Some absolute wholesome, Terra united in celebration. But just like the Star League, in the Golden Age, nothing good lasts forever... Hope you're doing well today Sven!
The success of the Deimos Project might have temporarily distracted everyone from the growing problems on Earth, but pretty soon they're going to be reminded of how bad things are becoming and looking for a way to escape the planet.
Quite some time ago, I was inspired by Battletech to start conceptualizing a strategy game that would involve similar pseudo-feudal politics in space, just even more fragmented, to really focus on that aspect. But over time I've increasingly been pondering the logistics of the whole thing, of first humanity colonizing so widely, but then collapsing to much smaller polities. I think that has big potential to be an entire phase of its own in the game, turning it into a whole big simulation of all the logistics of space travel and colonization, as well as of the politics and technology required to make it all possible. So coming back to Battletech, and finding out that it's got even more to offer in this regard as well, is honestly really satisfying.
It is interesting how many problems the Alliance had right from the beginning, although my reading of it is that the conflict is stemming less from nationalism and more from with inequality.
I didn't really go into detail on that but it was a group of anti-Alliance Americans who worked in the aerospace industry. It was their company which was building the probes. Magellan-6 had a bunch of modifications made to it in secret to accommodate such a long voyage.
Well I'm pleased to have evoked such emotion with one of my videos. Sadly, this historic event did not bring an end to Earth's troubles. The 22nd Century saw so much progress, but so many of the same problems persisted.
Great project you are building Sven. Very happy the Terran Alliance is getting the spotlight. After all, it the litteral roots of everything that came after - the genesis of the Inner Sphere.
It's interesting how many problems the Terran Alliance was plagued with throughout it's history, but on the rare occasion someone does reflect on the discovery of FTL technology, it's always looked on positively with no mention of all the people who were starving so that the project could go ahead.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Kind of reminds me of what I remember reading in the Homeworld manual years ago, about how all the major Kiith on world quite literally doomed themselves in terms of natural resources and material to build just the Scaffold that would later on hold the Mothership. It got to the point where even if the Mothership worked perfectly and the mission to find Hiigara went without issue, Kharak would likely starve to death in a matter of decades afterword. Ironically, that would not come to pass anyways for obvious reasons. Granted this was of course once the major players all realized the shocking realization that Kharak was not their home and they were simply living on an alien world for 1300 years, so that venture had at least a strong universal impetus that everyone felt inclined to submit to, though from what I remember this same event in Homeworld's timeline had similar dilemmas at play when the matter of specifically who made greater sacrifices to make that happen at all. It's very likely that the Kushan would have had the same levels of unrest and even downright rebellion had that same drive to find their real home had not been so equally compelling to so many of them.
The richest countries in the Terran Alliance forcing the poorest to pay for the Deimos project while ALSO exporting food from those countries in such quantities as to cause food riots: That's some Classic Imperialism *chef's kiss*
The stowaways actually surviving and managing to establish a colony of their own is worthy of mention, i love the history pre-unification & succession wars because it fleshes out my understanding on how BT universe started, not just it being a war with regular and mechanized warfare, i hope post succession wars (clan wars, the clans are explained too!) Ty sven
I'll definitely get to the Clan Invasion eventually. I mentioned this in another comment, but the"stowaways" were actually employees of the aerospace company who built the probes. They had made significant alterations to transform it into a more suitable transport. Still pretty remarkable they survived not just the journey, but all the way to 2850 when they were rediscovered by ComStar.
This is really great. Amazing presentation as always, but also its really nice to see how the lore has so many interesting intrincacies. It does feel like human history, with constant attempts to improve but also constantly stumbling on the same old issues.
Excellent work Sven! My apologies for getting to this 18 hours late. I had two emergency jobs in my shop and I've been out there till midnight the last two nights to push them out. Very well done!
