What If? What if the Successor States decided to colonize the Periphery?

Wolf of Arrakis

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I'm a casual Battletech fan but I always wondered why didn't the Successor States colonize the Periphery as part of their expansion. Now I am not suggesting that the Successor States start waging war on Periphery States (Piranha Principle and all) but what if they expanded more into the Periphery. For this scenario let's say that during the chaos of First Succession War House Marik decides to start expanding into the Periphery as part of a long term strategy to enhance their political position and the other Great Houses decide to copy House Marik's idea. How would this affect future events? How would relations between Periphery States and the Inner Sphere be affected by this? How would the Clans react to this when they invade the Inner Sphere in future?
 

Battlegrinder

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My understanding of the reason why they didn't try to seize more periphery territory is because there was nothing to gain by doing so. The Periphery is poor, technologically primitive, and underdeveloped relative to the inner sphere (this is also why the one periphery state that wasn't like that or was at least better off than the norm, the Rim Worlds Republic, got conquered by the Lyrans the second they got the chance). Devoting resources to expanding into the periphery means not using those same resources to take or hold much more valuable parts of the inner sphere, which will weaken any house that tries it.
 

Spartan303

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My understanding of the reason why they didn't try to seize more periphery territory is because there was nothing to gain by doing so. The Periphery is poor, technologically primitive, and underdeveloped relative to the inner sphere (this is also why the one periphery state that wasn't like that or was at least better off than the norm, the Rim Worlds Republic, got conquered by the Lyrans the second they got the chance). Devoting resources to expanding into the periphery means not using those same resources to take or hold much more valuable parts of the inner sphere, which will weaken any house that tries it.


This is essentially the case, yes. Granted, the Rim Worlds Republic were the primary antagonists with the Amaris insurrection and Amaris himself was a colossal douche to everyone. If anything I can't exactly blame the Lyrans for having a hostile power on their borders like that. One primarily responsible for the fall of the Star League. And they were a threat.

The Taurian Concordat is also a periphery power. And what the Star League did to them is inexcusable. So much so that they're still recovering from the asskicking they got hundreds of years later.
 

JagerIV

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Yeah, the successor states not really having the resources to expand over much into the rim makes sense. It seems to be heavily implied that the inner sphere itself is pretty heavily underdeveloped during this time: if some entprising clan wanted to go off and stake its own claim to some unclaimed land, most of the inner sphere is so underpopulated that founding a new town for yourself is probably just a couple of hours of rough overland trucking, and then once you get the road built its an hours truck drive to get more supplies/market access.

So, if you want to play colonist, most people just have to move to a different part of the same planet, and not even necessarily all that far, which is much cheaper and less risky than trying to set up on a whole new planet. And, if you do have some situation where the planet just isn't big enough for ya, there's probably a planet thats habitable and mildly settled, or at least has some ruins to salvage to jumpstart your colony a mere jump away from your current planet. Now, I'm not quite sure of the details of BT FTL lore, but if the games are anything to go by, you can only travel fairly short distances by jumps. Assuming each jump is expensive in and of itself, it makes sense to save your money to buy gear and supplies rather than traveling, so if colonizing one jump over gets you a near empty world, no point going, what, half a dozen, a hundred jumps to get to the periphery?

About how far is it from Terra to the Periphery anyways?

The time you would expect pushes into the Periphery was during the Star League, where free real estate in the Inner Sphere was assumedly much less common. Which, we saw an attempt to do so, but that effort was frustrated by the fact that they weren't hitting an empty ring of totally free real estate, but populated and hostile worlds.

Now, why the Periphery itself didn't keep expanding further and further out is the better question. I'm not sure on the timeline, and thus the obvious answer of "they haven't gotten around to that yet" is plausible or not.
 

Bear Ribs

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They have, like, 2000 planets and most of those planets have less population than Chicago. A hefty percentage have less population that individual neighborhoods in Chicago. They don't have the people to expand in the first place and need a century or two of peace and high birthrates before even considering it. Why would you go colonize planet Sheepdip 800 lightyears away when right here on planet Goatdip you've got an area the size of South America with no humans in it you could colonize instead?

I'm not certain is spelled out in canon but my headcanon is that the Star League terraformed worlds closest to Terra first, hence why there's a very dense knot of planets right next to Terra but inhabited worlds get scarcer as you reach the periphery. Actual useful worlds without Star League terraforming tech are thus much rarer than the inner sphere would suggest because they terraformed so many in the past, and in the age of lostech they can't do that anymore even if they hadn't lost so much population.
 

