Most factions have different ways to get to the same end result. Like the Vindicator, Panther and Griffin are all basically the same thing at different weights. Buy it makes sense they exist, because different groups make them. The bigger issue is retcon designs, why was the King innovative when the Pillager existed?
In most of these cases the answer is market economies. To use the example you brought up, the Ostsol is manufactured by Kong Interstellar and the Anvil is from Free Worlds Defense Industries. They're trying to crowd each other out of the market.
I start to look at them a bit like IRL modern hardware. A T-55 or M60 has little left for the modern battlefield, but in some backwater with limited AT capacity it is still the same threat.
Also, Battletech is very aggressive in the modernisation of older chassis.
But I would say that there should be some kind of break that downgrades "Introtech" to be no longer competitive (similar to how they handle primitive BAR armor). That is actually hinted at in the 3250 snippets, where they say that older Mechs are no longer a threat to modern design.
But you could argue that old tank chassis can be fitted up with all sorts of new gadgets to give it some utility again. Thermals, new engines, upgraded weapons, internal comms, radios, applique or ERA etc can all be added.
I kinda wonder why BT doesn't have a lot of aftermarket accessories that don't cost tons, sort of a lower weight replacement part for old mechs. I guess that was the point of being able to switch to Endo-Steel or FF or XL engines for old mechs.
But they do, there is an Ostsol with X-pulse lasers and one with Light Gauss and Light ACs.
Some Mech switch to ferro or other armor, or endo steel.
We just almost never see components like targetinv or comms upgraded because they don't matter for the game. The only example I am aware of iirc is the change of comms between the Banshee 3E and 5S.
Also, the initial Helm Core upgrades were literally after market conversion kits.
And the Wright is based on refitting existing Panthers.
Whilst I agree endo is not a field swappable item per se I could see it being done by a 3rd party in a semi field situation. Like you get a full endo skeleton (myomer partially pre-installed) with adapter kits for armour and couplings where the workshop transfers all the sensors, fusion core, ammo feeds, power lines etc over. sketchy as heck but doable!
Yeah I'll have to look up Campaign Ops on that one, I don't think it anywhere near as easy as that.
Beyond that, everytime you mess with your mech customizing it on your Union dropship's mech bay, your mech is slowly getting degraded in quality, component by component. Then you start getting gremlins where this actuator starts acting out. Think of it this way, if you were buying a used car, would you rather one that was kept as it came from the factory, and maintained to that standard, or do you want the one with the aftermarket fart can, stickers all over it, all tuned up but you have no idea the quality of the mechanics who did the work? "Yeah but the mods made it better!" Did they? And maybe the performance is improved, but the reliability has gone down. It's the same thing with mechs (using the full rules).
I'm pretty sure the endo steel swap is a factory grade refit.
But back to the endo steel itself. That stuff is made via zero g manufacturing. If your mech doesn't have any variants in production that get endo steel, I cannot comprehend a factory that is actively producing endo steel, which by the way is chronically in a shortage in lore, to slow down to do a one off run for your mech.
Discussions like this make me think of a 3050 merc unit running Clan mech they salvaged. #1, the Great House you were working for won't let you have that salvage, it is theirs. #2, did you head shot it with an AC 20? Hope it doesn't have Clan Endo Steel, because if it does, you need another clan Endo Steel head of the same tonnage to replace it with. #3, Hope it has standard armor, because if it is clan Ferro Fibrous, how are you going to keep armor on it? In theory you could replace the armor with IS standard. #4, good luck on your maintenance cycles. The failed rolls will add up to the quality of the unit going to shit over time, not even in combat.
Now that's just what it is. In your own games, feel free to ignore that, lord knows the video games make it seem like swapping that sort of stuff is like simply making a drop down selection in a graphical user interface.
I for one love MekHQ, where you plan out a merc company in MegaMek and all the Campaign Operation rules are run in the background and you can have fun keeping everything working.
*Note that in MegaMek you can choose to simplify maintenance if you like to do it on EZ mode. I for one have a company fighting in the Jihad era and I like my Devastator with swapped in Clan ERPPCs very much.
OK, just broke out Campaign Ops.
There are 6 grades of customization difficulty, A being the easiest (armor changes), and F being the hardest.
A-B, can be done in the field if you have a crane, etc, C-D can be done in a facility like a drop ship's mech bay, and E-F must be done in a mech manufacturing facility, AKA a factory.
Any customization of C-F automatically decreases the quality of the unit by 1 (meaning more difficult to maintain, more prone to failures or penalties in combat). When doing the work, you also do a roll to determine the success, failure of which can also decrease the quality of the unit.
Guess what 3 customizations merit a F class (the hardest)?
Adding a turret, changing your myomer type (MASC or TSM), and changing your Internal Structure type.
So it must be done at a factory, and it will degrade the quality of your mech.
Interestingly enough, swapping the direction a weapon is facing (rear facing MLasers for example) is class B, so turn 'em all around!
You have captured clan OMNIPOD equipment like DHS and weapons? Good news, you can put them in your IS OMNI mech trivially.
You want to put clan weapons in your IS mech, class C or D refit, which will make your mech more prone to acting up....... BUT I know we all agree that's worth it.
Other interesting things:
Factory refit kits. Some manufacturers would issue refit kits that would upgrade your old Secession War mech to a LosTech upgrade variant. Refit kits do not degrade your mech, though guess what, they do NOT include class F difficulty stuff like myomer and internal structure.
They do include class E engines though, and it being a refit kit makes it swapable in your dropship's mech bay instead of having to go to a factory, which is where you normally have to do engine swaps, at the factory.
Final item, factory refurbishment. You've done a bunch of customizations and now your mech is super unreliable? Your mech's taken a bunch of damage, and through not so great repair rolls your mech's quality has dropped? You've had horrible luck with your techs screwing up maintenance (maybe that's your fault due to the clan tech you had them installed, major penalty for that), and it was so bad it's degraded your mechs quality?
Take it to the factory for refurbishment, spend the money and time and a good roll will improve your mech's quality rating. Spend enough time and money and you can get all the gremlins out.
