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The Star League's military doctrine was to go full balls-to-the-wall in every battle. It's why invading the Hegemony destroyed most infrastructure in the Hegemony and why the Clan Homeworlds were taken from SLDF levels of technology to 3rd Succession War levels in just a few years.
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Mar 23, 2018 21:36
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Sorry to interrupt SLDF chat but I was just looking back at more things and realized that in addition to doing 1.5x extra damage while performing DFAs, these mechs also take half damage when doing them thanks to their reinforced legs. This is the best mission.
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Mar 23, 2018 22:29
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PoptartsNinja posted:The SLDF is exactly what you'd expect from a bloated money-eating interstellar army who buys ships from whichever bidder offered the best bribes that day and who continues to buy garbage for decades because they have a contract for 3000 of the things and they're getting their money's worth drat it. Too real
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Mar 23, 2018 23:36
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Gwaihir posted:Sorry to interrupt SLDF chat but I was just looking back at more things and realized that in addition to doing 1.5x extra damage while performing DFAs, these mechs also take half damage when doing them thanks to their reinforced legs. Yup, still giggling with barely suppressed glee.
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Mar 24, 2018 00:09
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Gwaihir posted:Sorry to interrupt SLDF chat but I was just looking back at more things and realized that in addition to doing 1.5x extra damage while performing DFAs, these mechs also take half damage when doing them thanks to their reinforced legs. So... If heat <9, DFA. If heat >9, kick. Bonus points for kicking from a level above, because 46 damage is going to cause some serious carnage even if it misses the head.
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Mar 24, 2018 00:43
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Remmon posted:So... If heat <9, DFA. If heat >9, kick. Bonus points for kicking from a level above, because 46 damage is going to cause some serious carnage even if it misses the head. You missed the part where we hit them with the TSEMP first.
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Mar 24, 2018 00:57
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Farseli posted:You missed the part where we hit them with the TSEMP first. And Heavy PPCs. 
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Mar 24, 2018 01:03
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Battletech is a lot more grimdark than I realized. Rather like Warhammer 40k, in that every story, every source book, while canon, could be true from a certain point of view, but you have to keep in mind that every single person in power is awful. Except that there's less space-magic, and more realistic politics.
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Mar 24, 2018 01:36
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It's pessimistic, but not particularly grimdark. The Capellans have a slave caste, but it's like Roman slavery rather than chattel slavery. Just kinda ordinary lovely. If it was grimdark, the Capellans would have forced breeding camps to populate their eleven kabillion infantry regiments who die by the millions each day trying to swarm down a Davion mech company.
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Mar 24, 2018 01:49
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Rorahusky posted:A looooot of designs in Battletech became prolific not because they were good, but because a company greased the hand of key politicians to get contracts. And other designs ended up with so much meddling from the military complex who wanted Do Everything Ultra Kill Machines that it's a wonder that they even worked at all. Now I want a movie like that but set in the universe of something like Gundam or well,Battletech.
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Mar 24, 2018 01:52
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I'd argue the setting is secretly optimistic. Mostly because lovely as things are people are still people and most of them are actively trying to make the galaxy a better place, and humanity is dragging itself out of the grave to fight (itself mostly) for the right to keep existing.
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Mar 24, 2018 04:10
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If you get past the huge ring of systems out in the Periphery deliberately made uninhabitable by the Terran Hegemony's explorers to limit humanity's expansion, you might find some pretty okay places to live if you had the resources to start a colony from scratch, import some giant icebergs, and were willing to knuckle down. Unfortunately the writers might just get lazy with theming you so you become Literally the Hanseatic League in Space. Or something cool might happen and you get conquered by the Goliath Scorpions 
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Mar 24, 2018 04:37
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I was going to make a comment about some of the Deep Periphery states, so I went to Sarna to double check my names. When the hell did the map get so big? Especially to the 'south'?
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Mar 24, 2018 04:48
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berryjon posted:I was going to make a comment about some of the Deep Periphery states, so I went to Sarna to double check my names. Note the RWR outposts super deep in every direction. For all the Terran Hegemony's effort in keeping people in line there were plenty of other factions actively helping people spread beyond their reach. dis astranagant fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Mar 24, 2018 |
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Mar 24, 2018 05:09
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Doggerbank? Doesn't sound like a bad place to live, they get all the dogs! 
