Hello again everyone. Hope you are doing well. Over the past three years of making BattleTech content, I've received quite a few comments expressing confusion about how space travel works in the setting. I've frequently thrown out terms like "quick charge" or "pirate points" in my videos, and while most folks have a loose understanding of what that would mean in context, I've never taken the time to properly explain things thoroughly. I also suspect that there are a lot of misconceptions about how these things work among the community, so I'm hoping that this bonus episode will clear things up. I wrote it to be non-specific timeline wise so I can place this one back at the start of the playlist as a proper introduction to these concepts before the main history begins. It's been six weeks since I last uploaded anything. Apologies for the lengthy absence, but I'm happy to report that I'll be back to making Lore & History videos in July now that the scripts for the Third Succession War are finished. If all goes to plan, you'll see the first premiere next weekend. I'll hope to see some of you there. Thanks everyone.
No need to apologize, the Third SW is a beast, 150+ years of warfare. I think most of us assumed you were working on it and weren't going to make and post a video until the scripts were at least at the 80% point. And this was awesome, by the way.
Yeah, I wanted to get a first draft finished so I had some idea where I was going with the episodes, but I foolishly believed that because I didn't have an entire Historical sourcebook to summarise, I'd get the 3rdSW finished in no time. Turned into a nightmare and was just as long as it's predecessors, much larger than I anticipated.
I just love the whole concept of space travel in Battletech as it feels much more grounded and "risky" rather than a push of a button and you're there. I love that Battletech makes the setting work with itself rather than slap on some elements and not put too much thought into it.
It's amazing how adding some extra restrictions on their usage can change the way FTL feels compared to other settings. I'm seeing some people say it's more "realistic" but it's all made-up and arbitrary when you think about it. But like you say, it just feels more grounded.
Ironically the richness and detail of Battletech as a setting is a direct product of how much work they had to do to justify interstellar wars being settled by big stompy robots instead of space ships. The writers had to make both the history and technology of the setting extremely detailed to produce the conditions needed for the table top game. It's a great example of how placing restrictions on creative people can dramatically improve their work product.
@@theodoremccarthy4438 It's not just why there's big stompy robots slapping each other into submission. Anything dealing with FTL travel and communication in BT is also made to explain why there's pseudo-feudal systems of fiefdoms, nobility and so on. Within the lore, communicating directly (ie: send a message that is received almost instantly) is something that only became possible comparatively late with the HPG network, that was created when the Star League was already a thing. Before then, you could only carry messages on board of jumpships to far-off places. Sure, it's still significantly faster than light, but a message might take a couple weeks to reach its destination and then you'd have to wait another couple weeks for an answer. Any kind of meaningful back-and-forth communication could take months, if not years, depending on the number of people invovled and the distances between them. This makes it _very_ hard for a centralized government to work and as a result, you have much smaller, more easy to manage, spheres of influence, that form the foundation of your government. The bottom-most layer of the ruling class are people ruling over one system or maybe even just a planet or moon (kind of like a knight with a single castle), then you'll have some guy who's in charge of those systems, the next in line controls a couple of those sectors and so on until you reach the top of the foodchain with a house lord. This alone is a level of clever writing that makes Battletech a very well-designed setting, but what impresses me even more is that in the very next step, someone realized that this means that warfare would be something insanely terrifying in such a setting: Without the ability to report what's going on on the battlefield, escalating a battle until it involves weapons of mass destruction is a given. So you end up with stuff like the Tintavel Massacre.
@@h.a.9880 Honestly, hereditary aristocracy is the most common and most stable form of government in human history. You don't have to work that hard to justify it. Good communications may make a centralized government possible, but it doesn't make them efficient or stable.
Pleased to hear that you think it works as an explanation. I did sneak in a couple of lines referencing some of the rules I've seen broken in the fiction.
The sourcebook talks about some of the ways you can work around this (basically grinding down the raw materials the core is made from into gravel and diluting the mix, then refining it again on the other end) but I thought that was too convoluted to go into in the video.
@@SvenVanDerPlank That almost suggests that an intersteller "towtruck" would be more a factory ship- it carries all the spare parts you can prefab, and the ability to manufacture the rest from raw material. I imagine all such ships that didn't go on the Exodus are with ComStar or were destroyed between Aramis' war and 1st SW.
@tenchraven The in-universe term is YardShip, and you're exactly right with ComStar owning the only ones (they actually built some new ones). I always imagined them as repairing the exterior hulls but the idea of them carrying the raw materials to construct a new drive core at their destination would be a really interesting additional function.
Also wasn't there a bit of old lore about someone managing to us multipule cores to jump large things like asteroids. Something about the Ryan Ice Cartel or something right??
Good stuff! The way space travel in BattleTech works is one of my favorite parts of the entire setting. Compared to 'push button/throw lever, get to destination' stuff it feels so much more real.
It's definitely part of the unique flavour of the setting. Taking a long time to get anywhere is fundamental in understanding why things are the way they are.
Dude hell yeah. I absolutely love blackwater and aerospace stuff in Battletech, I know why they don't get more attention in the lore but I wish they did. It's just a unique take on FTL, especially when you throw in how FTL communications work in the setting This and hearing about all the epic space battles from your Reunification War, Star Leauge Civil War and 1st Succession War vids it really makes me want to get some WarShip minis even if nobody plays blackwater stuff lol. Also thank you for shouting out Stratops one of your big sources, that helps out immensely.
I also love all the space stuff. Probably picked the wrong franchise if that's the bit that interests me. Learning about all this does recontextualise some of the naval battles I've described earlier in the history.
Finally more actual lore. Only a very small few actually release actual lore videos. Everyone else seems to forget that robots aren’t food, infrastructure, building materials, jobs, day to day life, clothing, historical artifacts and more. There is clearly enough there. Just most have no vision beyond metallic giants
Cheers, I'm glad you think so. It's a topic that I thought could do with a bit more focus. Was surprised to learn just how fleshed out the lore is on this. So many details I learned doing the research that I wanted to include because I think many folks in the community just assume it's all handwaved away (and I suspect a few authors have as well, lol).
@@SvenVanDerPlank While it is true the basics are known enough around the community - I believe the ''Wall'' technology forced all of us to rethink for a moment on what hyperspace travel meant and what the KF drive can and can't do. Besides, imo, hyperspace travel is like sailing - we have used ships for millenia now but the true age of sailing wasn't so long ago. Inevitably, it is bound to get some breakthroughs or improvements.
Cheers, I'm glad you found it interesting. There is another video on YT I found that presented a mathematical explanation of how they could function, but I quickly realised I was not nearly intelligent enough to understand such a technical breakdown. I threw in a line at the start of this one explicitly saying that I won't be attempting such an explanation as a joke that stemmed from that.
Well-said. Battletech does a great job of having an internal logic and system of rules that generally aren't broken (occasionally weird stuff happens, but they usually come across as rumours or exaggerations). It's impressive to see how much thought was put into this system of space travel without really getting too deep into the actual science of it all. Great video, as always.
I imagine that, in the golden age, ships used Lagrange points much more frequently. With a robust FTL communications network and a centralized database of known systems, it would be entirely possible to download simple calendar tables that registered where a Lagrange point would be at a specific moment. In particular, core planets should be incredibly well mapped in this regard. Of course, I imagine Com Star wouldn't let anyone but themselves do this by the time of the succession wars. But I'd bet they still have everything they need to jump to any system of the great houses.