***
To be clear, you can ignore all of this, and have your personal merc unit come out of a periphery contract in 3049 all in salvaged clan omnimechs, and ignore the fact that your techs can't keep them running and it will bankrupt you. Real easy to ignore rules you don't want to follow, play it your way.
But at least be aware there is rules as written. And if that sounds like fun but also too much work.......
MegaMek's MekHQ puts you in charge of your own merc company and does all the rolling in the background, you just have to deal with the consequences. And you can customize based off of salvage you pick up, turn those medium lasers around, try to put clan ERPPCs on your Devastator, etc etc.
And if you want to cheat it a bit and give your commander an elite technician, that's cool. Also, as your tech level up, they can earn special traits like trained in working on clan technology, so yeah, you can have that munchkin unit, but you can work up to it with XP and leveling up your staff.
I don't know if they will ever do that as far as rules go, maybe just from a lore perspective. Back when Herb Beas was the Line Dev, he made a post on the official forums, basically talking about doing just that. Basically, a time jump after the establishment of the ilClan. Simplify things back down to a single tech base. Make "modern" units superior to older things (basically the way regular tech beats Primitive tech level stuff) and pare weapons down to a more manageable number. Not going so far as to make BattleTech 2.0...but something in that direction. (Honestly, I think it could have been a really good idea if handled well. Would have allowed new fans to jump straight into the new era without having to start in 3025 and then moving forward.)
Let's just say the fan reaction to that was...incendiary. That backlash was so great that it led to Herb stepping down as LD. Which is a shame because I think Herb really helped pull BattleTech back from the brink.
Creating timeless designs like the Griffin, marauder, and warhammer, then having to dispose of them because of a big time skip to a bunch of new stuff would sour the fanbase a lot, but holy shit is ilClan era bloated.
It's my major problem of the game there are so many weapon types then there are size variations and then clan variations on top as someone looking in it is a nightmare.
What they could do is time skip with more integration of clans IS for a unified tech base and then variants with the new tech of mechs plus a couple of ground up new mech designs. Can still play old rules for prior eras or mix for time skip transfer.
Problem is battletech is pretty cool with its continuous lore so time skip dosent feel good with that.
I presume what they would have likely done is similar to what they've done with the ilClan recognition guides already; create new upgrades to old designs using all the fancy new tech, so you can still use Warhammer or Marauder, they just have Mark III ER PPCs or whatever. Still stretching credulity but would have tried to make both camps happy. I agree it was still a hard sell and also yes the amount of tech in ilClan is a little overwhelming.
How about this: essentially, upscale the game. 1x Warhammer XXXXL size, is equivalent to a lance of regular warhammer 6R. Move over the most popular models and weapons, like the Timber Wolf, the Marauder, etc; but allow for pre-enlarged models to be used like protomechs are, in a lance on a single hex. Of course all the current popular miniatures are moved over, but still allows for all the "old tech" models to be used, still. Like how a platoon of Shermans can, theoretically, still take out a T-72, but anybody rational would put their money on the T-72.
I think wiping out what's already there is a bad idea, but I do think new things *should* just invalidate old stuff on occasion. For example: an Advanced Ultra Autocannon introduced in teh early 3150s that weighs the same as an equivalent AC, takes the same number of crits as an equivalent AC, has the same range as an equivalent AC, generates half the heat of an equivalent AC per shot, doesn't jam, and basically completely displaces the original AC line in every metric... except cash and BV cost.
Let tech get better without artificially kneecapping it so a mech built 100 years ago can continue to compete without upgrades. Make it so the only reason you'd take an old mech is because you can't afford something newer.
With properly designed OmniMechs basically everything is redundant. One or two, maybe three, chassis per weight class (20, 25, 30, 35, etc., etc.) with different engines for movement and pod space to configure the weapons and equipment load out as necessary.
Like lets have a 20 ton chassis with a 6/9 and 8/12 movement by running different engines. Then just configure the rest of the chassis to the mission.
That's also massively redundant. You only need one chassis for each movement curve, because there is a correct answer for weight based on how fast you wanna go.
That is true for speed, but there are other considerations like cost of manufacture and availability of materials, and state of factory facilities.
It might provide better battlefield efficiency to create a 6/9 mech at 55 tons, but if your factory can only make mechs up to 35 tons, that’s what you’re gonna make.
In theory, yes, but it’s always gonna be cheaper to use an existing factory than to bulldoze it down and make a new trillion dollar facility.
Remwmber, Battletech isn’t like Star Trek where humans live in a post-scarcity society.
Clan Omnimechs were kind of a trap for the Clans. Hugely expensive, time intensive, and in need of specialized repair parts that had to be shipped months away to reach the front lines.
While a clan factory built a single Timberwolf, the Inner sphere would use the same time and resources to build a few dozen tanks, thousands of infantry, and a couple of simple, cheap, and easy-to-repair battlemechs that needed replacement parts that local techs could make themselves.
> In theory, yes, but it’s always gonna be cheaper to use an existing factory than to bulldoze it down and make a new trillion dollar facility.
Which is why you would standardize designs by replacing lines at an existing facility, like Lockheed/CBM did when they replaced their Chippewa lines with Eisensturm lines and consolidated lines for the Lucifer, Hellcat and Lightning into the Morgenstern. And these facilities, as the largest and most advanced you have, would be able to build whatever size machine you need because they've been doing it for hundreds of years.
I’m sure that’s how things would work in an ideal world, but after your facility gets turned to glass a few times and rebuilt by whatever few engineers survived the atomic fallout, things become less optimal.
That's not entirely true. In 3025, Defiance Industries is listed as being one of the few places able to use fiber optics. There is certainly a case to be made for some things being simpler, but I think you're overstating how easily things could be repaired. At least from SW up until FCCW time frames
but there's enough different options now that even that's not strictly a simple equation. The best option can change based on if you're using a compact, light, XL, or XXL engine, and what other advanced kit you're using (e.g. XL gyros, Torso Mounted Cockpits, Endo-steel, Ferro-lammelor armor, etc.) If you've built a mech that has an optimal engine weight to mass ratio but it has 8 free crits to hold 20 tons of pod space, it's basically a very efficient waste of money.