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Mar 24, 2018 05:18
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Quite a lot of those places were colonized within decades of jump drives being made feasible, before the now standard limitations were figured out and centuries before even the Age of War. Various poor and down on their luck groups decided they'd rather take off for a one way trip to as far away as possible than keep getting kicked around where they were. Wealthier ones had dibs on known habitable worlds close to Sol.
dis astranagant fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Mar 24, 2018 |
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Mar 24, 2018 05:28
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berryjon posted:I was going to make a comment about some of the Deep Periphery states, so I went to Sarna to double check my names. The map is circa 3095 so I don't think it's surprising that there was a lot of exploration by C* Explorer Corps around the Deep Periphery. They'd want to try and make sure there aren't any more Blakist surprises stashed out there. Functionally speaking, the map isn't any larger in 3150 than it was in 3050. There's some inhabited worlds in the Deep Periphery we know about but nothing ever happens there. There's the Clan Homeworlds, but we can't go there even if we want to. There's some notable nebulas and stars we have on our charts but nobody actually lives at any of them.
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Mar 24, 2018 05:42
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berryjon posted:I was going to make a comment about some of the Deep Periphery states, so I went to Sarna to double check my names. Basically whenever a writer or designer wanted to kludge together a new and "unique" setting and they couldn't find a way to kludge it into the Inner Sphere they just made up something in the Periphery, and usually no one noticed... until there were enough of these states that even the Periphery was starting to look pretty crowded.
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Mar 24, 2018 05:46
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Defiance Industries posted:The map is circa 3095 so I don't think it's surprising that there was a lot of exploration by C* Explorer Corps around the Deep Periphery. They'd want to try and make sure there aren't any more Blakist surprises stashed out there. Pretty sure the C*Explorer Corps ended up getting downsized and mostly replaced by private exploration groups, like Interstellar Expeditions...actually speaking of the Periphery does anyone know what's up with McEvedy's Folly? Interestingly named place considering some rumors.
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Mar 24, 2018 05:59
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Are we ever going to see the mystery man in the green assault mech with dollar signs painted on it, who swoops in to dunk on people or did that already happen and I missed it.
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Mar 24, 2018 06:35
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Basically whenever a writer or designer wanted to kludge together a new and "unique" setting and they couldn't find a way to kludge it into the Inner Sphere they just made up something in the Periphery, and usually no one noticed... until there were enough of these states that even the Periphery was starting to look pretty crowded. If the Periphery is the only place to go where the SLDF never caused widespread ecological devastation, or just the only place to go to get away from the great houses and their wars, then that's where people are going to go. wiegieman fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Mar 24, 2018 |
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Mar 24, 2018 06:37
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:I remember reading somewhere a very cogent explanation of various subgenres of science fiction that went something like "transhumanist SF posits that technology can address the human condition and allow us to become something greater, something better, than we were before. Cyberpunk posits that even if technology can do that, it won't." Social science fiction takes a middle ground. We can change the future, but rebelling isn't usually the right choice over working within the system. And society as a whole has become more and more peaceful over recorded history, so technology without neural changes has actually improved our nature, though these changes are fragile and would partially revert immediately if civilization collapsed and culturally over a few generations (highly rules-focused societies such as the Japanese do show high discipline even in the event of disaster, however it would break down almost completely if a disaster is severe enough to destroy all organization, and over a few generations of living during brutal conflict the culture of cooperation would be phased out). If we want to use technology to change human nature we have to change the human brain towards more altruistic models where we take the different choices we are given, however such changes would probably lead to the abuse of the 'altruoids' created as a result. If on the other hand all of society was engineered over a generation to be highly altruistic it would probably make the species more politically stable, but as a whole less resilient against external conflict, and of course there'd be unintended side effects for better and worse. We are who we are for the reasons that evolution made us this way (although culturally speaking grave goods were divided in an extremely egalitarian fashion in the earliest prehistoric grave sites found, only slowly becoming more and more hierachical, a process that's only begun to reverse the last several hundred years), but there are certainly numerous animal species who live in more peaceful social models like bonobo monkeys, or more social models like dolphins, etc, though we might ask ourselves why they have been less successful (no thumbs and living in the ocean is one way to make a technological society almost impossible, but dolphins do have individual verbal names, and the ability to communicate with friends to very quickly use a series of whistles to plan out how to follow an order from a trainer to improvise complicated synchronized maneuevers, and very likely their own vocabulary and grammar, cryptologists are hard at work making painstakingly slow advances. Chimps can learn ASL, but they're just as violent as us, and African Grey Parrots can understand and speak a couple hundred words of English if you train them (a lot of speciecists immediately accept the ASL by chimps, but not verbal English from African Grey Parrots like the late Alex because birds are seen as more stupid, and because verbal language is too close to comfort). Anyway, my point is there are many species on this planet alone that display extremely different social models, some of which are extremely peaceful and stable, and others such as eusocial insects whom are even more violent and socially organized than we are. One might make the observation that early pre-historical homo sapiens grave sited were extremely egalitarian in grave good distribution, and that animal cultures are all pretty much pre-neolithic at best with only occasional tool use (but Dolphins, with the highest encephalization quotient (especially the Tucuxi) are actually great at taking objects they find and using them, I blame their lack of thumbs) and thus there is a chance they might