A small bit of trivia... something that came up when discussing various Sci-fi - the K/F Drive is one the fastest FTL drives in scifi. That 30 LY jump in one week is... hard to match in most of the more reputable sci-fi. It is faster than the Traveller J6 drive (yes, the TL 16 you can never have it fast boat drive), TNG era Trek ships have to burn a full week at low Warp 9 to catch up to the jump ship before it recharges to jump again (not that you can sustain the engines that long), Honorverse ships are having to travel in the Epsilon and Theta bands to catch a Jumpship before it recharges... so unless things move at the speed of plot (Star Wars), the BT Jumpship is one of the best sci fi FTL ships, even with that week recharge times. Puts the scale of the Inner Sphere into a bit of a new light when you start thinking of things like that. Just a fun thing that came up in a conversation. There are faster but we liked those three universes when we were discussing and well, those universes have maps that aren't trash!
yeah despite all that's good about Andor, the time it takes takes to jump between systems felt simply and wrongly way too quick, giving the impression of mere hours when in much older media it felt like it should take days at the VERY least
@@djolds1 Yup, command chains rapid give you communication speeds that in credible. Only the practically time travel fast speeds of say Babylon 5's BabCom (no time delay between Earth and Epsilon Endri) or the insanity of Trek's subspace communications grid (again, no time delay what so ever over incredible distances... but Trek also has ultra-poor writing/able to see into the future with not just FTL sensors but real time FTL sensors that can see for light years instantly when the plot says it can)... but when you are used to say a Traveller game where speed is barely as fast as the fastest jump ship... the command chain trick can get rather impressive. The HPG network, even more so. 60 LY near instant transmissions are incredible, especially the circuit design.
@@Khymerion HPGs are another example of a well thought out tech with restrictions, in BTech. The Clans have arranged near-real time Kurultais using HPG, yet it's difficult. Now if we could just get rid of the stupid walking robots, and swap in the fusion powered hovertanks...
So much of BattleTech's aerospace stuff hasn't been explored enough. Not much has been explored in the Mechwarrior series of videogames. I'd love to see a MechWarrior game at least somewhat include Dropships, JumpShips and aerospace fighters as things you can actually use in game instead of just NPCs or cutscenes. I suppose being JumpShip crew wouldn't be all that exciting, but a DropShip crew would be quite exciting. Getting to do planetary landings, dropping off mechs and picking them up.
You don't want to aim for L1-L3 because their gravitational equilibrium is unstable (like trying to throw a ball and have it land exactly on the top of a hill without rolling down the other side). L4 and L5 are stable (throw the same ball and aim for a depression instead of a hill top, the ball with naturally settle at the point of gravitational equilibrium). Lagrange points are amazing, and incredibly useful in astrdynamics.
i genuinely loved this video. i know it may not perform well, but you made nerds like me very happy i am thankful for your effort, and listing those sources. this has enhanced the lore. for example, the Malagrotta affair and Tintativa are now much more interesting. that many ships misjumping all at once has me wondering what happened at malagrotta, and now that i know just how risky pirate points are, the battle of tintativa is even more stunning. considering kf drives are a cornerstone of how the setting works, its suprising how little its discussed
I'm really pleased you enjoyed it. I just realised reading your comment I haven't updated my source list in a while, so I've added in the relevant ones.
There is a infamous real-world incident called the Honda Point Disaster where an entire US Navy destroyer flotilla ran themselves into rocks on the California coast due to fog and bad navigation. They were taking their nav instructions from the flagship. So if the Taurian admiral had everybody copying his FTL calculations, they'd all drop out into the wrong spot in Malgrotta.
That would be an interesting possibility. I don't believe the sourcebook offers any explanation but I think at the time I imagined it was because of an anomaly lying along their specific route, kind of like how Far Country later explained how two JumpShips made it to the Tetatae system by jumping between the same two stars at a precise moment.
@@SvenVanDerPlank I confess I have no knowledge/have not read Far Country, so I can't argue, but naval formations using identical instructions from the flag for movement is a common practice. There are good reasons to do it, but sometimes bad results.
@@MM22966Far Country is... controversial. The fairest consensus is that it's a good sci-fi story but bad BattleTech. Due to a misJump, the characters end up on a world with talking bird-aliens. They're still technologically backward having only recently started living in log cabins but it's about as close as you can get to crossing the no-aliens rule without actually crossing it. It also helps that the location is unknown and disconnected from the wider universe, so noone knows about it and anyone who gets there can't ever go home... Author Peter Rice copped a lot more flak than he really deserved for it and I'm fairly sure Far Country is the only novel he ever wrote - it was supposed to be in support of a planned 'primitive aliens' sourcebook that never eventuated, so it's not like he was just doing it to be edgy. Then, much later Herb Beas wrote an unofficial campaign track called Far No Longer with the intention of it being a rules-compliant but non-canon Halloween product. The premise is that contact with Humans supercharged the development of the Tetatae (who now call themselves the Tetakuni), and a merc company from 3152 who get shunted far, far into the future find a ruined Inner Sphere ruled by the bird-aliens.
thank you so much for doing such an important video. for all the work you are doing establishing game canon, please spend some more time in warship classifications and all things regarding the space-side of the game because it simply hasn't gotten enough love
You're welcome. I might look into doing a video about the development and evolution of WarShip designs in the future since it is a topic I'm interested in, but for the time being I want to get back to my history series.
It actually is possible to jump in a replacement drive, it's just extremely difficult and expensive. You basically have to construct an entire temporary JumpShip around the new core (i.e. attach the drive, cooling systems, controls, and everything else you need to make it jump), jump it to the system with the stricken ship, disassemble the components around the core and tow it to the ship whose core needs replacing (after having removed and towed away the original core, as even broken the mass of germanium will interfere with the new core if too close). For understandable reason this isn't normally done since at that point you've already almost built another JumpShip already, but it could be practical to, say, salvage a WarShip whose core has been destroyed, as WarShips have a lot of other expensive and hard to manufacture components in addition to the core (chiefly the massive transit drives). Also, there is a theoretical possibility of taking advantage of the phenomena where misjumped ships sometimes end up emerging far outside their normal jump range by using a precisely timed activation of a LF battery during a jump to trigger a sort of controlled misjump, sending the ship across far greater distance than normally possible. However, since this would invariably destroy the KF core and would result in destruction of the ship if the calculations were even slightly off, by 3025 nobody has ever been crazy enough to actually test out that idea.
That's an interesting theory on "super-jumping." Wonder if anyone will ever be mad enough to give it a go? I was aware of ways in which replacement drives can be moved through space, but it would have been a lengthy digression I couldn't be assed with. "Functionally impossible" was good enough for this script.
@@SvenVanDerPlank There is actually someone who did this! The Word of Blake with their "Super Jump Drive". It's exactly what was described, a KF drive hooked to a LF battery with several safety features disabled, which would initiate a second jump 1 second after starting the first, giving it a theoretical 900 LY range on the jump, albeit completely destroying both drive and battery, as well as sending a gigantic emergence signature. It's also rummored that someone else did try this prior to 3025, a company named Interconnectedness Unlimited allegedly developed the system in the early 29th century, and outfited the Lucretia with it around the 3000. That ship is also responsible for the New Syrtis Shipyards Incident of 3022, in which the drydocks there where heavily damaged by the Lucretia initiating a jump while on the docks. The Super Jump Drive of Interconnectedness did have a few differences with the WoB one, namely extra systems and safety features (which increased mass and costs) and a 120LY limit on the super jump, but with some hope of survival for the drive and battery.
These videos on the internal mechanics of the setting are really useful Especially with how spread out information on a lot of stuff in BattleTech can be.
One of the key goals of this series is to try and bring all that information together in one place and summarise it (lol, 24 hours already) for people to catch up with 40 years of lore.
awesome video! i'm only just getting into battletech and your videos are pleasant informative and interesting, it's not always easy to find a great introduction to a settings lore but youve provided it with these vids!
I wasn't going to watch this video, because I already know how these work, but I will listen to you talk about any Battletech stuff Sven. Cheers for another video!