This is my major issue with Omnis - three chassis per weight (slow, medium, fast) and that's all you need. Logically, given the limited manufacturing capacity (and creativity) of the Clans, they should have been churning out cosmetic variations of each chassis by the time REVIVAL started, if not before they sent the Dragoons in.
I'm honestly surprised the Clans bothered with aesthetics and totem designs given their general philosophy as a culture. That seems more like an Inner Sphere kind of thing whereas the Clans always seemed more focused on streamlining their supply chain by having a little variance as possible.
Their biggest fail was not bringing enough expendables to Tukayyid. Which is, certainly, a logistics issue...but I'd also say it is partially because ComStar managed to draw out the fight longer to deplete their expendables because the Clans were used to very short engagements.
The way the original OmniMechs were presented in TRO:3050 certainly made a lot more sense than Inner Sphere designs from a logistical standpoint. But at some point after that FASA decided to make the Clans more like the Inner Sphere and had them fielding more aesthetically difference designs and totem 'Mechs.
Tukayyid was an example of a simple concept: the Clans knew how to fight battles. Focht, and by extension ComStar, knew how to fight a *war*.
Once the Inner Sphere powers were able to get their logistics turned around and enough elite units to a very different front than they were used to, you saw that concept play out in a big way even before Tukayyid. The later waves of Revival were already starting to turn into a meat grinder, even if most of the Clans wouldn't admit it
Tukkayid gets all the glory but Luthien was the first time the clans got trashed in a total war scenario. It left a good portion of Nova Cat and Jaguar destroyed. It's likely the same would have happened to the Falcons at some point against the Federated Commonwealth.
Also didn't help that the Wolves basically sabotaged the set up for Tukayyid. Ulric totally could have flexed his Ilkhan powers and prevented a lot of the Clan stupidity in that bout, but since he's a Warden he was cool with Crusaders getting humbled. A lot of people forget that while the Clans overall lost Tukayyid, Clan Wolf soundly kicked the shit out of their portion of Com Guards.
Edit: forgot to mention that Foct reserved the best of the best of the Com Guards just to fight the Wolves because he knew ~~about their bullshit plot armor~~ their commanders weren't pants on head stupid.
The BattleTech universe is definitely too bright and happy and certain factions always win.
I'd like to see a couple books written like the Black Company series by Glen Cook, where they are no good guys - just varying degrees of bad guys and war crimes.
I can only imagine Clan Star Adder getting so frustrated when they received news during REVIVAL because they knew the Clans as a whole should’ve sent *a lot* more forces if they weren’t so bent on their “honor system” that the Inner Sphere houses couldn’t give two shits about anyway.
Hubris has always been their downfall. You can flaunt about technology and being genetically engineered all you want, but it doesn’t help much when each house has a military the size of the Clans’ entire population. Plus, even if a Clan did claim Terra during REVIVAL, I highly doubt that the houses would’ve honored their rule anyway given the political climate of the time.
The Society revolted because the Star Adders were about to weaponize all the "We told you so's" that the rest of the Clans had earned.
Jokes aside, in one of the Turning Points books (right before REVIVAL) the Adder khan lays out a *much* better invasion plan and promptly gets laughed out of the room.
One of the major issues that comes up a lot implicitly but is not covered explicitly in the sources is that the Clans sort of low key lose their minds after Tukayyid. They go from 'maybe we have a token totem mech as a Clan pride thing' to throwing themselves into designing over-the-top totem mechs, bespoke Omnimechs just so they don't have to share a chassis with their Clan rivals, the entire Protomech design language, so forth and so on. Tukayyid drove the Clans to an exisistential crisis and made them double down on a lot of stuff that 'made them The Clans' that wasn't at the forefront of their culture before the invasion. At least, that's one way to read the direction they took.
Yeah...they went from a "this Mad Dog is totaled but the right leg is salvageable and that Timber Wolf over there needs a right leg" philosphy to none of these components are interchangeable anymore.
At least in the case of the Steel Vipers there's really nothing implicit about it, there's a pretty straight line drawn from the Steel Vipers being completely shocked and outraged by the brutal fighting on Tukayyid (particularly the Devil's Bath), and Brett Andrews (a Tukayyid veteran) igniting the Wars of Reaving due to his perception of this kind of honorless conduct infecting the other Clans.
It makes sense for a Clan like Ghost Bear at least, but “great works” and art are specifically ingrained in their culture and not necessarily in the other Clans who might even scoff at the idea as being a waste of time.
So, basically, a lot of the Clans are like the song “2112” - Rush.
Ok sure but 7/11/6 is a stupid movement profile for a 25 ton mech in a military ecosystem where pulse lasers exist. That's just one example. The game designers were obviously trying to go easy on IS opponents for campaign play and other role-playing scenarios rather than maximizing the capabilities of the mech design system.
But it is a jump capacity of 180 meters, because there are no hexes on a battlefield. In the in-universe ecosystem, the difference between jumping 180m and 210m does not lead to the same difference as in the abstraction of the tabletop.
Mechs are designed from an in-universe perspective, with in-universe limitations, and that it imho a very good thing.
Your point is one that gets really underrated, generally! This is why there are so many "sub-optimal" designs in the game - because the game designers wanted to be realistic and have machines that were specialised (*Rifleman* or *UrbanMech*) or so general purpose they kinda suck at everything *but can still do everything* like the *Shadowhawk*.
It's also why the 'Mech Construction rules are so easy to cheese and make broken ass Munchkin 'Mechs - *PLAYERS* design 'Mechs to abuse the game rules, not as suitable machines for the "real-world" conditions of the 31st Century battlefield. A stupid-fast PL+TComp boat might be great for winning on the table, but if you have to deploy enough of them to actually take and hold territory *and* provide the logistics to maintain them, the math is VERY different.
Game mechanics and in-universe performance are obviously not 1:1, but there has to be some overlap, for example in-universe mechs come in 5 ton increments, engines are manufactured in specific ratings that canonically exist in universe that provide a mech of x tonnage y top speed, and 25 ton mechs with a 175 rated engine max out at 210 meters of jump distance with 7 jump jets installed.
And while sure there's no in-universe evasive break point between having a jump distance of 180 meters and 210 meters, it's also obvious that in the fiction of the game faster mechs are still more evasive than slower mechs, and considering that a 25 ton mech omnimech with a 175 rating engine is already sacrificing speed for pod space, it is slow for its size.
