Tom Clancy's Endwar Earth ISOT to BattleTech.

[namar13766]

One of the things people will have to keep in mind about Clancyverse war technological research and development is that they’re neither limited by a shortage of researchers and infrastructure like the Inner Sphere nor Warriors not wanting to ruin their way of life like the Clans.

The Clans took 120 years, from the moment Strana Mechty was colonized, to invent 80% of their armaments as seen in 3050. Not only that, ATMs & Heavy Lasers had been 'sat on' by the Scientist Caste since the early-2900s because the Warrior caste didn't want them. Because they were too paradigm breaking for their honor code:

The Heavy Laser breaks the mold for lights, in that new trainees in their 1st Trial of Position could bumrush an opponent, and pull the trigger, and have extremely high odds of winning. Even if the trainee has crap piloting skills.

ATMs outrange anything on the field that isn't a an AC2/LBX2 plinking, and get horrifically nastier if you get close, and hit hard enough to force an opponent to close to a range that is dictated by the ATM user.

For that matter, ProtoMechs had been in secret development since 2970 or abouts.

Remember, the Improved ER PPC the Wolverines developed was created while Nicky was still alive, and the modern Clan version came out immediately after his death.

That's all within 40 years of the Clans' creation.

Wars of Reaving goes occasionally into detail that due to the various Clans' Warrior castes not wanting something that would rock the boat too much, there were/are hundreds of weapon variations of things the Scientists/Society had tucked away. Throwaway lines from that whole event about various 'rejected' items that sounded like an ER version of a VSPL, a scatter laser, and the infamous Railgun. Ferro-Lamellor for Mechs was available in 2800...but it had originally been prototyped for conventional vehicles so nobody (outside Hell's Horse, maybe, and they didn't invent it, so never knew of it) wanted it, so it got sat on for decades. And all of those had gathered dust for upwards of half a century or even mutliple centuries.

So @Spartan303, what, if any, are going to be the hard limits on what the Clancyverse will develop from the knowledge of the Minnesota Tribe?

 

[Bear Ribs]

One of the things people will have to keep in mind about Clancyverse war technological research and development is that they’re neither limited by a shortage of researchers and infrastructure like the Inner Sphere nor Warriors not wanting to ruin their way of life like the Clans.

The Clans took 120 years, from the moment Strana Mechty was colonized, to invent 80% of their armaments as seen in 3050. Not only that, ATMs & Heavy Lasers had been 'sat on' by the Scientist Caste since the early-2900s because the Warrior caste didn't want them. Because they were too paradigm breaking for their honor code:

It's worth noting in conjunction with this that people with Star League medicine can easily live to 150 and often don't even start having kids before they're 80 years old. The clans don't have those lifespans anymore due to their bizarre cult of youth and not providing good medicine to anybody but Warriors. At their initial landing, that 120 years is all within the expected lifetime of a single generation of Star League scientists plus their (probably homeschooled) kids polishing up Mom and Dad's inventions before actual Star League culture got completely eroded into Clan culture.

 

[Spartan303]

So @Spartan303, what, if any, are going to be the hard limits on what the Clancyverse will develop from the knowledge of the Minnesota Tribe

Earth: We'll take them.

Minnesota tribe. Which ones?

Earth: All of them. Also we'd like to jointly develop a few of our own goodies with you. You game?

 

[namar13766]

Earth: We'll take them.

Minnesota tribe. Which ones?

Earth: All of them. Also we'd like to jointly develop a few of our own goodies with you. You game?

Well then, Let me make a proposal of my own, to see if I can make Honor Harrington-style Missile Pods in BattleTech.

MISSILE POD CONSTRUCTION

Step 1: Select the number and type of launchers in a Missile Pod. The only acceptable launchers are Barracuda, White Shark, and Killer Whale. Missile Pods cannot handle teleoperated systems, which prevents the use of Krakens. Pod launchers are simplified, single-shot launchers dedicated to one missile type, so AR10s are not allowed. The Missile Pod will be treated as a Weapons Bay and is thus limited to 70pts of capital damage. Missile Pods have sharp fire control limits, so be careful with the number of launchers in a pod.

For example, Bob decides to build a 10-tube White Shark Missile Pod.

Step 2: Determine the tonnage of the launchers in the Missile Pods. This is equal to a normal capital missile launcher of the appropriate type times the number of launchers in the pod, halved. These are one-shot launchers that include the tonnage of the capital missile that they'll fire.

