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innersphere3050
Federated Suns
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Joined: 12-Jan-2011 18:43
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 Posted: 25-Jan-2012 21:57 Post subject: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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I am curious to get the viewpoint of some longtime battletech fans outside of the forums on the classic battletech website.
Personally, I think the dark age and events preceeding it were a huge disaster for the BT universe. I could only suffer through so many of those books. I skipped around but did like Bonfire of Worlds, finally BT is back to larger engagements between factions with some history.
I would like to see many of the old mercenary units that were an integral part of the early fiction as well as successor state and clan units rebuilt. Units like the GDL, Wolf's Dragoons, ELH, Wolf Spiders, etc. And I wish the developers would get away from everything being so "scarce" and hard to produce. I would like to see dozens of Davion Guard and Sword of Light regiments battling it out.
Thoughts?
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Kraken
Federated Suns
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| Posted: 25-Jan-2012 22:45 Post subject: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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One thing I'd like to see would be some fiction fleshing out the Star League era, perhaps even a trilogy or two about the fall.
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"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat." -Edgar Allen Poe"I knew there was something special about you, but I never realized you were really a cat." Wolfwood to a random cat (Trigun)
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Karagin
Imperial Karagin Army
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| Posted: 25-Jan-2012 23:17 Post subject: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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I would like to see actual novels again....either Ebooks or paper back novels that anyone can buy without having to join a special club just to get them.
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Karagin
Only the dead have seen the end of war. - Plato
"Wasted trip Man. Nobody said nuthin' about lockin' horns with no tigers." Oddball
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spartan117
Clan Wolf
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| Posted: 26-Jan-2012 10:17 Post subject: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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I will agree with the above posters and say CGL needs to start getting novels published again. Whether in paperback or ebook they need to do something. The novels made the battletech universe come alive for me as a teenager and I have been smitten with the story-line since.
I was not a big fan of the annihilation of Clan Smoke Jaguar, but accepted it. I liked the Fedcom Civil War story arc, but the Jihad has caused battletech to lose some of its luster for me.
The WOB being able to assemble an enormous army and warship fleet out of thin air, along with their technological leap, was a bit much. Then the use of orbital bombardment and WMDs destroying entire regiments or planets was way out of line. I don't mind mech regiments being destroyed but it makes you wonder why you play if someone can kill your entire unit with the push of a button.
Then the mysterious Delvin Stone appears and saves the innersphere from the WOB and creates Fortress republic. At this point, I didn't even recognize the story as battletech anymore.
Almost all of the units easily identified with the battletech universe have been destroyed or crippled. To me, the battletech universe is not the same without units like the GDL, Kell Hounds, and Wolf's Dragoons. These types of units have been phased out or replaced with inferior units and characters.
However, now that the Jihad timeline is coming to an end I do like the direction 'Bondfire of Worlds' took the fiction in. My only complaint is I want me mech vs mech engagements rather than 1-2 mechs holding a flank supported by a dozen or so vehicles. That's not battletech. Even during the 4th succession war(or first dark ages), the engagements weren't that watered down.
Personally I think CGL needs to take battletech back to its roots. No more WMDs, and more mech combat(or large combined arms engagements).
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master arminas
Clan Goliath Scorpion
Star Colonel
Joined: 07-Mar-2007 16:14
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| Posted: 26-Jan-2012 12:41 Post subject: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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As much as I like the Clans, I think BattleTech needs to . . . well, reset itself. Drop the advanced tech, the Dark Ages, the Clan invasion, the FedCom, and (much like Abrams version of Star Trek) start over in the 3020-25 era. Only do it right. Well designed 'Mechs for that era with limited production that means no sudden creation of a dozen brand spanking new Federated Commonwealth Regiments (for example) with no disruption to the supplies and parts for other, older, more senior Regiments.
It is a pipedream, but I (for one) long for a return to the simpler times on which the game was originally based.