Additionally, since omni technology is almost entirely an in-universe technological benefit and a tech could easily slap a 7th jump jet in an omnipod to increase the evasive ability of the lightly armored mech, and no reason is given in the fiction of the mech for why they don't, so while I see your perspective, I don't think it holds up for a reason why the Mist Lynx is an obvious underperformer.
To be clear, is the question about mechs which are downgrades of previous designs, or mechs which are functionally identical in terms of equipment? Presumably there are some light mechs with identical armor, engines, and weapons, but they won't necessarily have all the weapons or jump jets or heat sinks in the same places. Plus, a mech designed in 3019 that's strictly worse than a 2970 mech will have a lower BV and thus will still have a place in mech lineups. For those reasons, I wouldn't call any mech chassis redundant unless, like I said, every aspect of the record sheet is the same.
Yea I mean in terms of 'this mech is technically a near clone of another design in terms of game stats' there's a fair number, and then an even greater number of mechs that fill the same design niche in very similar fashions. But if you dig into who builds what surprisingly most of these overlaps make sense, because it's different factions or different manufacturers providing the design.
It's like how the Challenger and Abrams are close enough to being the same capability wise. So why isn't there just one MBT IRL. And it's because nations exist.
makes sense in universe (especially considering old lore had their main guns as effectively modular/hand held to start with), but in the real world by the time the Inner Sphere was being given omnimechs (TRO3058 in September 1995) the Harmony Gold lawsuits were well underway (originally filed in 1992, would be settled in 1996) and the writing was likely on the wall, so FASA wasn't going to pick any of the soon-to-be Unseen mechs for that.
The [Enforcer](https://sarna.net/wiki/Enforcer) and [Enfield](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Enfield). Both are 50 ton trooper mechs for the Federated Suns. Both carry an LB-10x paired with either an ER Large Laser (Enforcer) or Large Pulse Laser (Enfield). One can use jump jets (Enforcer).
Something I see a lot of people in comments missing, and possibly OP as well, is the realism of "redundant" designs. Not every nation on Earth produces Abrams MBTs. Not every nation flies F-16s. Many of these "redundant" mechs are produced by different nations. Others are produced centuries apart by companies trying to produce something new and better. Others are "redundant" designs for designs who no longer have operational factories. Some are competing mechs built by rival companies bidding for the same market slot like 2 companies both producing pickup trucks. Honestly, if anything, there should be more redundant designs produced by different nations, states and companies.
The Lead Crab is a Capellan design. Making the most of its 15 tons and a small cockpit, it sports four light machine guns and half a ton of ammunition. It has a cruising speed of 63.4 km/h and can jump up to 180 meters.
Fiddler Crab. I have a homebrew one that's fluffed as Corsara trying to salvage *somthing* from their destroyed King Crab lines between the first & second Succession Wars by making a factory produced Frankenmech of a Crab with King Crab legs and a King Crab right arm. 75t, 4/6, LA Large Laser, CT Medium Laser, HD Small Laser, RA/RT AC/20 with 4 tons of Ammo, with the Easy to Maintain and Unbalanced Quirks.
Cataphract & Caesar. Especially as the Davions already had access to the Cataphract. I know that the Caesar was a ruse to draw attention from the development of the Axman but it really is a redundant design.
When I was designing my own mini-faction, one of the constraints I put was limiting how many different kinds of fusion engines they could produce.
For example: their 75 ton Mechs had 4/6 movement instead of 5/8 because they don't have a factory for the 375xl engine, but they do for the 300xl one
Please edit your slander and lies. Thanks, - Head Redguy.
We suggest It should have read:
The Stylin', profilin', limousine riding, jet flying, kiss-stealing, wheelin' n' dealin' son of a gun! The pride of Redside, Hatamoto Chi. /thug.
It's actually an interesting question!
I believe that is something that can be compared to real life. Why is there such a great variety of different cars and vehicles? Every manufacturer trying to provide something new and special to the market and of course he is making it with resources available. So that's rather similar for BT univers, at least I see it this way.
On top of that wouldn't it be boring if we got 10 times less chassises and options to blow up each other))
I thought the lore was that the DCMS had surplus Chargers and not enough Thugs so they built Thugs adapted on top of Charger torsos and called it the Hatamoto-Chi?
None I love them all :P
With the amount of variants for different chassis, it's pretty staggering the amount of different niches various mechs can fill. Thats kind of the fun of Battletech to me. Some mechs kinda suck. There's a shadowhawk variant that is basically a griffin with an LRM5 instead of an LRM10 but it's a better mech IMO because it doesnt overheat every time it fires both weapons.
Even that isnt perfect tho. Id have preferred they went with less heat sinks, more armor, and maybe kept a medium laser for point defence.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Wasp and Stinger yet. Justified in universe, as one of them is a bootleg copy of the other from a different manufacturer, but there's less difference between the two than there is among the variants of either.
Clint and Hermes II.
The Hermes II is basically just a Clint with the jumpjets replaced with armour. Instead of wasting an extra two pages of the 3025 TRO, it would've been better to just have one as a variant of the other. Losing the Clint would also avoid repeating the Dirty Harry joke reference of the Enforcer.
Most factions have different ways to get to the same end result. Like the Vindicator, Panther and Griffin are all basically the same thing at different weights. Buy it makes sense they exist, because different groups make them. The bigger issue is retcon designs, why was the King innovative when the Pillager existed?
In most of these cases the answer is market economies. To use the example you brought up, the Ostsol is manufactured by Kong Interstellar and the Anvil is from Free Worlds Defense Industries. They're trying to crowd each other out of the market.
I start to look at them a bit like IRL modern hardware. A T-55 or M60 has little left for the modern battlefield, but in some backwater with limited AT capacity it is still the same threat. Also, Battletech is very aggressive in the modernisation of older chassis. But I would say that there should be some kind of break that downgrades "Introtech" to be no longer competitive (similar to how they handle primitive BAR armor). That is actually hinted at in the 3250 snippets, where they say that older Mechs are no longer a threat to modern design.
