BattleMech Generations

Fucking Hammerhands.

So during Battletech's Jihad, the Word of Blake was everywhere with fancy, experimental tech. They bombed shit and disrupted supply lines and fucked with interstellar communications and shit was fucky. I still don't think we have a clear, consolidated sourcebook for the whole fiasco. The Jihad-era sourcebooks are all filled with in-character snippets of intelligence reports, news articles, and rumors. You didn't really know what was happening. Not even when it was all over.

In the midst of this, Catalyst Game Labs needed to sell a TRO. TROs move units. I used some just this past weekend to hook some folks into the game. They have bite-sized lore, compelling stats, and pictures that are cool to look at. I have my issues with TROs, but they're great. 

So in the chaos of the Jihad, folks were short in logistical supplies and made whatever military gear they could to thwart the WoB. Fair enough.

Here's what I do not fucking get. Someone made the Hammerhands. They didn't create it. The Hammerhands was created over 500 years before the Jihad. It was one of the Federated Suns' first 'mechs. It was eclipsed by the Warhammer, and people kept making Warhammers for FIVE CENTURIES.

Look guys, I don't love the Warhammer. I think it's subpar and undersinked. It's not terrible, but it's no Thug. But they should make more Warhammers. If they don't have the PPCs for a Warhammer, they should make a Warhammer with autocannons. They made the -8M, which carries a gauss rifle. They've stretched the definition of 'mechs defined by their weirdness--the 4/6 Charger, the PPC Catapult, the LRM Hunchback--so it makes little sense that they wouldn't just make a ballistic Warhammer.

Why would you make a factory--a rare and critical piece of infrastructure in BattleTech--that produces a Hammerhands? An ancient relic that's not designed for a modern world, which hasn't been produced in half-a-millennia, and which no pilot is familiar with? Why would you not create a tested, modern chassis, with generations of refinement in its production process, albeit with downgraded weapons? That's a key feature of the Succession Wars.

Someone said that it was because factories were easier to produce in the pre-Jihad eras. While the technology to make factories was rare in the Succession Wars, it was more common during the Clan Invasion Era (I refuse to acknowledge the FCCW as an era of its own). So you could make old factories that made fucking bullshit for your mechwarriors to die in.

That's not even my main point today. My main point is: 

Why Is The Hammerhands A Viable Modern Weapon?

Seriously. Why can it hang toe to toe with a modern-day Marauder? It was designed in 2475. The Jihad took place in the 3070's.

Sure, the Succession Wars below the Inner Sphere back to the stone age. I get it. Sure, the magical technologies which made 'mechs work were understood by few enough people that they died during the Succession Wars and black box factories churned out 'mechs--

 --well, downgraded 'mechs. Which is something that dirt poor mercenary units could do and which regular units did during the Succession Wars. So someone downgraded all of the 'mechs from a lack of supplies and then made the factories make worse versions of them and then died like the animator from Monty Python's Holy Grail. Okay.

Let's assume a gamma-based and columnated laser-based brain drain happened from 2780 until the 3020's (plus ComStar fuckery). That's still 305 years of technological advancement from 2475 to 2780, plus another 50 from 3020 to 3070. And none of that 355 years made the Hammerhands obsolete?

I'm not talking about standard AC/10's, which are the least obsolete of an obsolete class of weapons, but structurally. Physically. Electronically. No improvements? 

Legacies

Maybe production improved. Maybe those factors I bitched about improved to the point where you could shove an LBX AC/10 into a 'mech and have it work. Or you could swap PPCs out for Plasma Cannons or Machine Guns out for Light Gauss Rifles. Maybe. 

Look at the Woodsman. 1st Generation Clan Omnimech. It was allegedly tested to Hell and back and used as the basis for three more 'mechs. The kinks got worked out and they built specialized 'mechs based off of its chassis.

So why isn't every 'mech a refinement of an earlier model?

Obviously, it's because this is all fluff and the construction rules for 'mechs apply to units from the Age of War all the way up to the ilClan Era. And Catalyst did create rules for primitive weapons and armor in Strategic Operations. 

I don't expect them to make rules for legacy 'mechs, both the generational improvements in certain chassis and the advantages afforded by new chassis. 

Quirkyyy!

There has to be a reason to refine older concepts and to create new chassis. My answer would be that chassis can be refined to a certain point, but will still have intractable flaws. New 'mechs will be able to ignore those flaws, but have shortcomings of their own.

It turns out that Classic BattleTech has a system for this already. They're called Quirks.

Quirks are an optional rule to represent qualtiies of mechs--some mentioned in canon and some not--that aren't represented byt he construction rules. If you remember the World of Darkness' old merits and flaws system. It's that.

I don't like quirks. If you can't do it with 0.25 tons and regular old construction rules, then don't do it. That said, there's only so much math you can do. The systems are, reasonably, abstracted below a certain point and quirks give you unique options in that subbasement full of fractions.

So quirks are a good system. A person asked for one all-around 'mech to support a vehicle and infantry force and I paged through the Succession War TRO and found a lot of 5/8/5 medium 'mechs with a big gun (PPC, AC/5, or Lg Laser) and some missiles (SRM 6, LRM 10).

Some had more medium lasers or fewer. Plus or minus some jump jets or armor. But like the lineup of gay tictok thirst traps, it's samey as fuck. Having quirks could distinguish a crowded field of 'mechs that's constantly getting filled with more mechs. 

It's a Red Queen scenario where additional options for 'mechs--wether they're quirks or those shitty RE-lasers--have to be introduced at a rate that allows the spigot of more canon 'mechs to be kept wide open.

The Belated Point

So my system for new 'mechs going forward is that new 'mechs have a number of starting quirks based on the type of design they are. Maybe they're just a variant. Maybe they're an overhaul or next generation version of an existing 'mech. Both of those two will have the intractable flaws of the 'mech they are based on, but the next gen version will improve the design.

Maybe it's a new 'mech built from the ground up. It will have more problems generally, but it will have a new intractable flaw that maybe works better for your purposes. Besides, subsequent versions of it will out those other problems in time.

Finally, there's the revolutionary design. I've added this one basically for fluff reasons. It's a quantum leap in 'mech design usually designed to host a new (or house-created) technology and it flies in the face of  existing design conventions. It, too, will become better over subsequent revisions. 

Every 'mech will always keep its intractable flaws, but they can get better despite that.

This has gone on for way too long so I guess we're going to have "BattleMech Generations , Pt II" with explicit rules, an example, and some original quirks.