Thank you for the information. I've always been curious about the zenith and nadir points, and their importance. Along with pirate points to. A lot of info, but very straight forward.
Absolutely outstanding Sven and well worth your research time!! A perfect blend of BT lore/cannon and our own current scientific knowledge. Special gratitude on including Lagrange points. When I first learned of them years ago my brain overclocked itself trying to calculate the 1000+ or more possible L points in our own Sol system. Kudos & Huzzahs!! Keep up the great work Sven and can't wait for next Succession war episode!!
Thank you, really pleased you enjoyed it. I should say, while Lagrange Points exist between any two astronomical bodies in a system (Earth and Moon for example) the way the term is used in BattleTech fiction is almost exclusively in relation to a star and planet. On the very rare occasions something jumps into orbit, it's always referred to as a pirate point. So I guess a lot of those Transiet Points are actually the Lagrange of two objects other than the star.
This is one of the most interesting parts of the battletech lore. Everything else is pretty standard sci-fi. Huge interstellar empires, giant robots etc. But the way space travel is handled is incredibly unique and i love it. Watching the old battletech cartoon theres a throw away line where adam says "and now we wait 2 weeks for the engine to charge and do it all over again." I was like....wait what?
I believe you might have made a mistake (by omission!) during the Lagrange point explanation - not all Lagrange points are valid for K-F Drive usage, only the L1 points. This is elaborated upon in _Strategic Operations: Advanced Aerospace Rules_ on pages 122 and 123, which states: "Anyway, the short of it is this: in any set of LaGrange points, only the L1 point－well, a place near it－is a valid jump point. The actual jump point will wiggle around the real L1 point due to the influence of the local stars and planets." Earlier the text explains that this is due to the fact that, of all the Lagrange points, the L1 is the only one where the gravitational pull of the planet and star _actually_ balance out, which is what matters for the K-F Drive to do its K-F-y things.
That line about L1 is a mistake. Just put it down to that section being spoken by a character giving their own presentation. There are countless examples in the lore that contradict that, and as another commenter pointed out, my explanation of L1 is incorrect. It's actually closer to the sun than the point where the two gravities equalise. It's just close enough to the planet that its gravity stabilises it's trajectory into an orbit whereas it's natural velocity would have it fall into the sun. So if what you said was correct, none of the Lagrange Points would be valid, which is obviously not the case.
An awesome video! I have always preferred Battletech's take on interstellar travel than those used in other sci-fi franchises. It just seems more 'realistic.'
I'm with you. Obviously it's all make believe so there's nothing more or less realistic about it, but I love how introducing extra limitations/complications to space travel has an impact on so many other aspects of the setting.
Well I'm only loosely familiar with 40K lore but travelling through the demon-infested warp to get anywhere is a fun concept that fits perfectly with setting.
I used to play MW2 on pc with my dad. Clans just came out and Ive been enjoying the battletech universe again. But I didnt want to sort out a million books for myself to read. So thankyou for this very conclusive and effective playlist of history!
I have thought about making a video on the early development of WarShips or BattleMechs and discussing the evolution in design. It's an idea I might return to in the future.
OK, found the reference I was looking for about Rudolph Ryan and his fleets of iceships (AKA the Ryan Cartel). To solve the water shortages on many worlds, they would jump giant icecubes between stars. They would cut off chunks of asteroid ice 2km on a side. Tug them out to a jump point. Then a fleet of 16 ships in a precise formation (roughly globe shaped) would jump them to the system that needed them. This was in 2177. (House Kurita Source book p15-17) This should of course be impossible due to the core proximity issue. (this was published a year before the release of D&J so obviously like in so may other cases the details of story and technology had not quite been locked down yet)
There's more about Ryan's Iceships in other sources. All those jump drives were controlled from a command vessel. Each was communicating with each other to create an overlapping field.
They could theoretically tug a 28km-radius sphere of ice (but they would need to assemble the JumpDrive right in the centre), so for practical purposes single JumpShips tugged much smaller volumes of ice. But they also did a more complex manoever where 16 Jump ships arranged in polygon of 28km edges around a mass could all jump at once and drag through hundreds of thousands of cubic kilometeres of ice at once inside the 'bubble-of-bubbles'
@jamesperkins191 I don't know where you're getting 28km from. Every source I've read agrees on 2km³, nowhere near the hundreds of thousands you're suggesting.
Ginally got around to watching this and, even though you lore videos mention the different jump points, it just dawned on me how much more use of the three dimensional plane the BattleTech interstellar travel lore uses. I think that adds to the realism, because its not just about getting from point A to point B, but rather also factors in the need to respect real life orbital mechanics at the two endpoints.
"I said I was going to do something with the article on jump points on Sarna back in October, and I've got this 12 kB text file of notes and references sitting on my desktop I haven't done anything with since then, maybe I should actually..." "Meh, it looks like nobody else has touched anything since then anyway. No rush. I doubt there's much demand anyway." --me, literally last freakin' Tuesday
11:48 This diagram first appeared in DropShips & JumpShips. It's... misleading. In the Terran system, the "Non-Standard Transit Distance" only saves about 6% of travel time at 1G. 15:15 Something that doesn't get specifically pointed out much in BattleTech sourcebooks is that every pair of "primary" and "secondary" has these five points. There's an L1 between Sol and Terra, and there's an L1 between Terra and Luna. 1G transit time from the Sol-Terra L1 is about 7 hours, while time from the Terra-Luna L1 is about 3.25 hours. (Travel time from Terra to Luna is about 3.5 hours). (For comparison, BattleSpace mentions a "pirate point" [whatever that means!] about 11 hours out from Luthien, probably referring to one of the novels.) Also: The in-universe instructor in Strategic Operations seems to believe that only L1's (more specifically, a point *near* the L1, long story) are valid jump points. I think there are reasons to treat him as unreliable, though. 19:34 I'm going to sit on my hands here and simply point out that different pages in Strategic Operations (the latest version of the "space rules") disagree with each other on what is and is not a "pirate point."
The Manassas from Living Legends is one such warship with an experimental Jump Drive that popped up after 300 years stuck in hyperspace from the Exodus. While the RPG adventure states that the vessel should be destroyed, crippled or captured by Com Star at the end, it's whereabouts are still unknown. If I ran this adventure again, I'd have it make another 'time-jump' from 3058 to.. maybe the Jihad, Dark Age, or Il Clan era. I whacky way to deliver your players from the 3050 on to the new eras.
I thought the Lagrange points WERE the pirate points... I'm learning! Fantastic video and something I've only ever picked up in bits and pieces from lore videos talking about other things.
There are plenty of examples in the lore where the terms Lagrange/Pirate points are used interchangeably, but the rulebooks that focus on this aspect of the lore are quite specific in saying they're different.
Battletech's FTL travel system is so cool. If only the writers would play with it beyond the occasional abstracted and unspecific use of pirate points. But then, that would require some small degree of attention be paid beyond the planetary surface. And that in turn may result in something for even a moment appearing to be cooler than mechs. Which would naturally destroy the franchise either by making folks interested in other things, or making mech fans feel completely and entirely abandoned by the small diversion away from what must be the only cool thing about the Battletech setting. Some points of fact that I noticed. Part of the reason the experimentation with K-F physics was not experimented with can be inferred to have been the incredible energy requirements necessary to do so. But it is consistently stated or implied throughout the sourcebooks that the larger factor was academic entrenchment against K & F's claims which violated and necessarily rejected then embraced Einsteinian relativity. The sanctity of the jumpship also varies in time. Prior to and during the early days of the succession wars there was practically no stigma against striking jump ships beyond that which generally existed towards the assault of innocents and collateral targets which they often were. Beyond the clan invasion this stigma similarly began to weaken. The clans generally played game owing to their abhorrence of waste which they view the destruction of a jumpship as. But they have never viewed that as the extreme violation that the IS did. As I recall there are a couple examples of the Clans attacking jumpships that did not submit to their orders horrifying the IS as a result. Further, as jump drive production increased during the renaissance period and beyond the IS's own stigma has waned. Even after the destruction wrought upon jumpdrive production by the Jihad and the interference of Republican black ops in rebuilding those capabilities, this trend of decreasing concern continued. In the Dark Age and early IlClan eras the destruction of a jumpship is merely a trash move, not the near atrocity it once was at the height of the third succession war.