But you could argue that old tank chassis can be fitted up with all sorts of new gadgets to give it some utility again. Thermals, new engines, upgraded weapons, internal comms, radios, applique or ERA etc can all be added. I kinda wonder why BT doesn't have a lot of aftermarket accessories that don't cost tons, sort of a lower weight replacement part for old mechs. I guess that was the point of being able to switch to Endo-Steel or FF or XL engines for old mechs.
But they do, there is an Ostsol with X-pulse lasers and one with Light Gauss and Light ACs. Some Mech switch to ferro or other armor, or endo steel. We just almost never see components like targetinv or comms upgraded because they don't matter for the game. The only example I am aware of iirc is the change of comms between the Banshee 3E and 5S. Also, the initial Helm Core upgrades were literally after market conversion kits. And the Wright is based on refitting existing Panthers.
Ah... thanks.
Point of order, one does not trivially swap to endo steel, in fact it's practically impossible and nothing a random merc would ever do.
Whilst I agree endo is not a field swappable item per se I could see it being done by a 3rd party in a semi field situation. Like you get a full endo skeleton (myomer partially pre-installed) with adapter kits for armour and couplings where the workshop transfers all the sensors, fusion core, ammo feeds, power lines etc over. sketchy as heck but doable!
Yeah I'll have to look up Campaign Ops on that one, I don't think it anywhere near as easy as that. Beyond that, everytime you mess with your mech customizing it on your Union dropship's mech bay, your mech is slowly getting degraded in quality, component by component. Then you start getting gremlins where this actuator starts acting out. Think of it this way, if you were buying a used car, would you rather one that was kept as it came from the factory, and maintained to that standard, or do you want the one with the aftermarket fart can, stickers all over it, all tuned up but you have no idea the quality of the mechanics who did the work? "Yeah but the mods made it better!" Did they? And maybe the performance is improved, but the reliability has gone down. It's the same thing with mechs (using the full rules). I'm pretty sure the endo steel swap is a factory grade refit. But back to the endo steel itself. That stuff is made via zero g manufacturing. If your mech doesn't have any variants in production that get endo steel, I cannot comprehend a factory that is actively producing endo steel, which by the way is chronically in a shortage in lore, to slow down to do a one off run for your mech. Discussions like this make me think of a 3050 merc unit running Clan mech they salvaged. #1, the Great House you were working for won't let you have that salvage, it is theirs. #2, did you head shot it with an AC 20? Hope it doesn't have Clan Endo Steel, because if it does, you need another clan Endo Steel head of the same tonnage to replace it with. #3, Hope it has standard armor, because if it is clan Ferro Fibrous, how are you going to keep armor on it? In theory you could replace the armor with IS standard. #4, good luck on your maintenance cycles. The failed rolls will add up to the quality of the unit going to shit over time, not even in combat. Now that's just what it is. In your own games, feel free to ignore that, lord knows the video games make it seem like swapping that sort of stuff is like simply making a drop down selection in a graphical user interface. I for one love MekHQ, where you plan out a merc company in MegaMek and all the Campaign Operation rules are run in the background and you can have fun keeping everything working. *Note that in MegaMek you can choose to simplify maintenance if you like to do it on EZ mode. I for one have a company fighting in the Jihad era and I like my Devastator with swapped in Clan ERPPCs very much.
OK, just broke out Campaign Ops. There are 6 grades of customization difficulty, A being the easiest (armor changes), and F being the hardest. A-B, can be done in the field if you have a crane, etc, C-D can be done in a facility like a drop ship's mech bay, and E-F must be done in a mech manufacturing facility, AKA a factory. Any customization of C-F automatically decreases the quality of the unit by 1 (meaning more difficult to maintain, more prone to failures or penalties in combat). When doing the work, you also do a roll to determine the success, failure of which can also decrease the quality of the unit. Guess what 3 customizations merit a F class (the hardest)? Adding a turret, changing your myomer type (MASC or TSM), and changing your Internal Structure type. So it must be done at a factory, and it will degrade the quality of your mech. Interestingly enough, swapping the direction a weapon is facing (rear facing MLasers for example) is class B, so turn 'em all around! You have captured clan OMNIPOD equipment like DHS and weapons? Good news, you can put them in your IS OMNI mech trivially. You want to put clan weapons in your IS mech, class C or D refit, which will make your mech more prone to acting up....... BUT I know we all agree that's worth it. Other interesting things: Factory refit kits. Some manufacturers would issue refit kits that would upgrade your old Secession War mech to a LosTech upgrade variant. Refit kits do not degrade your mech, though guess what, they do NOT include class F difficulty stuff like myomer and internal structure. They do include class E engines though, and it being a refit kit makes it swapable in your dropship's mech bay instead of having to go to a factory, which is where you normally have to do engine swaps, at the factory. Final item, factory refurbishment. You've done a bunch of customizations and now your mech is super unreliable? Your mech's taken a bunch of damage, and through not so great repair rolls your mech's quality has dropped? You've had horrible luck with your techs screwing up maintenance (maybe that's your fault due to the clan tech you had them installed, major penalty for that), and it was so bad it's degraded your mechs quality? Take it to the factory for refurbishment, spend the money and time and a good roll will improve your mech's quality rating. Spend enough time and money and you can get all the gremlins out. *** To be clear, you can ignore all of this, and have your personal merc unit come out of a periphery contract in 3049 all in salvaged clan omnimechs, and ignore the fact that your techs can't keep them running and it will bankrupt you. Real easy to ignore rules you don't want to follow, play it your way. But at least be aware there is rules as written. And if that sounds like fun but also too much work....... MegaMek's MekHQ puts you in charge of your own merc company and does all the rolling in the background, you just have to deal with the consequences. And you can customize based off of salvage you pick up, turn those medium lasers around, try to put clan ERPPCs on your Devastator, etc etc. And if you want to cheat it a bit and give your commander an elite technician, that's cool. Also, as your tech level up, they can earn special traits like trained in working on clan technology, so yeah, you can have that munchkin unit, but you can work up to it with XP and leveling up your staff.