Master Arminas
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Karagin
Imperial Karagin Army
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| Posted: 26-Jan-2012 22:40 Post subject: Re: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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| master arminas wrote: | As much as I like the Clans, I think BattleTech needs to . . . well, reset itself. Drop the advanced tech, the Dark Ages, the Clan invasion, the FedCom, and (much like Abrams version of Star Trek) start over in the 3020-25 era. Only do it right. Well designed 'Mechs for that era with limited production that means no sudden creation of a dozen brand spanking new Federated Commonwealth Regiments (for example) with no disruption to the supplies and parts for other, older, more senior Regiments.
It is a pipedream, but I (for one) long for a return to the simpler times on which the game was originally based.
Master Arminas |
It would indeed be nice to see the whole system get revamped and reset in that they fix the issues and return things to more fun and less crazy days of when the game first came out.
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Karagin
Only the dead have seen the end of war. - Plato
"Wasted trip Man. Nobody said nuthin' about lockin' horns with no tigers." Oddball
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innersphere3050
Federated Suns
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| Posted: 27-Jan-2012 19:49 Post subject: Re: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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At this point I wouldn't mind a reset either. To me much of the "advanced tech" isn't very good. Weapons systems with so many tradeoffs that they are new but essentially worthless. And 80 years after the Clan invasion (and access to Clan tech) CGL still comes up with weapons that I think.....why would you use that?
But that is a different discussion, I would very much like to see some novel lines around the old star league, rise/fall and formation of the successor states.
I have always struggled with the concept of nation states with thousands of planets and trillions of people only fielding 80 regiments of mechs, but at least there were large engagements to take a planet. Dark Age introduced this concept of 4 (2vs2) mechs duking it out for a planet....please, 2 mechs couldn't hold Pittsburgh much less a planet.
But now with all that is happened, maybe everything does need to go back to 3025 and build back up...or an alternate universe or something
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Karagin
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| Posted: 28-Jan-2012 03:57 Post subject: Re: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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| innersphere3050 wrote: |
I have always struggled with the concept of nation states with thousands of planets and trillions of people only fielding 80 regiments of mechs, but at least there were large engagements to take a planet. Dark Age introduced this concept of 4 (2vs2) mechs duking it out for a planet....please, 2 mechs couldn't hold Pittsburgh much less a planet.
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4 mechs hold and taking a world has been around since the GDL books, it has NEVER made sense nor is it realistic even for a sci-fi setting. BUT it has been a hallmark of the BT universe and it does make for smaller games/battles which in turn makes it easier for the authors to write about. Or lazier, your call on that one. Hell even David Drake and other can write about a single tank to a regiments work in his books without any issues, yet it seems BT writers can't handle a company's worth of mechs fighting another company....
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Karagin
Only the dead have seen the end of war. - Plato
"Wasted trip Man. Nobody said nuthin' about lockin' horns with no tigers." Oddball
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Vagabond
Mercenary
Mr. Referee
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| Posted: 28-Jan-2012 04:30 Post subject: Re: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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| Karagin wrote: | | innersphere3050 wrote: |
I have always struggled with the concept of nation states with thousands of planets and trillions of people only fielding 80 regiments of mechs, but at least there were large engagements to take a planet. Dark Age introduced this concept of 4 (2vs2) mechs duking it out for a planet....please, 2 mechs couldn't hold Pittsburgh much less a planet.
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4 mechs hold and taking a world has been around since the GDL books, it has NEVER made sense nor is it realistic even for a sci-fi setting. BUT it has been a hallmark of the BT universe and it does make for smaller games/battles which in turn makes it easier for the authors to write about. Or lazier, your call on that one. Hell even David Drake and other can write about a single tank to a regiments work in his books without any issues, yet it seems BT writers can't handle a company's worth of mechs fighting another company.... |
When this was canonized, they had not yet fully developed citytech and vehicles and so it was imagined that a single mech could with only slight difficulty take out a company of tanks and infantry. The only weapon that could compete was another mech.
However, do to their great cost and technological complexity (ie. rare) each house could only afford to field so many. So unless enemy mech force was garrisoned on the target world, a mech lance could easily take on a battalion of conventional tanks. As fun as this is, i think that MechCommander duplicated this outlook on Vehicles vs Mech the most faithful of all of the games. Honestly, i think that if they had thought about it back then they would have created some excuse to give vehicles BAR ratings or like aero give them armor thresholds. Most tanks would get murdered by any mech with a Large Laser or PPC.