change for the more hierarchical over time if they developed (until and unless reaching such political social models that would begin to reverse such trends, if they even follow similar political patterns in the first place), but regardless their neural architecture and social behavior still differ wildly from that of us super chimps, with all that it implies they would likely take different routes of social development than we have. Modern human nature is only a massive disaster and a few generations of learned cultural behavior away from its earliest days of civilization despite the very low levels of crime and violence in areas such as Scandinavia and the most prosperous East Asian states, because in terms of raw neural hardware and post-birth language cyberization software (learning a language before we are about 8 years old permanently develops our brains) we are still ever the same as since humanity developed complex language. We can change the cultural software that is mostly installed over the first few decades of a human's life, and we can change hardware outside of a brain, but unless we physically change or at least add to the neural architecture of the human brain there is a very hard limit to how much we can change by the adoption of language/taming and advanced culture alone. I'll stop rambling, but cyberpunk and even most transhumanist and social SF stories do not manage to make applications of technology result in believable different societies at the most fundamental level of social behavior because these stories focus mostly on hardware tools, and on connectedness at best, not on the most fundamental 'human' hardware, the brain. If we wish to become fully transhuman and act differently, even in extremis, then we do not need toys or even the halfway house of telepathic and sensory connections to other humans (or mechs in the case of the Manei Domini) that simply add new dimensions to existing human cognition, but altered modes of cognition, which will result from altering the human brain, with all the dangers it entails. Edit: oh yeah, no problem, I'm curious how grave goods work. If you really want to tell me without rambling like I did I'd be super happy to read a PM about it. 
RA Rx fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Mar 26, 2018 |
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Mar 24, 2018 06:46
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At the risk of turning this into archaeology chat grave goods dont really work that way. Edit: This is actually a nitpick and its just because I work in the field, not meant to be a call out. Edit response to your edit: I sadly do not have PMs but what I really need to do is make an A/T archaeology thread since I have a nasty habit of nitpicking poo poo and I know we have a few other archaeologists on the forum. I might make one tomorrow. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Mar 24, 2018 |
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Mar 24, 2018 06:53
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wiegieman posted:If the Periphery is the only place to go where the SLDF never caused widespread ecological devastation, or just the only place to go to get away from the great houses and their wars, then that's where people are going to go. Periphery and Deep Periphery are very different animals. The Periphery states have all been ravaged by war with the Star League at some point or had their planets wrecked before they even got there in many cases but they still have some access to the Inner Sphere and sometimes even have an HPG. In the Deep Periphery you might go 10 jumps between signs of habitation and have no contact with the bulk of humanity. There are whole interstellar empires out there that no one outside of Comstar's Explorer Corps and similar organizations even know exist.
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Mar 24, 2018 07:05
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berryjon posted:I was going to make a comment about some of the Deep Periphery states, so I went to Sarna to double check my names. To be fair, a lot of those blobs are nebulae and not actually states. Also, some of those outlying planets were basically only discovered/inhabited due to misjumps, as I recall. Not many, but it's a non-zero number. Also also, a non-zero number of those are former C*/WOB bases/test sites/whatever. That map even seems to be missing a few (I don't see Mundo Nublar on it for example). PoptartsNinja posted:I'd argue the setting is secretly optimistic. Mostly because lovely as things are people are still people and most of them are actively trying to make the galaxy a better place, and humanity is dragging itself out of the grave to fight (itself mostly) for the right to keep existing. It's not outwardly optimistic per se, but I think it lends itself to a sort of existentialist reading where you can make it optimistic so I am kind of with you there. There's really no reason to choose one faction or another to root for since they all have different but equal human failings; I know my Feddies aren't really the good guys. But most people choose one anyway in order to have a stake. Sometimes that unfortunately means that fans of a faction rationalize that their nation's war crimes are actually cool and good, but that's kind of a problem shared by lots of wargames. People make choices to try to create a world they want to live in, but it doesn't always work out, but they keep trying. The Clans represent a sort of traditional Nietzschian transcendence of traditional morality; the Word of Blake ends up with the mirror, the sort of fake-nihilist blow-up-everything aesthetic. Most of the others are different flavors of authoritarian, with different goals and ideologies, but they still manage to have their heroes anyway, and those heroes are mostly defined by their willingness to fight against the inevitable. The game mechanics themselves lead to the most heroic and memorable moments being the ones where the odds are most impossible. No one remembers a game where they hit exactly 58% of their 7s and won - they remember the ones where they DFA'd on an 11 and hit, or where they landed 3 MLs to the head of a Dire Wolf in one round. There's mostly no objective good (though some of the novel writers try to make it so); and even as poo poo as basically every faction is, you also find people willing to work for peace and defend others even at cost to themselves, not because they are necessarily even "good guys," but just because they committed to an ideal. There's a choice by both the fan and the in-setting character to commit to something, and a choice to keep playing/reading or to keep struggling. I don't know who Battletech Sisyphus is, but one must imagine him happy. Fraction Jackson fucked around with this message at 12:46 on Mar 24, 2018 |
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Mar 24, 2018 09:14
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Telsa Cola posted:Are we ever going to see the mystery man in the green assault mech with dollar signs painted on it, who swoops in to dunk on people or did that already happen and I missed it. Wait what, I don’t want this to get lost in the rest of the chatter because what
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Mar 24, 2018 15:08
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Podima posted:Wait what, I don’t want this to get lost in the rest of the chatter because what He's talking about the bounty hunter. IIRC, we did see them - with the crew that will become the Demon Hawks.