Battletech jump drive: "You may randomly disappear or re-appear in the middle of solid objects in the course of a interdimensional jump." (Looks at Warhammer 40K) "On the other hand, you will not be required to traverse demon-infested hell dimensions to use it, nor let said dimension's madness and their extremely disagreeable denizens into sidereal space. So there's that."
This is a great video! I do have an idea for a future video based on this, perhaps maybe part of a Halloween edition, compiled with other similar stories; Missjumps. Perhaps something like what would a group of spacers drinking late at night talk about to mess with new employees or visitors haha. Sort of a campfire story of the future. Other than maybe Far Country, I am not sure how much we actually know about failed jumps in this universe other than ships don’t always end up anywhere where they can report back in.
There's rumours about what happend to the Philadelphia, a few semi-canon stories about ships going backwards or sideways in time, the unoffical but rules-compliant Far No Longer (sequel to Far Country) by Herb Beas, the two Nebula California sourcebooks (the first one riffs on superheroes, the second on Star Wars) There's the War Of The Worlds sourcebook which as far as I can tell doesn't rely on a MisJump and that Zombie adventure that's fully canonical... There's probably nore I've forgotten. I've been doing my own project where the Dragoon Compromise came earlier and went further in the Crusader Clans' favour so a much bigger force leaves to recon the Inner Sphere... but something goes funny with Hyperspace (it was ComStar, but that's not important) and they HyperLock for thousands of years, emerging into the universe of... DUNE!
I'm so glad you did this! For the longest of times I didn't quite understand how it worked. I knew it was different than lightspeed for Star wars and other such things, but I couldn't quite grasp what the difference was. This dose a great job of explaining it. And in many respects I actually like this system better than say Star wars or Star Trek because it feels more grounded believable. Plus the extra rules in place add restrictions that are fun to play around with, mechanically speaking.
I'm glad you found the video useful in explaining how these things function. Like you say, adding a handful of extra restrictions on its use makes the technology so much more flavourful than its peers from other sci-fi.
So maybe things are different in the BattleTech fluff, but in ours the L1 Lagrange point isn't the point where the gravitational pulls equalize. In the case of the Sun-Earth L1 point the Earths pull is tiny compared to the Suns pull. Which makes some sense when you remember that objects at Lagrange points should be orbiting the sun, and orbits require gravitational attraction to work. You can do the back of the envelope math really easily: Earth-L1 distance is about 1.5 million kilometers. Sun-L1 distance is about 150 million kilometers (i.e. about 100x the Earth-L1 distance) The Sun is about 330,000x the Earths mass. Gravitational attraction is proportional to M/r^2. For Earth at L1 we can call this "1" (1 Earth mass / 1 Earth-L1 distance) For the Sun at L1 this is 330,000/100^2 = ~33 (330,000 Earth's mass / (100 Earth-L1 distances)^2)
That is completely my failure to explain it properly and not realising what was actually happening until you made me question it. It's on a slower orbit that would normally have it fall into the sun, but the gravity of the planet adds another force bringing it into a more stable orbit.
Kinda wish you had made mention of how JumpShips, WarShips, and the like are internally arranged. While the function of the drive was laid out early in the IP many of the early artists didn't follow the "skyscrapers in space" concept and stuck to the old "space is an ocean" orientation for their designs.
It's one of those things that doesn't make much sense that I just didn't want to get bogged down in. Like you say, the lore is quite clear that the larger vessels are oriented like flying skyscrapers, but the artists obviously didn't get that memo. There is an explanation given in one sourcebook I read that basically said during the early years of space exploration, the admiralty wanted their ships to look a certain way to align with classical ideas of how a vessel should look, and forced designers to pay homage to that in the placement of windows on the bridge, and then that style has just become ingrained over time. "It looks like that because that's the way ships look."
Great episode. I would love a few more like these, maybe focused on the basics of battlemech technology, warships, fighters, and the like. Altough i understand the main focus of the channel is on history.
I did have an idea to explore the emergence of new military technologies and starting talking about the evolution of design in the early centuries. It's something you might see on the channel at some point down the line.
There's a lot of nuance to KF travel that only gets brought up in the very few sourcebooks that provide a deep focus on how that technology works. Most of the authors of sourcebook writers are probably unaware of that and so it never gets a mention.
Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into making this video! It’s deeply appreciated and I enjoyed the video. I knew some of the basics of this but I never realized how little I knew the jump drives and the ships that use them which a big deal because I like WarShips a lot.
Another interesting fact is that if you jump far enough away (15AU) the emergence wave is undetectable allowing for stealth insertions into system (although slow)
I did my best to try and keep this video focused on general use. Didn't want to get into strategies for invasion and subterfuge but it's maybe a topic for another video down the line.
I'd been wondering about use of Lagrange points after some of the warship battles of the early succession wars. The risk of there being more mass there than your jump could otherwise displace is a pretty good reason to avoid them normally.
Hell yeah. Not only did some of the authors offer contradictions, only a few of them explained it all correctly, and yet not as well as this rendition.
The sheer amount of raw STUFF related to FTL travel in BT is one of the reasons I love it so. And more importantly, the lore NEVER flexes on this (except in some outliers, like Far Country, but thats Far Country) There is no "Last Jedi using a tiny shuttle to cross half the galaxy in less than a day because we said so" kinda stuff here, no. You're locked in by what is set before and the hard rules do not bend. Even stuff like the Fortress Wall for the Republic of the Sphere has a solid logic to it that works within the universe. Thats rare in sci-fi these days.
I agree in principle but I did sneak in a couple lines into the video to cover some of the novels I've read playing a little loose with the rules that the sourcebooks say are absolute. In Blood of Heroes, a GDL JumpShip does a double-jump to get from Glengarry to Skye then Mizar, both slightly over 30LY. And there's defo at least one instance of a vessel making a dramatic escape by jumping before the drive core is fully charged but I can't recall exactly where I read it. We'll say it was 99% finished.
@@SvenVanDerPlank But KillerOrca's right: Not many franchises would repeatedly use the (very tedious) movement trope of a jump drive or a "pony express" chain to move their characters about, and do it with pride. Distances feel real and troubling vast in BT, unlike things starting with "Star".
No problem, Wrangler. I was surprised to learn just how much information there was on this topic when I first started doing the research for it. The more I found out, the more detail I wanted to include either because I've seen others get it wrong or it was something I was mistaken on myself.
One of my favorite videos you've done! Very interesting! I'd love to see a follow up on any of the different weapon types; how the tech was invented and evolved to the "modern era". Battlefield uses and limitations. Your videos are some of the best I've seen, in depth and extremely detailed. I've loved the game and setting since I was a teenager in the 80's. Several friends and I still play tabletop at least once a month. I can't wait to see what you have next time.