Is it realistic, hell no. But does it need to be in their universe, nope. I can accept a universe were bipedal warmachines are just so technologically/structurally superior as to make even an M1-A1 look weak but so costly that the average colony/planet is not going to have access to more than maybe a single light mech. Sure it'll ward off a small pirate band but not much else. After all, I love both BT and Armored Core and both share this same element.
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Kraken
Federated Suns
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| Posted: 28-Jan-2012 07:30 Post subject: Re: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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| Karagin wrote: | | innersphere3050 wrote: |
I have always struggled with the concept of nation states with thousands of planets and trillions of people only fielding 80 regiments of mechs, but at least there were large engagements to take a planet. Dark Age introduced this concept of 4 (2vs2) mechs duking it out for a planet....please, 2 mechs couldn't hold Pittsburgh much less a planet.
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4 mechs hold and taking a world has been around since the GDL books, it has NEVER made sense nor is it realistic even for a sci-fi setting. BUT it has been a hallmark of the BT universe and it does make for smaller games/battles which in turn makes it easier for the authors to write about. Or lazier, your call on that one. Hell even David Drake and other can write about a single tank to a regiments work in his books without any issues, yet it seems BT writers can't handle a company's worth of mechs fighting another company.... |
If nothing else, though, some of the early books did raise such notions as "agromechs being converted into combat units". So it's possible that, once everything was said and done, a number of agromechs and vehicles were uparmored by the new garrison.
**
As far as producing fic for past-times goes, how about doing it Shrapnel-style?
Take a group of people, maybe even a few fans, give them the gist of each time period and what was going on, and then let them write a short story about what's going on.
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"I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat." -Edgar Allen Poe"I knew there was something special about you, but I never realized you were really a cat." Wolfwood to a random cat (Trigun)
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Karagin
Imperial Karagin Army
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| Posted: 28-Jan-2012 10:37 Post subject: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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Not to stray to far off topic but vehicles already have limits no matter how high tech you make them.
They can't use Endo, nor Double Heat Sinks, they have weak internal structure as it is, pop the outer armor and the vehicle is dead from every single weapon in the game, where as a mech still needs a 3 or more point hit to kill it once the internal is hit, normally there will be exceptions.
Then the big killer, look at the NORMAL non advanced damage table hit location for vehicles, then look at all the modifiers that can happen when areas are hit based on the roll of the dice...yeah mechs don't need much else to be better, the game is already weighted against vehicles.
But the idea that single lance can police an entire planet is crazy, how are these four mechs going to stop an invasion that lands in different points on the planet? How is this lance going to stop a battalions worth of tanks and infantry with artillery and aerospace units? Sorry, as cool as it is to smash things with mechs, a little reality goes a long way to making the fighting believable. I could see maybe a battalion of mechs defending a world with support units, but not a company and no way in hell not a single unsupported lance of medium and light mechs. And expensive as mechs maybe if your enemy has them, then your side will have them too and work to get more so as not to be conquered by said enemy.
Now if the writers would take the time to give us convincing battle scenes and such then they could have larger forces defending the planets in this universe, yet their laziness causes them to not to work on the fighting and spend more time making two bit characters more important. I don't care much about the bandit leader who is going to die most likely by then end of the book or half way through it, would rather see more effort put into things like the technical side or even the reasons why this world is being attacked to start with etc...these are suppose to be scifi war novels not scifi romance books after all.
edit for a space and grammar error.
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Karagin
Only the dead have seen the end of war. - Plato
"Wasted trip Man. Nobody said nuthin' about lockin' horns with no tigers." Oddball
[Last edited by Karagin on 28-Jan-2012 20:01; edited 1 time in total]
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Vagabond
Mercenary
Mr. Referee
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| Posted: 28-Jan-2012 15:49 Post subject: Re: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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| Karagin wrote: | | But the idea that single lance can police an entire planet is crazy, how are these four mechs going to stop an invasion that lands in different points on the planet? How is this lance going to stop a battalions worth of tanks and infantry with artillery and aerospace units? |
But you are again forgetting another unrealistic limitation that they put into place. Most planets with the exception of certain key worlds are described as having like 2 population centers on the entire planet. The rest of the planets surface is left undeveloped or simply not worth attacking. Somehow in the 1015 years from now until the 3rd SW, humans have stopped breeding like bunnies with all of this available land space around.