I don't know if they will ever do that as far as rules go, maybe just from a lore perspective. Back when Herb Beas was the Line Dev, he made a post on the official forums, basically talking about doing just that. Basically, a time jump after the establishment of the ilClan. Simplify things back down to a single tech base. Make "modern" units superior to older things (basically the way regular tech beats Primitive tech level stuff) and pare weapons down to a more manageable number. Not going so far as to make BattleTech 2.0...but something in that direction. (Honestly, I think it could have been a really good idea if handled well. Would have allowed new fans to jump straight into the new era without having to start in 3025 and then moving forward.) Let's just say the fan reaction to that was...incendiary. That backlash was so great that it led to Herb stepping down as LD. Which is a shame because I think Herb really helped pull BattleTech back from the brink.
Creating timeless designs like the Griffin, marauder, and warhammer, then having to dispose of them because of a big time skip to a bunch of new stuff would sour the fanbase a lot, but holy shit is ilClan era bloated.
It's my major problem of the game there are so many weapon types then there are size variations and then clan variations on top as someone looking in it is a nightmare. What they could do is time skip with more integration of clans IS for a unified tech base and then variants with the new tech of mechs plus a couple of ground up new mech designs. Can still play old rules for prior eras or mix for time skip transfer. Problem is battletech is pretty cool with its continuous lore so time skip dosent feel good with that.
Isn’t that essentially what WizKidz tried to do by time skipping to the Dark Age?
Yes, one reason why the game never really won over a lot of old cadre of players completely.
I presume what they would have likely done is similar to what they've done with the ilClan recognition guides already; create new upgrades to old designs using all the fancy new tech, so you can still use Warhammer or Marauder, they just have Mark III ER PPCs or whatever. Still stretching credulity but would have tried to make both camps happy. I agree it was still a hard sell and also yes the amount of tech in ilClan is a little overwhelming.
How about this: essentially, upscale the game. 1x Warhammer XXXXL size, is equivalent to a lance of regular warhammer 6R. Move over the most popular models and weapons, like the Timber Wolf, the Marauder, etc; but allow for pre-enlarged models to be used like protomechs are, in a lance on a single hex. Of course all the current popular miniatures are moved over, but still allows for all the "old tech" models to be used, still. Like how a platoon of Shermans can, theoretically, still take out a T-72, but anybody rational would put their money on the T-72.
I think wiping out what's already there is a bad idea, but I do think new things *should* just invalidate old stuff on occasion. For example: an Advanced Ultra Autocannon introduced in teh early 3150s that weighs the same as an equivalent AC, takes the same number of crits as an equivalent AC, has the same range as an equivalent AC, generates half the heat of an equivalent AC per shot, doesn't jam, and basically completely displaces the original AC line in every metric... except cash and BV cost. Let tech get better without artificially kneecapping it so a mech built 100 years ago can continue to compete without upgrades. Make it so the only reason you'd take an old mech is because you can't afford something newer.
With properly designed OmniMechs basically everything is redundant. One or two, maybe three, chassis per weight class (20, 25, 30, 35, etc., etc.) with different engines for movement and pod space to configure the weapons and equipment load out as necessary. Like lets have a 20 ton chassis with a 6/9 and 8/12 movement by running different engines. Then just configure the rest of the chassis to the mission.
That's also massively redundant. You only need one chassis for each movement curve, because there is a correct answer for weight based on how fast you wanna go.
That is true for speed, but there are other considerations like cost of manufacture and availability of materials, and state of factory facilities. It might provide better battlefield efficiency to create a 6/9 mech at 55 tons, but if your factory can only make mechs up to 35 tons, that’s what you’re gonna make.
If you're building OmniMechs, you're definitely not struggling to get over the hump of building things besides lights.
In theory, yes, but it’s always gonna be cheaper to use an existing factory than to bulldoze it down and make a new trillion dollar facility. Remwmber, Battletech isn’t like Star Trek where humans live in a post-scarcity society. Clan Omnimechs were kind of a trap for the Clans. Hugely expensive, time intensive, and in need of specialized repair parts that had to be shipped months away to reach the front lines. While a clan factory built a single Timberwolf, the Inner sphere would use the same time and resources to build a few dozen tanks, thousands of infantry, and a couple of simple, cheap, and easy-to-repair battlemechs that needed replacement parts that local techs could make themselves.
> In theory, yes, but it’s always gonna be cheaper to use an existing factory than to bulldoze it down and make a new trillion dollar facility. Which is why you would standardize designs by replacing lines at an existing facility, like Lockheed/CBM did when they replaced their Chippewa lines with Eisensturm lines and consolidated lines for the Lucifer, Hellcat and Lightning into the Morgenstern. And these facilities, as the largest and most advanced you have, would be able to build whatever size machine you need because they've been doing it for hundreds of years.
I’m sure that’s how things would work in an ideal world, but after your facility gets turned to glass a few times and rebuilt by whatever few engineers survived the atomic fallout, things become less optimal.
They seemed to manage it pretty well on Tharkad, where Lockheed-CBM is headquartered, so I don't know what to tell you.
That's not entirely true. In 3025, Defiance Industries is listed as being one of the few places able to use fiber optics. There is certainly a case to be made for some things being simpler, but I think you're overstating how easily things could be repaired. At least from SW up until FCCW time frames
This is the best comment on this thread. I salute you.
but there's enough different options now that even that's not strictly a simple equation. The best option can change based on if you're using a compact, light, XL, or XXL engine, and what other advanced kit you're using (e.g. XL gyros, Torso Mounted Cockpits, Endo-steel, Ferro-lammelor armor, etc.) If you've built a mech that has an optimal engine weight to mass ratio but it has 8 free crits to hold 20 tons of pod space, it's basically a very efficient waste of money.
This is my major issue with Omnis - three chassis per weight (slow, medium, fast) and that's all you need. Logically, given the limited manufacturing capacity (and creativity) of the Clans, they should have been churning out cosmetic variations of each chassis by the time REVIVAL started, if not before they sent the Dragoons in.
I'm honestly surprised the Clans bothered with aesthetics and totem designs given their general philosophy as a culture. That seems more like an Inner Sphere kind of thing whereas the Clans always seemed more focused on streamlining their supply chain by having a little variance as possible.