Well done! Format, pics, explanations! Sven knocked out of the park! I really like how you present BT fictional History! It all seems possible.( at this point IRL) "Wheel within wheels in a spiral array A pattern so grand and complex Time after time we lose sight of the way Our causes can't see their effects." "A quantum leap forward in time and space The universe learned to expand Mess and magic, triumphant and tragic A mechanized world out of hand!" Rush, from the album Permanent waves.
Thank you for this. It's interesting to see the historical underpinnings of the BattleTech universe. Keep this up and you're going to have to create a video showing the chronological order of your videos so new viewers will know which series is next. Once again, well done all around.
Just starting to get the first glimpses of the BattleTech universe we know and love in this chapter. Still almost completely alien to the modern 3025 setting.
I love how the bleeding of the poorer member states of the Terran Alliance presages the Star League's relationship with the Periphery. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
excellent video as always, the Terran Alliance was often held together by very cheap tape and that tape was always fraying until something came along to give them time to put more tape on it, in this case, the KF drive.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Aye its not like that feels familiar at all at the moment *nervous laugh* But yeah the way the TA was set up was never ever going to last. IIRC some of the slow boat colony ships did get to where they were going and settled down and made their own places that the other houses etc then got in contact with right?
@sharlin648 I discuss them briefly in the next chapter, but yes. Think there were a total of seven slowboat colonies from the 21st century that survived the voyage, last of which wasn't rediscovered until circa 2850.
a lot of this feels pretty reminiscent of the space race and the cold war. things were pretty rough on earth when Apollo 11 landed on the moon but it was none the less a great achievement.
Well it wasn't such a different political climate that the original creators were writing in. Only 15 years removed from the moon landing so that definitely influenced those early years.
Another interesting effect of extrasolar colonization is that people started buying planetary settlement rights essentially sight unseen. It was just a gamble whether you got a good one. Bolan was one of those planets, people bought it on a speculatory basis and didn't settle it for almost a century, when somebody actually notice how good it would be to mine.
Just a science note on the Magellan probes, they would not burn half their fuel on acceleration and half on deceleration, but rather use the majority on acceleration. This is because the acceleration burn has to push all the unused fuel along but the deceleration does not. Exact percentages used in each phase of flight can only be calculated if you know both fueled and empty mass of the craft, but the higher the ratio of fuel to empty mass the greater the proportion of the fuel burned during the first half of the flight.
Thank you for the correction. That makes sense once you explain it but I hadn't given it any thought before. I was just repeating what was written in the sourcebooks so they make the same mistake.
@@SvenVanDerPlank I figured after reading the same thing at Sarna that the error was in the source, but it jumped out at me when I watched so I decided to mention it. Not many people think about the rocket equation unless they had some reason to dig deep into it.
It's cool to see some of the really early history of the setting. Stuff they didn't really need but they went ahead and wrote it anyway. I did have a question about future content. I rewatched some of your earlier history videos and I can't remember which it is in but you mentioned about "current day 3025". Like a few Battletech creators, you're presenting it as though you are someone from the setting but I was curious what you might do when the timeline reaches 3025? Will you carry on as you have been, describing these events as though they are in the past or will you perhaps cover the 4th succession war as though it were happening and switch to a war reporter style?
Obviously, that's when you proclaim the End of History, and then spiral down into a circle of never-ending academic arguments about whether you were right to declare the End of History.
So I'm absolutely going to continue on past 3025, but how I cover it is still unclear. I might jump to the end of each new era (3049, 3061, 3067, etc) and look back, or I might just cover it as current events. I'll see what makes the most sense when I get there.
Deimos Project? If I had a coin for everytime a martian moon was used as a testbed for interstellar colonization, I would have two coins. _Frog blast the vent core_
Talking about the 22nd Century in this has got some sort of fever dream/stroke bring forth memories of a show called Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century...please tell me someone else remembers this.
It's most likely a one way trip though. People had to dismantle their shuttles upon arrival to set up their colony. Depending on how far out you go, it might be decades before someone else lands with spare capacity to take people offworld again.
