Sunday, April 14, 2013

Battletech Sillyness

So I was perusing Era Report 3145, reading the Museum Technica, and came to the conclusion that the writers are absolutely insane.

There is *NO* way that post war any military force would *downgrade* its technology.  Absolutely never, ever, and I can't stress "never" enough.

For Clan Sea Fox to downgrade a warship to a civilian transport is about the stupidest thing ever in the Battletech fluff.  For factions not to use word advanced technology because it was used for "bad things" during the war is also equally stupid.  It would never happen, with any military, of any race, in any time, in any universe, EVER.

Lets take some examples:
Nazi's were the epitomy of a "big evil" in our recent history.  However, after not only did we study their tanks, fighters, submarines, but their scientists and technology got the USA to the moon.  We used all their technology that we could in order to further our post-war era capabilities.

After WW2, sure, the US decomissioned a large percentage of its older fleet and sold off extra tanks, fighters, but just the older crap, we hung on to most of the later war stuff for at least a few years, before it was *sold*, and that was because we had far better stuff to use instead.  No state of the art equipment was scrapped immediately after.

The writers for Battletech are basically saying "After WW1 war was over, due to the tragedies seen by all sides, it was decided to go back to using swords and shields, and send the massive warship fleets to the scrapyard to be converted into cruise liners".

Stoooooopid.

Also:

  • Word of Blake mechs would be everywhere, especially the Omni's, because in many cases they were better than the house mechs.  In the 500+ years of the BTU, nobody has ever hesitated to convert an enemy's mech to their own use.
  • Warship construction would be an extremely high priority for all factions, as the last war saw extensive use of them, and many planets suffered from their bombardment.  The taxpayers would be demanding some defense to prevent that from happening again.
  • Cybernetic enhancements would be used extensively, especially by career soldiers, as most soldiers are going to be looking for that "extra edge".  However, these could be outlawed, though it wouldn't stop their use.
  • There would be massive paranoia in every faction, huge numbers of officer purges and witch hunts, as there were so many spies in the previous war.  Only the best merc units would still be employed, as nobody would trust any other ones.
  • Factions would all be reverse engineering all the WoB tech they could, as in many cases it was the most advanced, in order to gain technological parity with their enemies.
  • There is a good chance factions would be considering 6 mech lances.  Not only as the WoB used them so much with success, but it decreases the amount of leaders (something you do when you don't trust anybody), but also helps when fighting 5 mech clan stars.
Oh well, just venting, and thinking about doing my own game of mecha combat, since I'm just not very happy with any out there.  However what I'm most unhappy with is the way the universe is going, and that means the writing, and that unfortunately I can't do in any way.  Any game I'd do would be rules only, maybe a paragraph to set the stage but not much more.

3 comments:

  1. Yeah, this is why I'm noodling around with the idea of a mecha game that can use the BattleTech 'Mech designs - at least the classic ones, I'll need to think about some of the most powerful tech - but play faster and more sensibly. There's still lots of interesting BattleTech history even if you ignore the new shinies - I'm a 3025 player at heart...

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  2. the Stone Rhino was made by the Clans yet it was based on an Amaris design

    the inner sphere developed Omni tech because it was good tech in spite of the Clans carving up a quarter of the inner sphere

    Now the Clans won't use Society tech and the Inner Sphere won't use WoB-tech because it was "wrong"?

    Nothing like decommissioning most of your military edge so that you won't survive the next round of shooting. Can't imagine what the next century would be like.

    They can't compare this to the disappearance of nukes in the 2nd succession war because that's a totally different type of weapon, whereas WoB tech were enhancements of current "acceptable" technology.

    I'd like to see the home clans come back to the inner sphere using tech derived from the Society, with the inner sphere fighting back using WoB tech. now THAT would be a real fight.

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    Replies
    1. Disclaimer: I haven't yet seen 3145.

      Perhaps the great de-teching is an effort to get back to the original spirit of BattleTech - "the stuff we have this year isn't as good as the stuff we had last year"? Except that that's already been betrayed (as far back as TR3050), and any wargames company will always have the temptation to write books of new shinies (particularly tricky for CGL since unlike most wargames companies they can't regard the rules sales as bonus money on top of the miniatures sales).

      I'm sure the stuff that's now banned will come back in some form, eventually.

      If they want to get rid of problematic equipment, surely better just to say "we regard this as a bit dodgy, so it's not allowed in tournament play"?

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