Hello Sven. A very nicely made video, and informative. Even to us old 'Grey Warriors' that have been around for 4 decades. The L-4 and L-5 jump points are not used as often as the polar points of the target star, even in solar systems where the orbital paths are well known, and maps are highly detailed. The systems where this is done regularly are, in the vast majority, highly developed and with substantial space-based infrastructure, military outposts, and military bases. Although 'safer' than using a 'Pirate' point, it is 'risky' to use such jump points in a system that is now well documented. This has not kept various military uses for such jump points from being leveraged to shorten the time needed to transit to a target. It can take upwards of a week or more to boost out to, or inwards from, one of the Polar jump points for interstellar transit. Jumping to the L-4, or L-5 points results in a far shorter transit time to the target planet or space-based target. The reduction in the transit time from Emergence Point to Target makes it worth the risk of using such jump points for military purposes. Civilian cargo shipping though, usually uses the Polar Points for safety reasons and takes the 'hit' on transit times between a planet and a jump point. It is just better to take longer to deliver goods than risk the ship to an accidental mis-jump. Civilian Jump Ships that do use the L-4 and L-5 points are usually crewed by personnel that have extensive databanks about the systems they will most likely jump to, or have former military personnel that have experience using such points. After the initial newness of Battletech wore off on my playing group, we all started to keep records of our battles, salvage, money, etc. About 7 years after the initial release of Battletech, My Mercenary Company had been successful enough to buy a 'spare' Overlord Drop Ship, which they towed out to the L-4 point in a fairly busy solar system. There, they outfitted it with the equipment necessary to recharge jump ships via the use of microwave beaming of power. After a few more years, another Overlord was obtained and the two were mounted base to base (engine area to engine area) and spun for 'gravity'. Since neither had workable engines and had to be towed into place, the engine areas were useful for the resulting 'space station'. To make things 'easier', I had caused to have built a 'connector' that the two Drop Ship hulls would anchor to. Accessible via the axis of spin, since the 'connector' looked like a 'tin can', and had docking ports built at the zero Gee axis of spin points of the 'can'. Over the years, these two former Overlords were extensively refitted as spin-gravity habitats with all the 'bells and whistles' one could want in space. Accommodations, hospital, aid stations, gardens, hydroponics bays, power generation decks, etc. After a couple of character decades, this 'station' was making more money than the Mercenary Company itself, and the profits were used to 'tide things over' when contracts were either sparse or proved less than profitable. Since this 'station' was not in a high-traffic solar system that already had extensive space-based infrastructure, it did well for itself. Further expansions to the L-5, and L-1 points were invested in, with a deal with the planetary government and an understanding with the planetary militia. The resulting solar system became my 'base of operations' for what was now a Mercenary Regiment, and the planet became the 'home' of the Regiment's dependents. The technical staff were split between the various stations and planet-side bases. By the time we 'gave up' playing (sometime during the Dark Age) as a group, my Mercs had expanded operations to include several other stations. Including extensive ones at the Polar Jump Points. The unit also was engaged in extensive mining efforts on several of the available moons of the other planets, as well as mining a fairly extensive asteroid field. I figure that by the time the game got to the ILKhan Era, that solar system would be a major trade hub, and the Mercs would have expanded to upwards of three Regiments in size, as well as their 'spin-off' corporations investing in building a manufacturing facility to build Jump Drives out at the System's edge. By the way, the System in question is located outside the Inner Sphere, and just past the nearer Periphery governmental areas.
Thank you, Frank. Interesting to hear about a group who delved into that aspect of the lore when I imagine so many handwave it away in their own adventures.
@@SvenVanDerPlank I think it was mostly due to the players wanting to have the battles they played mean something. That, and the fact that almost all of us had firm backgrounds in roleplaying games with continuing characters.
I appreciate the detail that went into this. My fiance, who is a huge BT fan, made mention of..."things" rumored to be seen by people who momentarily get stuck in hyperspace, despite a successful trip. Any comment on those occurrences? Or "jump psychosis?"
nice in universe voice. I am honestly kind of curious about the wobblies and the hansiatic league. there is not that much available on them on youtube.
Can you somewhat expand upon it, and make a video on how a pirate/mercs raid on a planet would go? The process, how long will it take, etc. (and the time it will take for the reinforcement sent by nearby garrison after receiving the sos hpg to get there to help)
What would also be interesting in a future video(s) is the HPG Blackout & the Fortress Wall, but that probably will be something covered should you get around to the Dark Age period.
It's something I'll get to eventually but I only have a very loose understanding of them at the moment since that's much further into the timeline than I've read myself.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Lots of timeline to work through. No rush! Quality before quantity, though you seem to have matched both! Thank you for the work you do!
The Blackout was caused by the Clarion Note device, which somehow introduced a kind of 'Hyperspace software virus' into the medium of Hyperspace itself The Wall was actually a network of weaponised HPGs shooting at emerging JumpShips. The Word Of Blake was also experimenting with smaller ship-scale HPG cannons, and in at least one instance, one mounted on a Mech. In all cases they needed insane amounts of Germanium to work, in the case of the Wall the Republic Of The Sphere and the Fortress Republic burning through most of their supplies of it (which is why they had to stop and get conquered by the Clans)
Super well done vid... defintely expands my understanding of the BT universe. Also, the idea of a ship misjumping and arriving in some unknown Time/Location makes for a fun story in my head (not sure if thats something that been explored by anyone officially...)
The Living Legends sourcebook is the only canon instance I'm aware of (2784 to 3058) but the Strategic Operations sourcebook describes it as a very rare event, which maybe suggests it's happened more than once. Travelling backwards is just conjecture from that same book and may not be possible.
@@SvenVanDerPlank And the Novel Far Country if you are willing to tolerate intelligent aliens in the BT universe. Admittedly in a far off unknown section of the universe where they will never/cannot interact with the main plot.
They didn't travel in time. We know the dates of the two misjumps and when they get to the planet, the earlier arrivals tell them how many hundreds of years they've been there. Since it all matches up, the only other possibility is they both time travelled the exact same amount as well as arriving at the same destination.
@@SvenVanDerPlank A hypothesis I had going for a while was that they DID jump into the future (the same length of time both times) and that the Tetatae were failed Clanner experiments at trying to make winged infantry out of himans spliced with Jade Falcons (as in the actual birds)... but I don't think it works.
Ahh @Sven van der Plank. You are doing the seminal aspects of the Battletech Universe that make it different from all other SF/Game Universes. These both limit and give it greater depth. I expect you will soon cover other such videos, such as for Communication and Water. This can then lead on to one of the aspects of Battletech that long-time players take for granted, but new players find hard to wrap their heads around - the Neo-Feudalism found in the Inner Sphere and Periphery.
Thank you very much for the donation, jefaus. I really appreciate it. As you say, interstellar travel in BattleTech has a unique flavour to it compared to other sci-fis, and it's something that feeds directly into the rise of feudalism in the setting.
Thank you. I'm not sure how many other technical aspects have enough depth to make a video on. The construction of BattleMech armour and internals maybe, but I feel like that's a topic better suited to a channel that gives more focus to the machines of war than I do, whereas explaining jump travel nicely complements the history series I'm working on since it plays a part in the way interstellar government developed in the setting. I could do HPGs but that might get me into trouble with ComStar.
It wasn't a good break. Totally burned out, struggled to get anything written, then got really ill for a week. But I'm ready to move forwards again now.
@@SvenVanDerPlank As someone struggling with health related issues since years now please prioritize your well being. We can all wait a week or too for your quality content but you only have one body. Keep up the good work and stay healthy!
Thanks for the concern, but it was just a really bad fever that took me out of action for a while. Confident it wasn't work or stress related, just an unfortunate virus or something. Receiving so many kind comments has reminded me how much I miss working on these videos so I'm looking forward to getting back to it properly in July.
Funny you should mention water. It's actually a topic I'm exploring in an upcoming mini-series I scripted last month, though it's just part of a wider history project.