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Mar 24, 2018 15:22
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Podima posted:Wait what, I don’t want this to get lost in the rest of the chatter because what Boba Fett exists in the Battletech universe, he's seems just as "why is this dude who does nothing supposed to be cool again" as Boba Fett.
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Mar 24, 2018 16:31
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Cimbri posted:Pretty sure the C*Explorer Corps ended up getting downsized and mostly replaced by private exploration groups, like Interstellar Expeditions...actually speaking of the Periphery does anyone know what's up with McEvedy's Folly? Interestingly named place considering some rumors. It's just a system coincidentally named after an unrelated McEvedy. On the other hand, an IE team discovered a long buried Minnesota Tribe base in an unnamed system a jump away...and brought a Word of Blake warship out of hiding to kill everyone and nuke the site off the face of the planet. Perfectly innocuous. The SLDF was... big. A hundred-plus Archers dedicated to fire support wouldn't raise eyebrows because they work with five other regiments kind of big. While most of BT's present timeline is centered around lances of mixed machines and large units built around a single kind of Mech like these guys are uniquely rare, the SLDF typically wielded entire battalions and regiments composed of one design. While Mechs like the Awesome later became associated with a particular House because they held the main/surviving factories, back then an SLDF unit could likely get replacement parts or even fresh Mechs from a subsidiary or licensee located in whatever nation they were posted. These large homogeneous units began disappearing once Amaris shut off HPG traffic and trade through the core of human space, kicking interstellar trade square in the gonads, and the Houses diverted funding and equipment to replace SLDF casualties to their own armies.
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Mar 24, 2018 17:34
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Telsa Cola posted:Are we ever going to see the mystery man in the green assault mech with dollar signs painted on it, who swoops in to dunk on people or did that already happen and I missed it. I feel like he's had a scene but incase he hasn't, PTN can this be the mission I'm on if im still on the pilot's list?
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Mar 24, 2018 18:04
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RA Rx posted:Social science fiction takes a middle ground. We can change the future, but rebelling isn't usually the right choice over working within the system. And society as a whole has become more and more peaceful over recorded history, so technology without neural changes has actually improved our nature, though these changes are fragile and would partially revert immediately if civilization collapsed and culturally over a few generations (highly rules-focused societies such as the Japanese do show high discipline even in the event of disaster, however it would break down almost completely if a disaster is severe enough to destroy all organization, and over a few generations of living during brutal conflict the culture of cooperation would be phased out). holy poo poo, this was a very interesting post and not at all what I was expecting from this thread
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Mar 24, 2018 18:06
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Fraction Jackson posted:
There is only one objective good in Battletech. And that good is Solaris 7 
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Mar 24, 2018 22:42
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Fraction Jackson posted:I don't know who Battletech Sisyphus is, but one must imagine him happy. 
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Mar 24, 2018 23:41
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The discussion about SLDF quietly loving up periphery worlds, and the idea that beyond the periphery ring are a bunch of probably actually cool worlds not shitted up by the Hegemony, makes me wonder if that's where the Wolverines actually went given the poo poo that went down in the Betrayal of Ideals book series, it might be difficult but still doable? and that's why we haven't seen poo poo from them in ages - they created a new state way out there because gently caress the inner sphere and gently caress the clans. (Cue another round of bogey men from beyond the periphery)
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Mar 26, 2018 09:12
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Going far enough out on a superjump or misjump is like kind of jumping past the "red line" in Battlestar Galactica, so there's kind of a soft limit on how big the setting can possibly get without centuries of building up infrastructure in the Deep Periphery. I mean, look how irrelevant the Homeworld Clans are, and then imagine going further out than that.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:22
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I can't do a cave science base map without some silly cave science base poo poo.
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Mar 27, 2018 00:02
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That looks like a pretty standard science pipeline.
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Mar 27, 2018 00:10
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You fill the thing at the bottom with science and heat it up and the hydraulic pressure forces it to go up through the twisty parts, right?
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Mar 27, 2018 00:12
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Gaseous science on the left, liquid on the right.
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Mar 27, 2018 00:13
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PoptartsNinja posted:I can't do a cave science base map without some silly cave science base poo poo. New spacechem looking good
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