Looks like it requires 30GB of hard drive space, so the actual download is probably closer to 12GB or so, maybe less depending on compression.
I can imagine the defeated army of some minor noble house being evicted from their rightful claims and forced to wander the stars, degraded to fighting for coin while trying to scrape together enough to take back what’s theirs. It’s just the practical costs of day to day living for such an entity…yikes.
I mean, take Jayne from Firefly. Now there’s a mercenary arrangement that makes perfect sense. He gets paid, gets a place to live, food, etc etc.
I think the sticking point for me is how special mechs are supposed to be in the fiction. Since they’re so special, you’d think everything about them would be expensive as hell. And you’re not just gonna find some bespoke mech parts lying around, or spaceships that just happen to be mech-capable, etc. I’d imagine those ships look like wheezing masses of rube goldberg inspired best fit repairs.
Actually, thinking about this stuff is kinda fun.
Ha, yeah it is. To go with your example, Jayne is just a guy right? You feed him, give him a room and whatever pay he needs, it’s probably not a big deal. I mean hell, Mal can afford to keep him around, and he’s not rolling in money.
But not only are mechs massive, with some non-zero maintenance cost, but the ability to make new ones has been lost to time. They’re walking antiques, getting more rare with every battle. At some point, it just isn’t going to make sense to keep using them in wars! Though I guess there are all those caches out there …
I still don’t really get that. In a universe of billions & billions of people, there’s not a single scientist capable of reverse engineering this tech? Do any Battletech experts know if they ever give a solid explanation for this?
I’m not exactly up to date on Battletech lore, but I’ve always understood the concept of lostech is kind of a fait accompli. They just can’t make new ones, what are you gonna do?
And i just got my GMG key, yay!
It would make relationships with Merc companies weird, too. Historically, you want to use mercs as fodder as much as possible, or if you can’t do that (because they refuse) you use them to guard your flank in some safe-ish place.
But the specialness of Mechs turns that totally on its head. Mechs are too valuable for some rear or flank assignment, full stop. But as long as you intend to keep employing them, which you do because they’re so useful, you don’t want them blowing up, either. You need these guys!
Yeah, got my GMG key as well, all good.
If you’re at work, don’t forget https://store.steampowered.com/account/registerkey to type in keys while away and go to your games tab on Steam and you can set it to install while you’re away if you have steam running at home.
Decision at Thunder Rift is the start of the Gray Death Legion stories (my personal favorite storyline btw) and it covers a lot of what it might be like to start out a mercenary company.
As far as the interstellar travel. Dropships house the mechs, of course… but to travel system to system the dropships would dock with jumpships. Jumpships had jump drives that were powered by huge solar sails. Deploy the sails, charge up, and jump out. I believe most of the technology around these jumpships was lost, so mostly they are in maintenance mode unless star league caches are found - or when the clans return.
Jumpships had to jump into certain points of a system, then the dropships would burn in and usually that would take a week or so. I believe I read some books at one time where mechs could actually be airdropped from dropships as well with heat-shields.
There also exists aerospace fighters, although they aren’t too fleshed out in most of the lore. I even remember reading some books where some backwater planets defended themselves with aeronautical jets.
Mercenary Star, another Gray Death Legion book, does go into some depth about these items:
Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense, especially since I was a great mech pilot when I was 15 years old after about 3 hours of play. Heh.
Paradoxically, it makes a little more sense after the Clans show up and Clan salvage starts to filter into Inner Sphere use, even though by then some lostech is back in production. If your mercenary unit is built around a bunch of super-high-end Clan weapons and a Clan chassis or two, you start to look a whole lot more appealing to a government looking to hire muscle.
There are no clans, no clans at all!
Keep in mind, there are still factories that make mechs, just not a lot of them, and there is some understanding of more primative parts, like the basic lasers and missiles, just don’t ask about XL engines, double heat sinks of the Gause Rifle.
So, there are brand new mech walking around, only the most basic of mechs that have been produced for decades if not centuries.
There are still some factories making Mechs in 3025, just not many. And the setting has changed some from noble knight with rare tech to more soldier with special equipment.
Our Company Commander was part of the 16th Dragoons, who fled with Kerensky in the mid 2780s, leaving behind a number of Mechs that he used to found the Company once he’d hired on some super-talented pilots, like me.
That was the end of our economics-of-foundation conversation.
Then almost 75% of our actual gameplay revolved around economics, as House Marik repeatedly stiffed us on contract payment and my mech slowly fell apart over the course of several campaigns, to the point that I always pointed one side of my mech at the enemy, because I never quite managed to repair the armour on the other side.
Then we got poached to go and work for Steiner and never had to worry about money again.
I didn’t know that, but like I said I’m not exactly up to date on the lore.
Later on they find a memory core with plans for a ton of lostech and then actually start designing new toys.
Also, FWIW, the tech loss is less about it being genuinely lost to time and more about ComStar actively suppressing it. With murder.
Not that a lot of BattleTech is all that plausible, still.
Wilson’s Hussars!