May I suggest Issac Arthur's youtube channel if you don't watch him already? His thing is "Science Futurism" to which you might call extremely realistic scifi and he covers all sorts of topics inside and out with no stones unturned on them. Main reason I say is towards the end you said that interstellar civilizations were impossible and....I want to say I recall that's not actually the case? Sure faster than light travel makes things extremely easier but I want to say he's covered plenty how it's possible without...and really his videos open the eyes of what can be quite a bit to the point many scifi franchises suddenly leave a lot to be desired in all the things they can or could have done....though, with that said I still find the Battletech universe to be one of the better flushed out and realistic in that respect and he does respect the franchise even if he seems to like WH40K more based on frequency of mentioning it compared to me having only ever seen him mention BT once for it's implication heat management. That said? Awesome video, it's always been a topic I've wondered about and it's really nice to see Battletech flushes that out too.
You're welcome. It's been quite a while since the last upload. I've been pretty miserable trying to get the scripts for the next project finished but I'm hoping I can get going with those in early July.
The prices and crew count can be found in the respective TROs, or you can search for them on Sarna. I didn't want to go in to all the different specific classes in this video.
Hello again everyone. Hope you are doing well. Over the past three years of making BattleTech content, I've received quite a few comments expressing confusion about how space travel works in the setting. I've frequently thrown out terms like "quick charge" or "pirate points" in my videos, and while most folks have a loose understanding of what that would mean in context, I've never taken the time to properly explain things thoroughly. I also suspect that there are a lot of misconceptions about how these things work among the community, so I'm hoping that this bonus episode will clear things up. I wrote it to be non-specific timeline wise so I can place this one back at the start of the playlist as a proper introduction to these concepts before the main history begins.
It's been six weeks since I last uploaded anything. Apologies for the lengthy absence, but I'm happy to report that I'll be back to making Lore & History videos in July now that the scripts for the Third Succession War are finished. If all goes to plan, you'll see the first premiere next weekend. I'll hope to see some of you there. Thanks everyone.
A welcome addition to your return. I've always been curious about some of the details of FTL travel in battletech.
No need to apologize, the Third SW is a beast, 150+ years of warfare. I think most of us assumed you were working on it and weren't going to make and post a video until the scripts were at least at the 80% point.
And this was awesome, by the way.
Thanks. This was actually *very* helpful, and I like mixing it up with historical videos. Excited for the third succession war!
Yeah, I wanted to get a first draft finished so I had some idea where I was going with the episodes, but I foolishly believed that because I didn't have an entire Historical sourcebook to summarise, I'd get the 3rdSW finished in no time. Turned into a nightmare and was just as long as it's predecessors, much larger than I anticipated.
LOVED it!
“Humans tend to be more susceptible to rocks materializing inside of them.” 😂😭😂😭
Well it is a fact. Just look at kidney stones xD
"Sorry guys it seems we arrived later than usual to our destination. Hey, why are all your ships painted white?"
I just love the whole concept of space travel in Battletech as it feels much more grounded and "risky" rather than a push of a button and you're there. I love that Battletech makes the setting work with itself rather than slap on some elements and not put too much thought into it.
It's amazing how adding some extra restrictions on their usage can change the way FTL feels compared to other settings. I'm seeing some people say it's more "realistic" but it's all made-up and arbitrary when you think about it. But like you say, it just feels more grounded.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Absolutely and I love your videos, keep up the excellent work.
Ironically the richness and detail of Battletech as a setting is a direct product of how much work they had to do to justify interstellar wars being settled by big stompy robots instead of space ships. The writers had to make both the history and technology of the setting extremely detailed to produce the conditions needed for the table top game. It's a great example of how placing restrictions on creative people can dramatically improve their work product.
@@theodoremccarthy4438 It's not just why there's big stompy robots slapping each other into submission. Anything dealing with FTL travel and communication in BT is also made to explain why there's pseudo-feudal systems of fiefdoms, nobility and so on.
Within the lore, communicating directly (ie: send a message that is received almost instantly) is something that only became possible comparatively late with the HPG network, that was created when the Star League was already a thing. Before then, you could only carry messages on board of jumpships to far-off places. Sure, it's still significantly faster than light, but a message might take a couple weeks to reach its destination and then you'd have to wait another couple weeks for an answer. Any kind of meaningful back-and-forth communication could take months, if not years, depending on the number of people invovled and the distances between them.
This makes it _very_ hard for a centralized government to work and as a result, you have much smaller, more easy to manage, spheres of influence, that form the foundation of your government. The bottom-most layer of the ruling class are people ruling over one system or maybe even just a planet or moon (kind of like a knight with a single castle), then you'll have some guy who's in charge of those systems, the next in line controls a couple of those sectors and so on until you reach the top of the foodchain with a house lord.
This alone is a level of clever writing that makes Battletech a very well-designed setting, but what impresses me even more is that in the very next step, someone realized that this means that warfare would be something insanely terrifying in such a setting:
Without the ability to report what's going on on the battlefield, escalating a battle until it involves weapons of mass destruction is a given. So you end up with stuff like the Tintavel Massacre.
@@h.a.9880 Honestly, hereditary aristocracy is the most common and most stable form of government in human history. You don't have to work that hard to justify it. Good communications may make a centralized government possible, but it doesn't make them efficient or stable.
Welcome back Sven!
Thank you. It's been a little too long.
@@SvenVanDerPlankIt was worth it! Thanks, Sven!
Hey BigRed please do more videos on deeper lore. Mechs are just surface level.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Welcome! Missed your voice!
All BT writers need to see this video. I've noticed many inconsistencies, and it drives me nuts!
Pleased to hear that you think it works as an explanation. I did sneak in a couple of lines referencing some of the rules I've seen broken in the fiction.
but does it jumpdrive you nuts?
If it does, do they at least wait 1 day before doing it a second time?
I will admit to being a rule breaker. I had a Missjump in one of my games of A Time of War teleport the party to a parallel universe.
Replacement cores not being able to be jumped as replacements is a fascinating aspect I never thought of
The sourcebook talks about some of the ways you can work around this (basically grinding down the raw materials the core is made from into gravel and diluting the mix, then refining it again on the other end) but I thought that was too convoluted to go into in the video.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Don't forget the "make a skeleton jumpship around the core and jump it as normal before finishing it later" too.
@@SvenVanDerPlank That almost suggests that an intersteller "towtruck" would be more a factory ship- it carries all the spare parts you can prefab, and the ability to manufacture the rest from raw material. I imagine all such ships that didn't go on the Exodus are with ComStar or were destroyed between Aramis' war and 1st SW.
@tenchraven The in-universe term is YardShip, and you're exactly right with ComStar owning the only ones (they actually built some new ones). I always imagined them as repairing the exterior hulls but the idea of them carrying the raw materials to construct a new drive core at their destination would be a really interesting additional function.
Also wasn't there a bit of old lore about someone managing to us multipule cores to jump large things like asteroids. Something about the Ryan Ice Cartel or something right??
A fantastic Battletech palate cleanse. Not everything is blood and thunder in 3025. Thanks so much.
I guess this was a bit of a palate cleanser. I did my best to keep this focused on general usage and make as few references to conflict as I could.
Good stuff! The way space travel in BattleTech works is one of my favorite parts of the entire setting. Compared to 'push button/throw lever, get to destination' stuff it feels so much more real.
It's definitely part of the unique flavour of the setting. Taking a long time to get anywhere is fundamental in understanding why things are the way they are.
Dude hell yeah. I absolutely love blackwater and aerospace stuff in Battletech, I know why they don't get more attention in the lore but I wish they did. It's just a unique take on FTL, especially when you throw in how FTL communications work in the setting
This and hearing about all the epic space battles from your Reunification War, Star Leauge Civil War and 1st Succession War vids it really makes me want to get some WarShip minis even if nobody plays blackwater stuff lol.
