Battletech BattleTech discussion thread: May the light of Hanse Davion guide us

[Typhonis]

Another way to cover it up. Use it as a R+D Black site. It's secure, it's isolated. You could send the best and brightest there to come up with new things. They will need a support staff and security. Just up the numbers a bit. Then you get a few thousand colonists a year. colonists to expand farming, to do construction. No need to rush, just go slow and steady. Then let compound interest take over.

I'm sure the SLDF had prefabs they could use to rapidly build a base where they wanted one. That would be good for a start. Then they expand from there.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Maybe "next door" to a typical blacksite for "hide it even from our own skunkworks" purposes. Have the blacksite working on terraforming, send the to-be-replaced but still-serviceable equipment one more jump in the boonies away, then have a fraction of that site's future resources diverted to the secret-to-them end goal.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Wait, they did that shit?

They didn’t canonically do that, I’m saying it’s more the *sort* of thing they would do versus genetically engineered waifu sex slaves. Just like the Japanese, this would be claimed to be completely voluntary and uncoerced, and it would fit perfectly as an extension of the idea that the League’s war of conquest was in fact “liberating” the Periphery from itself.

 

[Husky_Khan]

They didn’t canonically do that, I’m saying it’s more the *sort* of thing they would do

Girl. You deserve a neural whipping for that.

Sadly for all of us, the Star League banned such needed disciplinary measures.

 

[Spartan303]

They didn’t canonically do that, I’m saying it’s more the *sort* of thing they would do versus genetically engineered waifu sex slaves. Just like the Japanese, this would be claimed to be completely voluntary and uncoerced, and it would fit perfectly as an extension of the idea that the League’s war of conquest was in fact “liberating” the Periphery from itself.

I'm gonna go with they didn't do that. Until there is evidence that contradicts that.

 

[Morphic Tide]

I'm gonna go with they didn't do that. Until there is evidence that contradicts that.

...You do know that most of the reason the end of the Star League was so catastrophic is because they went out of their way to destroy all industry not dependent on the Terran Hegemony they could remotely get away with, right? As in "specifically made sure to ruin Taurian terriforming equipment and the industry to rebuild it so that the basic livability of their planets would require Terran Hegemony imports".

Compared to enforcing the Mother Doctrine, "comfort women" is nothing.

 

[Spartan303]

...You do know that most of the reason the end of the Star League was so catastrophic is because they went out of their way to destroy all industry not dependent on the Terran Hegemony they could remotely get away with, right? As in "specifically made sure to ruin Taurian terriforming equipment and the industry to rebuild it so that the basic livability of their planets would require Terran Hegemony imports".

Compared to enforcing the Mother Doctrine, "comfort women" is nothing.

Depends on how you look at it. Destroying an enemy so utterly that they could never rise again. That's definitely within the realm of possibility and believability here. The IS did it routinely and so did the SLDF before it. But the comfort women thing is a more personal thing and despite their brutality towards an enemy, the use of women in such a manner is often something much more personal and affront to personal honor. Weird, I know, but that is how I view it.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Don't even have to be comfort women, just eligible young women sent to be useful personnel or support staff. Human nature takes care of the rest.

Also allows families to form around the central efforts on planet. Also fosters a sense of gratefulness to the SL as that's who brought the couples together.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Depends on how you look at it. Destroying an enemy so utterly that they could never rise again. That's definitely within the realm of possibility and believability here. The IS did it routinely and so did the SLDF before it. But the comfort women thing is a more personal thing and despite their brutality towards an enemy, the use of women in such a manner is often something much more personal and affront to personal honor. Weird, I know, but that is how I view it.

They intentionally sabotaged the basic habitability of planets so that any interruption to trade with them would near-certainly kill every inhabitant outright. And as we see with pretty much every post-industrial atrocity, at this scale there is no evil that cannot be rendered impersonal to the decision-makers, and no evil that cannot be justified by the hand to enact it with "just following orders". Especially at a rate somewhere around six decimal places, if not more.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Yeah....the SLDF was pretty evil.

Which made Kerensky's "I'm leaving, and I'm taking my toys with me!" fit pretty interesting to me.

 

[Knowledgeispower]

I mean a lot of TH planets also needed a constant stream of terraforming equipment parts and didn't make them

 

[Husky_Khan]

They intentionally sabotaged the basic habitability of planets so that any interruption to trade with them would near-certainly kill every inhabitant outright. And as we see with pretty much every post-industrial atrocity, at this scale there is no evil that cannot be rendered impersonal to the decision-makers, and no evil that cannot be justified by the hand to enact it with "just following orders". Especially at a rate somewhere around six decimal places, if not more.

It's important to note that there are scales of evil as well. Just because a group or entity does one thing doesn't mean automatically they'll do some "lesser" crime.

The Japanese perpetrated Unit 731 with its heinous medical experiments and engaged in the practice of comfort women and barbaric crimes against humanity like the Rape of Nanking and the Battle of Manila, but they never tossed the thousands of Jews under their authority into gas chambers even when the Germans kindly asked them to dispose of them as a random example.

The SLDF can be heinous in some practices but just because they engage in one bad thing doesn't mean they'll engage in all sorts of unsavory "lesser scale" evils as well.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Don't even have to be comfort women, just eligible young women sent to be useful personnel or support staff. Human nature takes care of the rest.

I am going to point out that this is what the Japanese to this day claim the comfort women “actually were”.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

I am going to point out that this is what the Japanese to this day claim the comfort women “actually were”.

Sure....but that's not what I said to do.

 

[Husky_Khan]

I dunno if this has been posted before but some Youtuber named Celestial Serpent remastered the twenty five cutscenes from the old Mechwarrior games including Mechwarrior 2: 31st Century Combat, Mechwarrior 2: Ghost Bear Legacy Expansion Pack, Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries, Mechwarrior 3 and of course Mechcommander.

It's all polished up in pretty 4K at 60FPS!

Playlist below.

 

[Husky_Khan]

So about Battletech...

 

[The Whispering Monk]

So about Battletech...

It's a great game!

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

I am big sad that we're probably not gonna get Battletech 2 from HBS.

Lamplighters didn't do so hot, and the videogame rights are a bit borked iirc. So, yeah.

 

[Husky_Khan]

It's a great game!

According to myth and legend back in the ol' days of Spacebattle nerddom there were the Big Three "Star Wars, Star Trek and Babylon 5" and for many moons, there was a campaign called Battletech for the Big Four where Battletech would join those two and a half titans of spacebattles/science fiction media.

 

[PsihoKekec]

the videogame rights are a bit borked iirc.

Yeah, the videogame rights are held by Microsoft and universe right by Topps, so if you want to make a computer game you have to pay danegeld to both.