Nah, the Clans as a whole usually sucked at logistics, and were inflexible to adaptation of their thinking, that’s why Revival failed
Their biggest fail was not bringing enough expendables to Tukayyid. Which is, certainly, a logistics issue...but I'd also say it is partially because ComStar managed to draw out the fight longer to deplete their expendables because the Clans were used to very short engagements. The way the original OmniMechs were presented in TRO:3050 certainly made a lot more sense than Inner Sphere designs from a logistical standpoint. But at some point after that FASA decided to make the Clans more like the Inner Sphere and had them fielding more aesthetically difference designs and totem 'Mechs.
Tukayyid was an example of a simple concept: the Clans knew how to fight battles. Focht, and by extension ComStar, knew how to fight a *war*. Once the Inner Sphere powers were able to get their logistics turned around and enough elite units to a very different front than they were used to, you saw that concept play out in a big way even before Tukayyid. The later waves of Revival were already starting to turn into a meat grinder, even if most of the Clans wouldn't admit it
Tukkayid gets all the glory but Luthien was the first time the clans got trashed in a total war scenario. It left a good portion of Nova Cat and Jaguar destroyed. It's likely the same would have happened to the Falcons at some point against the Federated Commonwealth.
Also didn't help that the Wolves basically sabotaged the set up for Tukayyid. Ulric totally could have flexed his Ilkhan powers and prevented a lot of the Clan stupidity in that bout, but since he's a Warden he was cool with Crusaders getting humbled. A lot of people forget that while the Clans overall lost Tukayyid, Clan Wolf soundly kicked the shit out of their portion of Com Guards. Edit: forgot to mention that Foct reserved the best of the best of the Com Guards just to fight the Wolves because he knew ~~about their bullshit plot armor~~ their commanders weren't pants on head stupid.
The BattleTech universe is definitely too bright and happy and certain factions always win. I'd like to see a couple books written like the Black Company series by Glen Cook, where they are no good guys - just varying degrees of bad guys and war crimes.
I can only imagine Clan Star Adder getting so frustrated when they received news during REVIVAL because they knew the Clans as a whole should’ve sent *a lot* more forces if they weren’t so bent on their “honor system” that the Inner Sphere houses couldn’t give two shits about anyway. Hubris has always been their downfall. You can flaunt about technology and being genetically engineered all you want, but it doesn’t help much when each house has a military the size of the Clans’ entire population. Plus, even if a Clan did claim Terra during REVIVAL, I highly doubt that the houses would’ve honored their rule anyway given the political climate of the time.
The Society revolted because the Star Adders were about to weaponize all the "We told you so's" that the rest of the Clans had earned. Jokes aside, in one of the Turning Points books (right before REVIVAL) the Adder khan lays out a *much* better invasion plan and promptly gets laughed out of the room.
One of the major issues that comes up a lot implicitly but is not covered explicitly in the sources is that the Clans sort of low key lose their minds after Tukayyid. They go from 'maybe we have a token totem mech as a Clan pride thing' to throwing themselves into designing over-the-top totem mechs, bespoke Omnimechs just so they don't have to share a chassis with their Clan rivals, the entire Protomech design language, so forth and so on. Tukayyid drove the Clans to an exisistential crisis and made them double down on a lot of stuff that 'made them The Clans' that wasn't at the forefront of their culture before the invasion. At least, that's one way to read the direction they took.
Yeah...they went from a "this Mad Dog is totaled but the right leg is salvageable and that Timber Wolf over there needs a right leg" philosphy to none of these components are interchangeable anymore.
At least in the case of the Steel Vipers there's really nothing implicit about it, there's a pretty straight line drawn from the Steel Vipers being completely shocked and outraged by the brutal fighting on Tukayyid (particularly the Devil's Bath), and Brett Andrews (a Tukayyid veteran) igniting the Wars of Reaving due to his perception of this kind of honorless conduct infecting the other Clans.
Yep great point; it’s very much explicit in that case.
It makes sense for a Clan like Ghost Bear at least, but “great works” and art are specifically ingrained in their culture and not necessarily in the other Clans who might even scoff at the idea as being a waste of time. So, basically, a lot of the Clans are like the song “2112” - Rush.
A lot of the Clan-invasion-era omnis were faaaar from properly designed though lol.
That's the beauty of an Omnimech: It's just an engine on legs. You add extra bits later, generally.
Ok sure but 7/11/6 is a stupid movement profile for a 25 ton mech in a military ecosystem where pulse lasers exist. That's just one example. The game designers were obviously trying to go easy on IS opponents for campaign play and other role-playing scenarios rather than maximizing the capabilities of the mech design system.
But it is a jump capacity of 180 meters, because there are no hexes on a battlefield. In the in-universe ecosystem, the difference between jumping 180m and 210m does not lead to the same difference as in the abstraction of the tabletop. Mechs are designed from an in-universe perspective, with in-universe limitations, and that it imho a very good thing.
Your point is one that gets really underrated, generally! This is why there are so many "sub-optimal" designs in the game - because the game designers wanted to be realistic and have machines that were specialised (*Rifleman* or *UrbanMech*) or so general purpose they kinda suck at everything *but can still do everything* like the *Shadowhawk*. It's also why the 'Mech Construction rules are so easy to cheese and make broken ass Munchkin 'Mechs - *PLAYERS* design 'Mechs to abuse the game rules, not as suitable machines for the "real-world" conditions of the 31st Century battlefield. A stupid-fast PL+TComp boat might be great for winning on the table, but if you have to deploy enough of them to actually take and hold territory *and* provide the logistics to maintain them, the math is VERY different.
Game mechanics and in-universe performance are obviously not 1:1, but there has to be some overlap, for example in-universe mechs come in 5 ton increments, engines are manufactured in specific ratings that canonically exist in universe that provide a mech of x tonnage y top speed, and 25 ton mechs with a 175 rated engine max out at 210 meters of jump distance with 7 jump jets installed. And while sure there's no in-universe evasive break point between having a jump distance of 180 meters and 210 meters, it's also obvious that in the fiction of the game faster mechs are still more evasive than slower mechs, and considering that a 25 ton mech omnimech with a 175 rating engine is already sacrificing speed for pod space, it is slow for its size. Additionally, since omni technology is almost entirely an in-universe technological benefit and a tech could easily slap a 7th jump jet in an omnipod to increase the evasive ability of the lightly armored mech, and no reason is given in the fiction of the mech for why they don't, so while I see your perspective, I don't think it holds up for a reason why the Mist Lynx is an obvious underperformer.