Also thank you for shouting out Stratops one of your big sources, that helps out immensely.
I also love all the space stuff. Probably picked the wrong franchise if that's the bit that interests me. Learning about all this does recontextualise some of the naval battles I've described earlier in the history.
Finally more actual lore. Only a very small few actually release actual lore videos. Everyone else seems to forget that robots aren’t food, infrastructure, building materials, jobs, day to day life, clothing, historical artifacts and more. There is clearly enough there. Just most have no vision beyond metallic giants
Okay, now that I've watched the full video- that was fantastic.
As always, exceptionally well done. This is definitely worthy of praise.
Cheers, I'm glad you think so. It's a topic that I thought could do with a bit more focus. Was surprised to learn just how fleshed out the lore is on this. So many details I learned doing the research that I wanted to include because I think many folks in the community just assume it's all handwaved away (and I suspect a few authors have as well, lol).
@@SvenVanDerPlank While it is true the basics are known enough around the community - I believe the ''Wall'' technology forced all of us to rethink for a moment on what hyperspace travel meant and what the KF drive can and can't do.
Besides, imo, hyperspace travel is like sailing - we have used ships for millenia now but the true age of sailing wasn't so long ago. Inevitably, it is bound to get some breakthroughs or improvements.
I think this is the only video that goes into depth about interstellar travel in Btech, so good on you for making it!
Also, welcome back Sven
Cheers, I'm glad you found it interesting. There is another video on YT I found that presented a mathematical explanation of how they could function, but I quickly realised I was not nearly intelligent enough to understand such a technical breakdown. I threw in a line at the start of this one explicitly saying that I won't be attempting such an explanation as a joke that stemmed from that.
Well-said. Battletech does a great job of having an internal logic and system of rules that generally aren't broken (occasionally weird stuff happens, but they usually come across as rumours or exaggerations).
It's impressive to see how much thought was put into this system of space travel without really getting too deep into the actual science of it all.
Great video, as always.
Except when economics are concerned. the logic breaks down there best not stress it
@@Veretaxhow so?
Well now i know what a Lagrange-point is and already ideas of how to use it in a sci-fi rpg is popping up. Great video as always.
Cheers, always happy to hear folks can draw inspiration from the videos.
You're hands down the best Battletech lore/history content creator, this type of diversion delving into Battletech technology is no different. 👍
Thank you very much for the high praise.
I imagine that, in the golden age, ships used Lagrange points much more frequently. With a robust FTL communications network and a centralized database of known systems, it would be entirely possible to download simple calendar tables that registered where a Lagrange point would be at a specific moment. In particular, core planets should be incredibly well mapped in this regard. Of course, I imagine Com Star wouldn't let anyone but themselves do this by the time of the succession wars. But I'd bet they still have everything they need to jump to any system of the great houses.
A small bit of trivia... something that came up when discussing various Sci-fi - the K/F Drive is one the fastest FTL drives in scifi. That 30 LY jump in one week is... hard to match in most of the more reputable sci-fi. It is faster than the Traveller J6 drive (yes, the TL 16 you can never have it fast boat drive), TNG era Trek ships have to burn a full week at low Warp 9 to catch up to the jump ship before it recharges to jump again (not that you can sustain the engines that long), Honorverse ships are having to travel in the Epsilon and Theta bands to catch a Jumpship before it recharges... so unless things move at the speed of plot (Star Wars), the BT Jumpship is one of the best sci fi FTL ships, even with that week recharge times.
Puts the scale of the Inner Sphere into a bit of a new light when you start thinking of things like that. Just a fun thing that came up in a conversation. There are faster but we liked those three universes when we were discussing and well, those universes have maps that aren't trash!
yeah despite all that's good about Andor, the time it takes takes to jump between systems felt simply and wrongly way too quick, giving the impression of mere hours when in much older media it felt like it should take days at the VERY least
And then there are the in-universe command chains. For sovereigns, warlords and moguls who spend money like water. Thirty light years per HOUR.
@@djolds1 Yup, command chains rapid give you communication speeds that in credible. Only the practically time travel fast speeds of say Babylon 5's BabCom (no time delay between Earth and Epsilon Endri) or the insanity of Trek's subspace communications grid (again, no time delay what so ever over incredible distances... but Trek also has ultra-poor writing/able to see into the future with not just FTL sensors but real time FTL sensors that can see for light years instantly when the plot says it can)... but when you are used to say a Traveller game where speed is barely as fast as the fastest jump ship... the command chain trick can get rather impressive.
The HPG network, even more so. 60 LY near instant transmissions are incredible, especially the circuit design.
@@Khymerion HPGs are another example of a well thought out tech with restrictions, in BTech. The Clans have arranged near-real time Kurultais using HPG, yet it's difficult. Now if we could just get rid of the stupid walking robots, and swap in the fusion powered hovertanks...
@@djolds1 Shhhhhhhhh... we are not allowed to talk about Renegade Legion.
So much of BattleTech's aerospace stuff hasn't been explored enough. Not much has been explored in the Mechwarrior series of videogames. I'd love to see a MechWarrior game at least somewhat include Dropships, JumpShips and aerospace fighters as things you can actually use in game instead of just NPCs or cutscenes.
I suppose being JumpShip crew wouldn't be all that exciting, but a DropShip crew would be quite exciting. Getting to do planetary landings, dropping off mechs and picking them up.
An AeroTech game would be great (and possibly easier to code than an Mech Sim)
You don't want to aim for L1-L3 because their gravitational equilibrium is unstable (like trying to throw a ball and have it land exactly on the top of a hill without rolling down the other side). L4 and L5 are stable (throw the same ball and aim for a depression instead of a hill top, the ball with naturally settle at the point of gravitational equilibrium). Lagrange points are amazing, and incredibly useful in astrdynamics.
i genuinely loved this video. i know it may not perform well, but you made nerds like me very happy
i am thankful for your effort, and listing those sources. this has enhanced the lore. for example, the Malagrotta affair and Tintativa are now much more interesting. that many ships misjumping all at once has me wondering what happened at malagrotta, and now that i know just how risky pirate points are, the battle of tintativa is even more stunning.
considering kf drives are a cornerstone of how the setting works, its suprising how little its discussed
I'm really pleased you enjoyed it. I just realised reading your comment I haven't updated my source list in a while, so I've added in the relevant ones.
There is a infamous real-world incident called the Honda Point Disaster where an entire US Navy destroyer flotilla ran themselves into rocks on the California coast due to fog and bad navigation. They were taking their nav instructions from the flagship. So if the Taurian admiral had everybody copying his FTL calculations, they'd all drop out into the wrong spot in Malgrotta.
That would be an interesting possibility. I don't believe the sourcebook offers any explanation but I think at the time I imagined it was because of an anomaly lying along their specific route, kind of like how Far Country later explained how two JumpShips made it to the Tetatae system by jumping between the same two stars at a precise moment.
@@SvenVanDerPlank I confess I have no knowledge/have not read Far Country, so I can't argue, but naval formations using identical instructions from the flag for movement is a common practice. There are good reasons to do it, but sometimes bad results.
@@MM22966Far Country is... controversial. The fairest consensus is that it's a good sci-fi story but bad BattleTech.
Due to a misJump, the characters end up on a world with talking bird-aliens. They're still technologically backward having only recently started living in log cabins but it's about as close as you can get to crossing the no-aliens rule without actually crossing it. It also helps that the location is unknown and disconnected from the wider universe, so noone knows about it and anyone who gets there can't ever go home...
Author Peter Rice copped a lot more flak than he really deserved for it and I'm fairly sure Far Country is the only novel he ever wrote - it was supposed to be in support of a planned 'primitive aliens' sourcebook that never eventuated, so it's not like he was just doing it to be edgy.