This super early Battletech stuff unironically just makes me super depressed - like, seriously. We could have this cool space solution, but no we can't now. We are literally incapable of making the same welds that were on the Saturn V rockets. We are destined to die in our cradle, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. I wish I could just turn my brain off and stop perceiving all these issues and just enjoy big robots but by this point I'm in too deep in the Black Pill Lagoon
Powerful people in the West pushing around poor nations in Africa because "they know best" in the modern era is reminds me of some of the stuff Obianuju Ekeocha has talked about, with powerful interests in the West quietly forcing their way in Africa, using drugs that are banned in the West (because they cause sterility) to "help" the locals without telling the truth and similar atrocities, all because "they know best."
The House Kurita sourcebook also has a lot on this, because that was one of the first times that they really started building out the history of the universe. There was some material in older stuff, but that was more of a two-page outline kind of thing.
Excellent day.
Cheers, thanks for being there.
That moment in Stellaris when you first start expanding, not realizing that there's a very angry fallen empire RIGHT THERE
Some absolute wholesome, Terra united in celebration. But just like the Star League, in the Golden Age, nothing good lasts forever...
Hope you're doing well today Sven!
The success of the Deimos Project might have temporarily distracted everyone from the growing problems on Earth, but pretty soon they're going to be reminded of how bad things are becoming and looking for a way to escape the planet.
Great work!
@@thomasrose4523 just like the Star League, it is rotten at its core and built on exploitation from the beginning
#warofCameronaggression
Also like with star league, like with rome, it was not the golden age we were lead to believe.
@moistjohn very true. And thanks to Sven, that's how I learn about the lore!
"April 2026?" We're cutting it a little close, aren't we? :v
Well given it's reliant on the advent of fusion technology first and we're already behind on that, I'm not holding my breath.
Quite some time ago, I was inspired by Battletech to start conceptualizing a strategy game that would involve similar pseudo-feudal politics in space, just even more fragmented, to really focus on that aspect. But over time I've increasingly been pondering the logistics of the whole thing, of first humanity colonizing so widely, but then collapsing to much smaller polities. I think that has big potential to be an entire phase of its own in the game, turning it into a whole big simulation of all the logistics of space travel and colonization, as well as of the politics and technology required to make it all possible. So coming back to Battletech, and finding out that it's got even more to offer in this regard as well, is honestly really satisfying.
Nice to see a detailed look at the baby steps of the setting. Also sad that the inter-natiin rivalries never really stop
It is interesting how many problems the Alliance had right from the beginning, although my reading of it is that the conflict is stemming less from nationalism and more from with inequality.
I can't help but notice some similarities between how humans in Battletech and Halo developed FTL technology and their offworld colonies.
Halo copied it seems
Stowaways on a probe!!
That's pretty crazy they survived and established a colony
I didn't really go into detail on that but it was a group of anti-Alliance Americans who worked in the aerospace industry. It was their company which was building the probes. Magellan-6 had a bunch of modifications made to it in secret to accommodate such a long voyage.
I'm going to be camping, so I won't see this come out live.
Sven, if you see this, Bravo! You're doing great work. Thank you.
Cheers, Deridus. Hope you enjoy it when you get home. Have fun.
@@SvenVanDerPlank It was enjoyed!
I love learning about how we got from our day in age to the inner sphere.
17:46 they found the klingons, but having watched every episode and movie of Star trek, they made quick work of them 🙂😎.
Can you imagine Klingon Battlemechs???????
@@Raider0075 all of em would have melee weapons but no ejection systems!
The conclusion of this episode brought a few tears to my eyes. Not sure why, but well done! ❤
Well I'm pleased to have evoked such emotion with one of my videos. Sadly, this historic event did not bring an end to Earth's troubles. The 22nd Century saw so much progress, but so many of the same problems persisted.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Probably because no matter how far out we go, there's still humans involved. 😕
@@Archangelm127 yeah
This is "brings a tear to your eye" kind of material
"For All Mankind"
Great project you are building Sven.