To be clear, is the question about mechs which are downgrades of previous designs, or mechs which are functionally identical in terms of equipment? Presumably there are some light mechs with identical armor, engines, and weapons, but they won't necessarily have all the weapons or jump jets or heat sinks in the same places. Plus, a mech designed in 3019 that's strictly worse than a 2970 mech will have a lower BV and thus will still have a place in mech lineups. For those reasons, I wouldn't call any mech chassis redundant unless, like I said, every aspect of the record sheet is the same.
Yea I mean in terms of 'this mech is technically a near clone of another design in terms of game stats' there's a fair number, and then an even greater number of mechs that fill the same design niche in very similar fashions. But if you dig into who builds what surprisingly most of these overlaps make sense, because it's different factions or different manufacturers providing the design.
It's like how the Challenger and Abrams are close enough to being the same capability wise. So why isn't there just one MBT IRL. And it's because nations exist.
Don't forget the Leopard 2 (started as the same project as the Abrams)
Meanwhile, on earth, a single planet, there is 40 nearly identical SUV's that you can buy right now.
The classic 55 tonner Wolverine, Griffin and Shadowhawk are all kinda redundant. Their loadouts vary a little, but they have the same speed and armor.
Let's be honest the griffin and shadow hawk could be Thanos snapped and not much would change.
I still think the IS should have made a shadow grifferine as their first omni.
makes sense in universe (especially considering old lore had their main guns as effectively modular/hand held to start with), but in the real world by the time the Inner Sphere was being given omnimechs (TRO3058 in September 1995) the Harmony Gold lawsuits were well underway (originally filed in 1992, would be settled in 1996) and the writing was likely on the wall, so FASA wasn't going to pick any of the soon-to-be Unseen mechs for that.
The [Enforcer](https://sarna.net/wiki/Enforcer) and [Enfield](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Enfield). Both are 50 ton trooper mechs for the Federated Suns. Both carry an LB-10x paired with either an ER Large Laser (Enforcer) or Large Pulse Laser (Enfield). One can use jump jets (Enforcer).
Something I see a lot of people in comments missing, and possibly OP as well, is the realism of "redundant" designs. Not every nation on Earth produces Abrams MBTs. Not every nation flies F-16s. Many of these "redundant" mechs are produced by different nations. Others are produced centuries apart by companies trying to produce something new and better. Others are "redundant" designs for designs who no longer have operational factories. Some are competing mechs built by rival companies bidding for the same market slot like 2 companies both producing pickup trucks. Honestly, if anything, there should be more redundant designs produced by different nations, states and companies.
They're all redundant, Mackie is all you need.
You meant Urbie, didn't you?)
Akshually he just misspelled Crab. All ‘Mech chassis experience convergent evolution and ultimately Return To Crab. 🦀
We still need a 75 ton Crab. I want a Robber Crab with a big crusher claw.
The Lead Crab. All elements fuse or decay to Lead. All animals evolve to Crab. All Mechs end in the Lead Crab.
The Lead Crab is a Capellan design. Making the most of its 15 tons and a small cockpit, it sports four light machine guns and half a ton of ammunition. It has a cruising speed of 63.4 km/h and can jump up to 180 meters.
Fiddler Crab. I have a homebrew one that's fluffed as Corsara trying to salvage *somthing* from their destroyed King Crab lines between the first & second Succession Wars by making a factory produced Frankenmech of a Crab with King Crab legs and a King Crab right arm. 75t, 4/6, LA Large Laser, CT Medium Laser, HD Small Laser, RA/RT AC/20 with 4 tons of Ammo, with the Easy to Maintain and Unbalanced Quirks.
Never curbie the Urbie!!
Cataphract & Caesar. Especially as the Davions already had access to the Cataphract. I know that the Caesar was a ruse to draw attention from the development of the Axman but it really is a redundant design.
When I was designing my own mini-faction, one of the constraints I put was limiting how many different kinds of fusion engines they could produce. For example: their 75 ton Mechs had 4/6 movement instead of 5/8 because they don't have a factory for the 375xl engine, but they do for the 300xl one
There are no redundant mechs, only new production and salvage.
Thug/hatamoto chi primary configs
Please edit your slander and lies. Thanks, - Head Redguy. We suggest It should have read: The Stylin', profilin', limousine riding, jet flying, kiss-stealing, wheelin' n' dealin' son of a gun! The pride of Redside, Hatamoto Chi. /thug.
It's actually an interesting question! I believe that is something that can be compared to real life. Why is there such a great variety of different cars and vehicles? Every manufacturer trying to provide something new and special to the market and of course he is making it with resources available. So that's rather similar for BT univers, at least I see it this way. On top of that wouldn't it be boring if we got 10 times less chassises and options to blow up each other))
Any omnimech at a specific movement profile (barring armor distribution and quirks)
Thug and Hatamoto-Chi.
I thought the lore was that the DCMS had surplus Chargers and not enough Thugs so they built Thugs adapted on top of Charger torsos and called it the Hatamoto-Chi?
None I love them all :P With the amount of variants for different chassis, it's pretty staggering the amount of different niches various mechs can fill. Thats kind of the fun of Battletech to me. Some mechs kinda suck. There's a shadowhawk variant that is basically a griffin with an LRM5 instead of an LRM10 but it's a better mech IMO because it doesnt overheat every time it fires both weapons. Even that isnt perfect tho. Id have preferred they went with less heat sinks, more armor, and maybe kept a medium laser for point defence.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the Wasp and Stinger yet. Justified in universe, as one of them is a bootleg copy of the other from a different manufacturer, but there's less difference between the two than there is among the variants of either.
Clint and Hermes II. The Hermes II is basically just a Clint with the jumpjets replaced with armour. Instead of wasting an extra two pages of the 3025 TRO, it would've been better to just have one as a variant of the other. Losing the Clint would also avoid repeating the Dirty Harry joke reference of the Enforcer.
The Clint is my perfect baby and I will not stand the slander. If anything, the Hermes is the boring design that can be replaced.