Spartan303

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They have, like, 2000 planets and most of those planets have less population than Chicago. A hefty percentage have less population that individual neighborhoods in Chicago. They don't have the people to expand in the first place and need a century or two of peace and high birthrates before even considering it. Why would you go colonize planet Sheepdip 800 lightyears away when right here on planet Goatdip you've got an area the size of South America with no humans in it you could colonize instead?

I'm not certain is spelled out in canon but my headcanon is that the Star League terraformed worlds closest to Terra first, hence why there's a very dense knot of planets right next to Terra but inhabited worlds get scarcer as you reach the periphery. Actual useful worlds without Star League terraforming tech are thus much rarer than the inner sphere would suggest because they terraformed so many in the past, and in the age of lostech they can't do that anymore even if they hadn't lost so much population.
[/QCorpus.

Not to mention the high body count of the Succession wars.
 

Wolf of Arrakis

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They have, like, 2000 planets and most of those planets have less population than Chicago. A hefty percentage have less population that individual neighborhoods in Chicago. They don't have the people to expand in the first place and need a century or two of peace and high birthrates before even considering it. Why would you go colonize planet Sheepdip 800 lightyears away when right here on planet Goatdip you've got an area the size of South America with no humans in it you could colonize instead?

I'm not certain is spelled out in canon but my headcanon is that the Star League terraformed worlds closest to Terra first, hence why there's a very dense knot of planets right next to Terra but inhabited worlds get scarcer as you reach the periphery. Actual useful worlds without Star League terraforming tech are thus much rarer than the inner sphere would suggest because they terraformed so many in the past, and in the age of lostech they can't do that anymore even if they hadn't lost so much population.
Exactly how much of the Inner Sphere is uninhabited or unexplored because I don't think we get a clear answer from the official lore. Also how many refugees from the Inner Sphere conflicts (Succession Wars, Clan Invasion, Jihad and etc.) migrated tor fled to the Periphery? Also to expand on the OP I noticed the only the Free Worlds League, Capellan Confederation and Federated Suns have Periphery States as neighbours so what is stopping the Draconis Combine and Lyran Commonwealth from expanding their borders across the Periphery and also why Star League sent expedition fleets into the Deep Periphery to explore and colonise?
 

Spartan303

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Exactly how much of the Inner Sphere is uninhabited or unexplored because I don't think we get a clear answer from the official lore. Also how many refugees from the Inner Sphere conflicts (Succession Wars, Clan Invasion, Jihad and etc.) migrated tor fled to the Periphery? Also to expand on the OP I noticed the only the Free Worlds League, Capellan Confederation and Federated Suns have Periphery States as neighbours so what is stopping the Draconis Combine and Lyran Commonwealth from expanding their borders across the Periphery and also why Star League sent expedition fleets into the Deep Periphery to explore and colonise?


Star League did a lot of shit that still doesn't make sense. As for why these states don't expand into the Periphery? They could, they just don't due to the expenditure of resources not being worth it.
 

Bear Ribs

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Exactly how much of the Inner Sphere is uninhabited or unexplored because I don't think we get a clear answer from the official lore. Also how many refugees from the Inner Sphere conflicts (Succession Wars, Clan Invasion, Jihad and etc.) migrated tor fled to the Periphery? Also to expand on the OP I noticed the only the Free Worlds League, Capellan Confederation and Federated Suns have Periphery States as neighbours so what is stopping the Draconis Combine and Lyran Commonwealth from expanding their borders across the Periphery and also why Star League sent expedition fleets into the Deep Periphery to explore and colonise?
Not easy to say.

If you want to bring in the story-poison that is real life, there are about 1400 star systems (more stars but those are binaries) within 50 lightyears of Sol.

There are 85 systems within 60 lightyears of Terra on the BT map.

That's the abnormally dense knot I attribute to advanced terraforming, if you get outside of Terra's sphere of influence it drops to 25 systems near Tharkad, and once you hit the periphery it drops more. Canopus is part of an usually dense periphery cluster with 20 but if you look at a non-capital world like Nyserta there's only 6 systems within 2 jumps.

Now if we presume that the stars are evenly distributed (a spherical camel assumption to be sure but useful here) we get 2419 star systems within a 60 lightyear sphere, so at their very densest they've colonized one system out of every 28 or so, while in the deep periphery there's over 400 stars for every system JumpShips ever visit (this does assume that these systems all have planets, we have no idea what the real ratio of planets to stars is). You could fit several dozen additional Inner Spheres inside the Inner Sphere and they would never notice unless they happen to misjump into an "uninhabited" system. This is also why Word of Blake was able to have massive construction yards and secret bases inside the Great House's territories, there's so many systems they never visit they simply never noticed that some of those systems had WarShip slips and enormous manufacturing facilities in them.