Bob's White Shark pod has 10 White Shark launchers totaling (140 tons per launchers) x (10 launchers) x 0.5 = 700 tons.

Step 3: Add fire control to the Missile Pod. Because these pods can target any arc, they have a low fire control limit: 4 tubes. So a pod with 5-8 tubes has to add 10% of the launcher mass in fire control; a pod with 9-12 adds 20%, etc.

Bob's Missile Pod has 10 tubes, so the launchers grow in tonnage by 20%. 700 tons x 1.20 = 840 tons.

Step 4: Add structure, armor, and steering systems to the Missile Pod. This equals 5% of the launcher weight. Missile Pods have an SI of 10, 50 standard scale armor points per location, and are treated as spheroid dropships for damage purposes.

Bob's 840-ton Missile Pods grows to 882 tons with the addition of structure, armor, etc. (840x1.05).

Step 5: Add fire control to the launching ship. Each missile tube in a pod or pods that a ship can control at once calls for 1 gunner and 50 tons of fire control gear (in HMAero, the fire control should be placed in a cargo bay to avoid confusing fire control for the ship's own firing arcs.)

Bob wants his Harrington-class Missile Cruiser to be able to volley 100 missiles at once from pods. That calls for 100 extra gunners and (100 tubes x 50 tons) = 5000 tons of fire control.

MISSILE POD USAGE:

It takes a while to deploy and utilize the pods.

1) A warship or dropship can only deploy as many Missile Pods per turn as it has launch-capable doors.

2) On the deployment turn, the pods are released on a heading and speed matching the deploying ships' movement. They are valid targets on this turn. Every facing of the generically-shaped pods is considered "side profile" for to-hit difficulties. They can't evade, jink, etc.

3) Missile Pods have a firing arc like a warship bow arc. On the turn they are to be fired, during the movement phase, MissilePods have steering thrusters that can change their facing by up to 3 hex faces. These thrusters cannot accelerate, brake, or otherwise move the Missile Pods, only turn the pods to face a target. For turning purposes, they have unlimited fuel.

4) The pods may be used on the next turn following deployment, or any subsequent turn, assuming the controlling ship has enough capacity to handle all of them.

5) When fired, a Missile Pod is treated as a weapons bay, with a single attack roll for all of the missiles.

Missile pods are recoverable, whether they've fire their missiles or not. A friendly unit with launch-capable doors may recover pods at the rate of 1 pod per turn per door. (Hostile units attempting to recover missile pods risk damage from self-destruct systems, and attempting to recover hostile, unspent missile pods is just stupid. The missile pods are smart enough to wait until their inside the ship to voice their complaints.)

 

[Spartan303]

Warships and missiles are certainly on the table. I'm thinking that maybe Earth is placed centrally in the Chainlaine Isles and over time just takes over completely. Over the course of decades they build a small but prosperous (and extremely well armed) Interstellar Nation.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

@namar13766
Now we just need to develop the bomb-pumped laser/graser!

 

[namar13766]

Warships and missiles are certainly on the table. I'm thinking that maybe Earth is placed centrally in the Chainlaine Isles and over time just takes over completely. Over the course of decades they build a small but prosperous (and extremely well armed) Interstellar Nation.

I was thinking they’d be in the Mahan Cluster as depicted on this map (Under the R of Inner).
Over time, they’d expand and assimilate the various polities on the north of the Inner Sphere.

Spoiler: Battletech Quest Map

@namar13766
Now we just need to develop the bomb-pumped laser/graser!

Laserheads use a nuclear warhead to power a crude but extremely powerful X-ray or Gamma-ray laser. Due to the single-shot nature of the lasing system, Laserheads are considerably more powerful than conventional ship-mounted lasers, though their crudity results in comparatively anemic range; much of this issue is solved by placing the weapon on the end of a missile. Laserheads deal Y*10 damage, where Y is the base damage of the missile using a standard warhead.


Plasmaheads are similar, based on the 20th century concept of the 'casaba-howitzer' a Plasmaheads creates a self-forging projectile of extremely hot matter that has a massively delirious effect on both a target's armor and its heat management system. Plasmaheads deal Y*8 damage where Y is the base damage of the missile using standard Kinetic warheads; additionally, they add Y*10 heat to the targeted unit.

