operating in excellent synergy with the industrial base and transport fleets of the former, and the Cappies had to deal with their no.2 and no.3 spooks being Davion plants, one of whom would manage to successfully seduce their insane leader's daughter into forming the St. Ives Compact. Then again, "Hey, you're the only one in your family on Sian who isn't insane and because of that you're probably safer off as a Davion client on St. Ives instead of here" isn't exactly the worst marriage proposal, mostly because of how undeniably truthful it is.

Also, keep in mind it isn't just the weeks of transit time for a DropShop to travel from a jump point to a planet, but the week or so it takes for a JumpShip to recharge, as well as K-F drive interference making mass movements difficult. You also have the 30 LY range, which is about peanuts as far as space goes.

And as I'm sure all you Civil Wars League fans will state, yes, you actually managed to take a decent chunk off the Lyrans while they were distracted by the Dracs... until you ended up handing them back during a retreat thanks to the Lyrans succesfully faking offensive preparations. Perhaps your only notable accomplishment aside from not undergoing yet another civil war at that time.

Something else too -- most jumpship transits occur strictly through colonized or at least mapped systems. Most jumpship captains prefer to slow-charge their KF drives off solar radiation, which means, y'know, being around a star. Very few will jump into the black without a lithium-fusion cell (which allows for two jumps) or some other way to charge the drive.

 

[Snekposter]

I'm well aware of that limitation, as I did mention the week-long recharge rate. Unless of course you feel like hot-loading and risking you know, exploding. Heck, even L-F batteries aren't good on drives.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Changing subjects entirely, has anyone found any way to run MechWarrior 4 (Vengeance and/or Mercs) on a modern system without the thing spazzing the fuck out? I got a hankerin' for some stompin', and I really don't feel like giving PGI or the EGS full price for MW5.