Very happy the Terran Alliance is getting the spotlight.
After all, it the litteral roots of everything that came after - the genesis of the Inner Sphere.
Aye, revisiting these early years of the setting is laying the foundations for everything that comes after.
more like it's when the seeds of tragedy was sown.
@@juamu1132 There is tragedy yes, but there is also opportunity and even comedy.
Where there is sorrow, on the other hand there is also joy.
to think that it all started with so much promise
It always does.
It's interesting how many problems the Terran Alliance was plagued with throughout it's history, but on the rare occasion someone does reflect on the discovery of FTL technology, it's always looked on positively with no mention of all the people who were starving so that the project could go ahead.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Kind of reminds me of what I remember reading in the Homeworld manual years ago, about how all the major Kiith on world quite literally doomed themselves in terms of natural resources and material to build just the Scaffold that would later on hold the Mothership. It got to the point where even if the Mothership worked perfectly and the mission to find Hiigara went without issue, Kharak would likely starve to death in a matter of decades afterword. Ironically, that would not come to pass anyways for obvious reasons. Granted this was of course once the major players all realized the shocking realization that Kharak was not their home and they were simply living on an alien world for 1300 years, so that venture had at least a strong universal impetus that everyone felt inclined to submit to, though from what I remember this same event in Homeworld's timeline had similar dilemmas at play when the matter of specifically who made greater sacrifices to make that happen at all. It's very likely that the Kushan would have had the same levels of unrest and even downright rebellion had that same drive to find their real home had not been so equally compelling to so many of them.
Love watching how everything came together and how our ability to make war with each other followed close behind. Keep up the amazing work!!
Thanks, will do.
My hard-Scifi heart is beating so hard to this part of BT's story. So good. Thank you for your brilliant work!
Knowing the history helps to understand why the events unfold as they do. Great stuff.
Cheers. That's what it's all about. Tracing a path through history to explain why things are the way that they are.
The richest countries in the Terran Alliance forcing the poorest to pay for the Deimos project while ALSO exporting food from those countries in such quantities as to cause food riots: That's some Classic Imperialism *chef's kiss*
Yet another excellent video on early Terran history. Thank you for such detailed work
You're welcome.
Dude, i am loving the deep history of Battletech. It really adds additional context to this universe. Thank you.
You're welcome. I'm also enjoying revisiting this early part of the setting.
The stowaways actually surviving and managing to establish a colony of their own is worthy of mention, i love the history pre-unification & succession wars because it fleshes out my understanding on how BT universe started, not just it being a war with regular and mechanized warfare, i hope post succession wars (clan wars, the clans are explained too!) Ty sven
I'll definitely get to the Clan Invasion eventually. I mentioned this in another comment, but the"stowaways" were actually employees of the aerospace company who built the probes. They had made significant alterations to transform it into a more suitable transport. Still pretty remarkable they survived not just the journey, but all the way to 2850 when they were rediscovered by ComStar.
Great stuff. Your delivery is great. I got chills with the successful return jump at the end. Felt like listening to real history.
This is really great. Amazing presentation as always, but also its really nice to see how the lore has so many interesting intrincacies. It does feel like human history, with constant attempts to improve but also constantly stumbling on the same old issues.
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Thanks for all your support.
This is a really interesting dive into the early history. Great job!
Excellent work Sven! My apologies for getting to this 18 hours late. I had two emergency jobs in my shop and I've been out there till midnight the last two nights to push them out. Very well done!
No worries, ebla. Just pleased you enjoyed it.
Well done! Format, pics, explanations! Sven knocked out of the park! I really like how you present BT fictional History! It all seems possible.( at this point IRL)
"Wheel within wheels in a spiral array
A pattern so grand and complex
Time after time we lose sight of the way
Our causes can't see their effects."