This does lead to the odd question of how these nations even have borders or why every other attack isn't on a capital given you should be able to fly from Tharkad to Luthien to New Avalon with no other humans knowing a thing about it. The best explanation I've gotten is that they don't like doing that because if you break down in an uninhabited system, it's harder to recover the JumpShip.

Getting back to the colonizing of the Periphery question, unless you happen to hit something extremely valuable like a Garden World or a planet with a crust of germanium, there's probably no advantage to colonizing it since there's bound to be numerous sub-par worlds within a jump or two (and thus with much shorter supply lines to support the colony) instead of way off in the edge of nowhere where a can of beer costs 50,000 Cbills to ship. And that's ignoring that if you want to move away from people, most planets have such tiny populations that you can get away from civilization by driving a few hours.
 

S'task

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Exactly how much of the Inner Sphere is uninhabited or unexplored because I don't think we get a clear answer from the official lore. Also how many refugees from the Inner Sphere conflicts (Succession Wars, Clan Invasion, Jihad and etc.) migrated tor fled to the Periphery? Also to expand on the OP I noticed the only the Free Worlds League, Capellan Confederation and Federated Suns have Periphery States as neighbours so what is stopping the Draconis Combine and Lyran Commonwealth from expanding their borders across the Periphery and also why Star League sent expedition fleets into the Deep Periphery to explore and colonise?
There used to be a very major Periphery State on the border of the Lyran Commonwealth: the Rim Worlds Republic. Its ruler was some guy name Stefan Aramis who, yanno, mass murdered the rulers of the Star League and then presided over its downfall. Part of that downfall was a systemic conquest, destruction, and tilling salt into the soil of the Rim Worlds Republic by one Alexander Kerensky and the SLDF before they turned to liberate Terra.

The Lyrans claimed what was left valuable from the Rim Worlds Republic that was near their borders, but the rest was scorched earth and not worth it, and left to their own devices. To get beyond the Rim World Republic's old borders and into fresh territory not scorched by Kerensky's march of vengeance was generally to far away to be worth colonizing. Hense why a bunch of small pirate and bandit kingdoms tended to pop up in that section of the Periphery... which then further discouraged adventurism.

As to the Draconis Combine, the Outworld Alliance is right on its border with the Federated Suns. Further, given the neo-feudal neo-Imperial Japanese culture, the Draconis Combine was never interested in building new colonies, as that didn't bring glory and honor. Conquest and battle against worthy foes (the Federated Suns mostly) are what the elites of society sought. And they had a culture that encouraged conformity and maintaining social status, as such, the push for colonizing new lands wasn't really as strong a drive for them.
 

Jarow

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Another reason no colonies existed - in many cases the Successor States are shockingly poor. Or, at least, have way too much of their budget being spent on an endless war. The Federated Suns, for example, has numerous worlds where basic literacy is out of reach. Admittedly the Federated Suns is a bit bipolar, also having the best universities on its "Golden Worlds," but the fact that they can't afford basic education should say something about available finances.

So as for what happens next? The Periphery is probably uncomfortable by successor states getting closer, the Clans (who are colonizing themselves) don't really care (but might run into issues with garrisons), and the successor states probably collapse from trying to afford the needlessly expensive prestige projects of colonizing new planets. Because enough land is not something the Successor States are missing. What they're missing is industry and knowledge, especially the knowledge to build that industry. Money can be a lot more usefully spent protecting/capturing industrial centers or developing/stealing knowledge than trying to spread your already thin population out even further.
 

Spartan303

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Another reason no colonies existed - in many cases the Successor States are shockingly poor. Or, at least, have way too much of their budget being spent on an endless war. The Federated Suns, for example, has numerous worlds where basic literacy is out of reach. Admittedly the Federated Suns is a bit bipolar, also having the best universities on its "Golden Worlds," but the fact that they can't afford basic education should say something about available finances.

So as for what happens next? The Periphery is probably uncomfortable by successor states getting closer, the Clans (who are colonizing themselves) don't really care (but might run into issues with garrisons), and the successor states probably collapse from trying to afford the needlessly expensive prestige projects of colonizing new planets. Because enough land is not something the Successor States are missing. What they're missing is industry and knowledge, especially the knowledge to build that industry. Money can be a lot more usefully spent protecting/capturing industrial centers or developing/stealing knowledge than trying to spread your already thin population out even further.


Especially as most of their planets are generations from reaching any sort of overpopulation issues. Hell, most of the interiors of these worlds are mostly sparsely populated and lightly developed; From hundreds of thousands to a few short millions. There just isn't a need to colonize more territory. And some of the worlds in the Federated Suns borders with the periphery are essentially living it up ala Mad Max style.

There is simply no need to seek out more colonies. Especially as their interior infrastructure desperately needs to be rebuilt. Lucky they got the Helm core when they did.
 

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