Both weapons must make an additional hit roll to represent terminal guidance; when firing a Laserhead or Plasmahead you must declare the point at which the weapon initiates, after which it cannot be intercepted with Point Defense weapons. For laserheads, every three hexes range from the targeted unit adds a +1 debuff to the second hit roll. For Plasmaheads, add a +1 for each hex above two from the target. Laserheads may be initiated up to nine hexes from their target, Plasmaheads however are only effective up to four hexes away due to dispersal. Tele-operated missiles must still make a second roll, but as they do not rely on automatic targeting do not suffer from these debuffs. Neither weapon system is effective against ground targets, lacking the cohesion required to punch through an atmosphere, restricting their use to void combat only.

 

[Spartan303]

I was thinking they’d be in the Mahan Cluster as depicted on this map (Under the R of Inner).
Over time, they’d expand and assimilate the various polities on the north of the Inner Sphere.

How big are we talking?

 

[Bear Ribs]

How big are we talking?

You've heard of the Inner Sphere? They're the Outer Sphere, completing englobing the inner.

 

[namar13766]

How big are we talking?

They’d assimilate the Morgan Valkyriate and the Oberon Confederation at least, though they’d also do some colonization and expansion of their own.

 

[Spartan303]

They’d assimilate the Morgan Valkyriate and the Oberon Confederation at least, though they’d also do some colonization and expansion of their own.

Thr Valkyriate, the Chainlane isles, Oberon. You could a very powerful Periphery state with them.

 

[namar13766]

Thr Valkyriate, the Chainlane isles, Oberon. You could a very powerful Periphery state with them.

Especially if some cultural assimilation leads to actually democratic governments instead of various flavors of Romantic Military Autocracy.

 

[Spartan303]

Especially if some cultural assimilation leads to actually democratic governments instead of various flavors of Romantic Military Autocracy.

So rather than be idle, Earth and the Minnesota Tribe would be very, very active building a Periphery state to rival the Taurians if not surpass them.

The IS will get wise to this. How do they respond?

 

[namar13766]

Initially they’ll disregard them as merely periphery neobarbarians boasting above their station. If the Successor States try to drag the Clancies into their Zero-Sum Game, I’m betting the Clancies would state “The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play.”

I’d want the Explorer Corps to be the one to find them around 2960. Comstar's usual methods of conversion and subversion will have minimal effect on the Clancy's practical, self-sufficient, high-tech society. Pseudo-religious preaching about the sanctity of technology means nothing to a nation that has never been through a dark age. ComStar has no established spy network inside the Clancies, no access to the Clancy's communications. ComStar simply can not manipulate the Clancies the way it juggles the myriad factions of the Inner Sphere.

Furthermore, even if people realize that part of the Clancies are made of Kerensky’s Exodus, it might not be what they had been expecting.

 

[Spartan303]

One thing I was thinking about was that Earth wouldn't stop developing Jump technology. Given a 150 years of R&D you could see jump ships as capable as the Lucretia that can jump 200 LY in a single jump. Or even artificial gravity and the ability to jump inside a gravity well.

 

[namar13766]

One thing I was thinking about was that Earth wouldn't stop developing Jump technology. Given a 150 years of R&D you could see jump ships as capable as the Lucretia that can jump 200 LY in a single jump. Or even artificial gravity and the ability to jump inside a gravity well.

How about improving Dropship Collars so that they only mass a fourth of their original size while still being able to carry a Dropship? Or maybe speeding up the recharge process? Or having LF Batteries be integral to the Jump Drive instead of taking up an additional 1% mass?

 

[Spartan303]

How about improving Dropship Collars so that they only mass a fourth of their original size while still being able to carry a Dropship? Or maybe speeding up the recharge process? Or having LF Batteries be integral to the Jump Drive instead of taking up an additional 1% mass?

All feasible with 175 years of continuous R&D.

 

[namar13766]

BTW, what would you call this new interstellar government composed of Endwar/Modern Earth and the Wolverines?

I’d go with the United Federation of Nations, because I’m a fan of the Templin Institute.

 

[Spartan303]

BTW, what would you call this new interstellar government composed of Endwar/Modern Earth and the Wolverines?

I’d go with the United Federation of Nations, because I’m a fan of the Templin Institute.

Not sure. Maybe 'Star Alliance'?

 

[LordSunhawk]

OK, I'm going to step in here as a veteran of the original. You are making the same mistake that they did, and massively overwanking Earth and assuming that the reason for the various things done in BTech are purely due to them being too stupid to pour piss out of a boot.

Congratulations, you've remade An Entry With A Bang in all of its curbstomping wankery.