"A quantum leap forward in time and space
The universe learned to expand
Mess and magic, triumphant and tragic
A mechanized world out of hand!" Rush, from the album Permanent waves.
Thank you, I'm really pleased you've been enjoying it.
Thank you for this. It's interesting to see the historical underpinnings of the BattleTech universe. Keep this up and you're going to have to create a video showing the chronological order of your videos so new viewers will know which series is next. Once again, well done all around.
I do have a playlist on the channel that's in chronological order. Once this mini-series is finished, I'll put the compilation video at the beginning.
your stuff is some of my favorite to listen to while i paint. thank you as always
You're welcome, glad you're enjoying it.
Great episode as always Sven, very much enjoying this look at the Terra Alliance, as well as the ongoing Succession Wars series.
Cheers, glad to hear it.
Mr.Sven...thank you for your work!!
Always a good day when you post another video. Thanks!
Cool, my good night watch for the weekend is set :)
Great work
Thank you thank you for the wonderful lore presentation!
You're welcome, Harbinger.
Awesome again! Your videos have helped me to get lost in the battletech universe when I was going through dark times. You do amazing work, thank you.
You're welcome. Glad I could help you with that.
Yay, Auckland University!
My Alma Mater showing up for humanity!
Awesome video as allways.
Seeing the beginnings of Battletech.
Just starting to get the first glimpses of the BattleTech universe we know and love in this chapter. Still almost completely alien to the modern 3025 setting.
another excellent video Sven. Keep it coming, and good luck with your new PC.
Absolutely fantastic Can't wait to enjoy more !!
Cheers. Next premiere is this Saturday.
Brilliant mini series
Love it
Even if I am waiting for the rest of the Third Succession War
Well worth the wait
Thank you, glad you're enjoying it. The Third Succession War is pretty much ready to go as soon as this is over so there'll be no delay.
I love how the bleeding of the poorer member states of the Terran Alliance presages the Star League's relationship with the Periphery. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
"It's like poetry... They rhyme."
Excellent episode, and I'm enjoying the series
Cheers, glad to hear it.
Super good one matey, thankee
excellent video as always, the Terran Alliance was often held together by very cheap tape and that tape was always fraying until something came along to give them time to put more tape on it, in this case, the KF drive.
Yeah, it was coming apart at the seams from the get-go. It's miraculous it lasted as long as it did.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Aye its not like that feels familiar at all at the moment *nervous laugh* But yeah the way the TA was set up was never ever going to last. IIRC some of the slow boat colony ships did get to where they were going and settled down and made their own places that the other houses etc then got in contact with right?
@sharlin648 I discuss them briefly in the next chapter, but yes. Think there were a total of seven slowboat colonies from the 21st century that survived the voyage, last of which wasn't rediscovered until circa 2850.
Great stuff, well done again Sven
Cheers, Aaron.
Great awesome video Sven
Loving these.
great job as usual Sven
Cheers, lorefox.
loved it mate
a lot of this feels pretty reminiscent of the space race and the cold war. things were pretty rough on earth when Apollo 11 landed on the moon but it was none the less a great achievement.
Well it wasn't such a different political climate that the original creators were writing in. Only 15 years removed from the moon landing so that definitely influenced those early years.
@@SvenVanDerPlank I don't doubt it. personally I feel modern battletech could stand to be a bit more cold war in it's art and presentation.
Another interesting effect of extrasolar colonization is that people started buying planetary settlement rights essentially sight unseen. It was just a gamble whether you got a good one. Bolan was one of those planets, people bought it on a speculatory basis and didn't settle it for almost a century, when somebody actually notice how good it would be to mine.
Huh, I wasn't aware of that detail.
Well done.
Always wondered about the back story
It's a largely forgotten era of the history, both in universe and in real life.
You're slacking, General Motors! Way behind schedule!
