Dumb Battletech Facts In Lore!

[MeiSooHaityu]

Does it make it better to know that how black boxes work is, from my understanding, also how fortress republic works?

I just looked this up on Sarna...Yeah, it's...interesting.

So, when they say walls, are we talking some 'Last Starfighter' like stuff here?...



It's not like that would be terribly practical, but then again, neither is a real wall lol. That would be one heck of a Dyson Sphere.

P.S. Also found this while looking for that image of the Frontier above. I think I may need to get this shirt from TeePublic...

 

[PadForce]

Ah ok, thanks for clarifying.. despite my disappointment thatit wasnt literally a 31st century fax machine

 

[TaurianMerc]

So, when they say walls, are we talking some 'Last Starfighter' like stuff here?...

It's not like that would be terribly practical, but then again, neither is a real wall lol. That would be one heck of a Dyson Sphere.

I'm potentially going to make myself look like a fool as I haven't looked it up yet, but.....

You could decrease the requirements drastically by only fortifying certain systems. Identify those that need to be fortified in order to ensure that the rear line is more than 30LY from a "foreign" system.

Now off to actually read the Fortress Republic stuff. (I have to shamefully admit that I have many .pdf sourcebooks that have been bought - because BT - but not actually read yet)

 

[Timaeus]

I just looked this up on Sarna...Yeah, it's...interesting.

So, when they say walls, are we talking some 'Last Starfighter' like stuff here?...

I'm potentially going to make myself look like a fool as I haven't looked it up yet, but.....

You could decrease the requirements drastically by only fortifying certain systems. Identify those that need to be fortified in order to ensure that the rear line is more than 30LY from a "foreign" system.

The "walls" were more "your ship comes out of a jump a mangled mass of component material at best", and lots of big guns more than actual walls from my understanding.

 

[TaurianMerc]

The "walls" were more "your ship comes out of a jump a mangled mass of component material at best", and lots of big guns more than actual walls from my understanding.

Yeah, I didn't suppose for moment they had actual walls

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

That makes

Yeah, I didn't suppose for moment they had actual walls

Neither did I, although I still think the wall from The Last Starfighter would be pretty sweet, if not impossible to build lol.

 

[_Firefly]

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I found this story too good not to share. It's from my character's home planet.

Quote from sarna.net:

The colonists who settled on Illliushin had a fondness for dairy products, and used the extensive grasslands found on the planet to found what would become a massive cheese-making industry; over the centuries nearly every type of cheese known to mankind would be produced on Illiushin. The popularity of Illiushin's cheeses was such that when a pirate band raided the world and disrupted exports of cheese for a lengthy period, other pirate bands hunted down the raiders and punished them for disrupting the flow of cheese, leading to the agricultural regions of Illiushin and the associated infrastructure becoming regions that bandits left alone.

Abbreviated version (141 characters)

When raiders disrupted Illiushin's cheese exports, local pirates hunted them down mercilessly. No such interference has been recorded since.

 

[EmptyPepsiCan]

I've always enjoyed this chestnut:

"The Scorpion has [a small] swivel-mount looking tube beneath the cockpit, perhaps intended for a flamer, machine gun, or small laser, but this mount does not actually work and is purely cosmetic; speculation is that it was dropped after the frame was completed and removing it would have slowed down production."

It's the writer's attempt at explaining why the Scorpion has a bow mounted machine gun in the art, but not the loadout. The writer apparently didn't notice that it also has a second cockpit. The obvious reason is that it's art from Fang of the Sun, and in that show it's a walking tank with a driver and a commander. What's not clear to me is why the guy who made redrew the FotS design in Battletech style included all of those things in the Scorpion.

 

[Hypnotist]

I'd kind of love a super hard Emu War flashpoint.

+1
Although I'm generally not in favor of missions that dictate what you can use, for this hilarious reference, I'll make an exception!

You have to kill a swarm of up-armored, weaponless locusts with nothing but machine guns! Watch out for their head-butts!

 

[Kereminde]

Yeah, I didn't suppose for moment they had actual walls

A minor digression:

From what I read of the details, because I like poking Dark Age/Republic era to see what they're doing with it, the actual technology is something which was developed but repurposed by the Republic of the Sphere specifically to fortify themselves. It literally is a case where the Jump points either fail to work or ships which make the Jump emerge as wreckage. From the latest sourcebook it's suggested they cannot keep it up indefinitely and/or the Capellans have figured out a way through - so the plan became to open it up and blitz out hard enough to put people on the defensive rather than invite someone to make a strike for Terra. (Then there's the idea that Devlin Stone picked someone to hand over Terra to who could actually probably hold it, which is heavily hinted to be a Clan. Hence the name of the next sourcebook, 'ilClan'.)

But yeah, it's more Quesada-tech. "It's sufficiently advanced technology, we don't have to explain it."

 

[Hobbes__]

A minor digression:

From what I read of the details, because I like poking Dark Age/Republic era to see what they're doing with it, the actual technology is something which was developed but repurposed by the Republic of the Sphere specifically to fortify themselves. It literally is a case where the Jump points either fail to work or ships which make the Jump emerge as wreckage. From the latest sourcebook it's suggested they cannot keep it up indefinitely and/or the Capellans have figured out a way through - so the plan became to open it up and blitz out hard enough to put people on the defensive rather than invite someone to make a strike for Terra. (Then there's the idea that Devlin Stone picked someone to hand over Terra to who could actually probably hold it, which is heavily hinted to be a Clan. Hence the name of the next sourcebook, 'ilClan'.)

But yeah, it's more Quesada-tech. "It's sufficiently advanced technology, we don't have to explain it."

From this description it would also be possible that the HPG Blackout was caused by Stone to disrupt all the powers except for the Republic due to its central location. If you look at the IS map and see the location of the still functioning HPGs they're mostly centered around Terra. Coincidence?

 

[Kereminde]

From this description it would also be possible that the HPG Blackout was caused by Stone to disrupt all the powers except for the Republic due to its central location. If you look at the IS map and see the location of the still functioning HPGs they're mostly centered around Terra. Coincidence?

There's a number of reasons that could be, mostly because those - in theory - would be the ones which ComStar was most likely to have kept with consistent and good maintenance. But far as I know, there's a ton of theories about the blackout.

My favorite was revenge from the tetatae for rendering them mostly non-canon.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Weaponized HPGs?

Yeah, I’ve searched for this topic on other BattleTech forum, weaponized Super HPG seem to be a favorite thing. : )

I am quite glad CGL didn’t come right out and explain the wherefor’s and whatnot’s of the Republic’s Wall. To me there remains just the chance that it could be quite a bit smoke and mirrors to go with along with the smashed ships and staggering body count. Maybe whatever drives the Wall can’t really be every where and all the time. Maybe it has to be directed and targeted after a fashion. Maybe the key component after all was Republic Intelligence that caught all the cited incursions and ensured those possible destinations were covered by the Wall at the proper time.

No one really knows yet, at least as I see it. I look forward to the next source book to see if the it covers down on the Wall in greater detail. : )