Also, when coupled with this aspect and the limited production of mechs with the odd and utter lack of reasonable aero assets (always wondered why the aero assets of major nations numbered in maybe a dozen regiments) with the seemingly conflicting availability of drop ships (they seem to be everywhere even if things like Overlords are rare) means that MOST world with a mech lance are likely to have a Leopard to carry it anywhere on the world in 3 hours, even if you do land on the backside the enemy will likely be sending a rapid response force that you'll not shoot down because your force was not allocated any aero support.
Honestly, the setting of battle tech has been force-ably contrived in so many ways to make mechs the single best thing out their. But so hard to build up sufficient supplies of reserves (do to raids and skirmishes) that conventional forces still exist. Its like, this unescorted vehicle company is intended and it is hoped that it can disable or destroy at least 1 of their mechs before dieing horribly. We can easily build more tanks so loosing 12 vehicles plus crews is worth that 1 mech.
So to kinda tie this all back to the OP, i would support a universe reboot or even an alternate universe that catches the fiction up to the rules as they are now and brings everything more in line with how things are and not how they were. I play on a megamek server were vehicles are a major element as are infantry and arty (most ppl refuse to play against aero supported forces) and even when a vehicle does not have the 'more effective vehicles' tacops option enabled, they a fraking bruisers. The quickly become pill boxes but a mech lance will not have an advantage against a company of tanks at equal BV. Hell, its likely that lance would get stomped.
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one must work hard to cultivate the mind and body. and one must always cultivate the mind.
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Karagin
Imperial Karagin Army
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| Posted: 28-Jan-2012 20:08 Post subject: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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Another thing I would like to see with the novels, if possible is getting decent writers. Not ones who feel they are Battletech us mere mortals should bow down because without them there would be no Battletech. I have found and seen that some of the better writers out there will write a story or two for just about anyone's universe if asked. Sure it may not be their best work, but it would be a good way to bring in new blood to the fiction side.
For example Karen Travis, she wrote the Republic Commando novels and is doing the Gears of War novels, her stuff is well done and has the technical details down pat, PLUS she is a veteran military person and her writing shows that. The attention to detail that many of the BT primary authors never seemed to worry about or glossed over when they did. Now while she may pass at writing a novel, she might do a short story or two for the game if asked, if not then there are others. Even if these folks say no, the word does get around that TPTB are looking for known scifi writers to do stories etc...that alone could bring folks over wanting to find out what is the big deal, the generates books sold as well the possible influx of new readers and players if they like what they see.
And the finial thing I would love to see...ADVERTISEMENT. Simple as that, more pushing of the product not the hope and prayer of word of mouth or the few online ads or the rumor of a new Mechwarrior game, but true ads to push the novels and products.
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Karagin
Only the dead have seen the end of war. - Plato
"Wasted trip Man. Nobody said nuthin' about lockin' horns with no tigers." Oddball
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innersphere3050
Federated Suns
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Joined: 12-Jan-2011 18:43
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| Posted: 29-Jan-2012 23:14 Post subject: The direction of new BT fiction: What would you like? |
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Advertisement would be nice, perhaps the MMO will bring in some people, but that hasn't been advertised that well either.
One simple problem of taking a planet with a few mechs is the mechwarriors eventually have to get out of the cockpit. The GDL books started small but expanded in scope as they went along (still some of my favorites). Part of that is being set in a universe to support this
I envision red storm rising or red phoenix when thinking planetary assault. Not that all BT books need to be of that scope, but Tom Clancy and Larry Bond managed to write the large scale war novel and books focusing in on something specific and smaller engagements.
Personally, I think you could do a trilogy on the battle of Tukayyid alone. I would grab that. But regardless of scope of the book, I hope the new line of fiction does a 180 from the Dark Age stuff
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