Just a science note on the Magellan probes, they would not burn half their fuel on acceleration and half on deceleration, but rather use the majority on acceleration. This is because the acceleration burn has to push all the unused fuel along but the deceleration does not. Exact percentages used in each phase of flight can only be calculated if you know both fueled and empty mass of the craft, but the higher the ratio of fuel to empty mass the greater the proportion of the fuel burned during the first half of the flight.
Thank you for the correction. That makes sense once you explain it but I hadn't given it any thought before. I was just repeating what was written in the sourcebooks so they make the same mistake.
@@SvenVanDerPlank I figured after reading the same thing at Sarna that the error was in the source, but it jumped out at me when I watched so I decided to mention it. Not many people think about the rocket equation unless they had some reason to dig deep into it.
It's cool to see some of the really early history of the setting. Stuff they didn't really need but they went ahead and wrote it anyway.
I did have a question about future content. I rewatched some of your earlier history videos and I can't remember which it is in but you mentioned about "current day 3025". Like a few Battletech creators, you're presenting it as though you are someone from the setting but I was curious what you might do when the timeline reaches 3025? Will you carry on as you have been, describing these events as though they are in the past or will you perhaps cover the 4th succession war as though it were happening and switch to a war reporter style?
Obviously, that's when you proclaim the End of History, and then spiral down into a circle of never-ending academic arguments about whether you were right to declare the End of History.
So I'm absolutely going to continue on past 3025, but how I cover it is still unclear. I might jump to the end of each new era (3049, 3061, 3067, etc) and look back, or I might just cover it as current events. I'll see what makes the most sense when I get there.
Cheers
Deimos Project? If I had a coin for everytime a martian moon was used as a testbed for interstellar colonization, I would have two coins.
_Frog blast the vent core_
Oh my science!
Nice that we only have to wait two more years for the first fusion rocket tests
Well we're a bit behind on fusion engines so we might have to wait a while yet.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Darn it.
why do i have a feeling that karma caught up with house cameroon when terran alliance was formed.
Talking about the 22nd Century in this has got some sort of fever dream/stroke bring forth memories of a show called Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century...please tell me someone else remembers this.
Alas, I do not. But with a name like that, I feel like I missed out on some high quality television.
If I got a chance to go explore or colonize another star system I would definitely take the chane
It's most likely a one way trip though. People had to dismantle their shuttles upon arrival to set up their colony. Depending on how far out you go, it might be decades before someone else lands with spare capacity to take people offworld again.
Noice
For the algorithm!
This super early Battletech stuff unironically just makes me super depressed - like, seriously. We could have this cool space solution, but no we can't now. We are literally incapable of making the same welds that were on the Saturn V rockets.
We are destined to die in our cradle, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. I wish I could just turn my brain off and stop perceiving all these issues and just enjoy big robots but by this point I'm in too deep in the Black Pill Lagoon
👍
Powerful people in the West pushing around poor nations in Africa because "they know best" in the modern era is reminds me of some of the stuff Obianuju Ekeocha has talked about, with powerful interests in the West quietly forcing their way in Africa, using drugs that are banned in the West (because they cause sterility) to "help" the locals without telling the truth and similar atrocities, all because "they know best."
Sven, what is the best source so far for lore in this era?
Jihad Hotspots: Terra
The original SLDF sourcebook covers a lot in this period as well.
The House Kurita sourcebook also has a lot on this, because that was one of the first times that they really started building out the history of the universe. There was some material in older stuff, but that was more of a two-page outline kind of thing.
Aye, I've read both Kurita and Star League sourcebooks as well. They're also good getting a foundational knowledge of this early period.
Pretty sad to say that this timeline is better than our timeline.
Faster than light travel for one trillion dollars? That's a bargain.
Where are you going in such a hurry?
@@SvenVanDerPlank The Pentagon Worlds. I want to get a head start on the invasion.
Excellent video as always. Free Palestine 🇵🇸
best battletech channel
Well thank you very much.