Then, much later Herb Beas wrote an unofficial campaign track called Far No Longer with the intention of it being a rules-compliant but non-canon Halloween product. The premise is that contact with Humans supercharged the development of the Tetatae (who now call themselves the Tetakuni), and a merc company from 3152 who get shunted far, far into the future find a ruined Inner Sphere ruled by the bird-aliens.
thank you so much for doing such an important video. for all the work you are doing establishing game canon, please spend some more time in warship classifications and all things regarding the space-side of the game because it simply hasn't gotten enough love
You're welcome. I might look into doing a video about the development and evolution of WarShip designs in the future since it is a topic I'm interested in, but for the time being I want to get back to my history series.
It actually is possible to jump in a replacement drive, it's just extremely difficult and expensive. You basically have to construct an entire temporary JumpShip around the new core (i.e. attach the drive, cooling systems, controls, and everything else you need to make it jump), jump it to the system with the stricken ship, disassemble the components around the core and tow it to the ship whose core needs replacing (after having removed and towed away the original core, as even broken the mass of germanium will interfere with the new core if too close). For understandable reason this isn't normally done since at that point you've already almost built another JumpShip already, but it could be practical to, say, salvage a WarShip whose core has been destroyed, as WarShips have a lot of other expensive and hard to manufacture components in addition to the core (chiefly the massive transit drives).
Also, there is a theoretical possibility of taking advantage of the phenomena where misjumped ships sometimes end up emerging far outside their normal jump range by using a precisely timed activation of a LF battery during a jump to trigger a sort of controlled misjump, sending the ship across far greater distance than normally possible. However, since this would invariably destroy the KF core and would result in destruction of the ship if the calculations were even slightly off, by 3025 nobody has ever been crazy enough to actually test out that idea.
That's an interesting theory on "super-jumping." Wonder if anyone will ever be mad enough to give it a go?
I was aware of ways in which replacement drives can be moved through space, but it would have been a lengthy digression I couldn't be assed with. "Functionally impossible" was good enough for this script.
Possibly can work if we think in "heatsink" terms...
@@SvenVanDerPlank There is actually someone who did this! The Word of Blake with their "Super Jump Drive". It's exactly what was described, a KF drive hooked to a LF battery with several safety features disabled, which would initiate a second jump 1 second after starting the first, giving it a theoretical 900 LY range on the jump, albeit completely destroying both drive and battery, as well as sending a gigantic emergence signature.
It's also rummored that someone else did try this prior to 3025, a company named Interconnectedness Unlimited allegedly developed the system in the early 29th century, and outfited the Lucretia with it around the 3000. That ship is also responsible for the New Syrtis Shipyards Incident of 3022, in which the drydocks there where heavily damaged by the Lucretia initiating a jump while on the docks. The Super Jump Drive of Interconnectedness did have a few differences with the WoB one, namely extra systems and safety features (which increased mass and costs) and a 120LY limit on the super jump, but with some hope of survival for the drive and battery.
There have been a few deliberate SuperJumps but you lose both the drive and the LF battery so it's an absolute desperate move
Coming from the Traveller background, this was fascinating.
These videos on the internal mechanics of the setting are really useful
Especially with how spread out information on a lot of stuff in BattleTech can be.
One of the key goals of this series is to try and bring all that information together in one place and summarise it (lol, 24 hours already) for people to catch up with 40 years of lore.
@@SvenVanDerPlank 24 is not that bad so far considering just how much there is,
Really appreciate it, especially for some of the more obscure stuff
Its like a technical manual but video form! I love it!
awesome video! i'm only just getting into battletech and your videos are pleasant informative and interesting, it's not always easy to find a great introduction to a settings lore but youve provided it with these vids!
Thank you, I'm pleased you've found the videos interesting. Always happy to hear that people are learning something from them.
I wasn't going to watch this video, because I already know how these work, but I will listen to you talk about any Battletech stuff Sven.
Cheers for another video!
You're welcome. Hopefully it proved entertaining even if it was something you're already familiar with.
Thank you for the information. I've always been curious about the zenith and nadir points, and their importance. Along with pirate points to. A lot of info, but very straight forward.
You're welcome. Happy to hear that I was able to provide a clear explanation.
Absolutely outstanding Sven and well worth your research time!! A perfect blend of BT lore/cannon and our own current scientific knowledge. Special gratitude on including Lagrange points. When I first learned of them years ago my brain overclocked itself trying to calculate the 1000+ or more possible L points in our own Sol system. Kudos & Huzzahs!! Keep up the great work Sven and can't wait for next Succession war episode!!
Thank you, really pleased you enjoyed it. I should say, while Lagrange Points exist between any two astronomical bodies in a system (Earth and Moon for example) the way the term is used in BattleTech fiction is almost exclusively in relation to a star and planet. On the very rare occasions something jumps into orbit, it's always referred to as a pirate point. So I guess a lot of those Transiet Points are actually the Lagrange of two objects other than the star.
This is one of the most interesting parts of the battletech lore. Everything else is pretty standard sci-fi. Huge interstellar empires, giant robots etc. But the way space travel is handled is incredibly unique and i love it. Watching the old battletech cartoon theres a throw away line where adam says "and now we wait 2 weeks for the engine to charge and do it all over again." I was like....wait what?
Sven, you're the man! Best low lore videos out here.
Thank you, glad you like them.
I believe you might have made a mistake (by omission!) during the Lagrange point explanation - not all Lagrange points are valid for K-F Drive usage, only the L1 points. This is elaborated upon in _Strategic Operations: Advanced Aerospace Rules_ on pages 122 and 123, which states:
"Anyway, the short of it is this: in any set of LaGrange points, only the L1 point－well, a place near it－is a valid jump point. The actual jump point will wiggle around the real L1 point due to the influence of the local stars and planets."
Earlier the text explains that this is due to the fact that, of all the Lagrange points, the L1 is the only one where the gravitational pull of the planet and star _actually_ balance out, which is what matters for the K-F Drive to do its K-F-y things.
That line about L1 is a mistake. Just put it down to that section being spoken by a character giving their own presentation.
There are countless examples in the lore that contradict that, and as another commenter pointed out, my explanation of L1 is incorrect. It's actually closer to the sun than the point where the two gravities equalise. It's just close enough to the planet that its gravity stabilises it's trajectory into an orbit whereas it's natural velocity would have it fall into the sun. So if what you said was correct, none of the Lagrange Points would be valid, which is obviously not the case.
An awesome video! I have always preferred Battletech's take on interstellar travel than those used in other sci-fi franchises. It just seems more 'realistic.'
I'm with you. Obviously it's all make believe so there's nothing more or less realistic about it, but I love how introducing extra limitations/complications to space travel has an impact on so many other aspects of the setting.
What do you think of warhammer 40k ftl
Well I'm only loosely familiar with 40K lore but travelling through the demon-infested warp to get anywhere is a fun concept that fits perfectly with setting.
Great work as always. Appreciate your dedication to bringing us these lore and background videos that are deep but not long winded
I used to play MW2 on pc with my dad. Clans just came out and Ive been enjoying the battletech universe again. But I didnt want to sort out a million books for myself to read. So thankyou for this very conclusive and effective playlist of history!
Really enjoyed this. I’d be very interested to see more videos about specific items of technology and their evolution through time.
I have thought about making a video on the early development of WarShips or BattleMechs and discussing the evolution in design. It's an idea I might return to in the future.
OK, found the reference I was looking for about Rudolph Ryan and his fleets of iceships (AKA the Ryan Cartel). To solve the water shortages on many worlds, they would jump giant icecubes between stars. They would cut off chunks of asteroid ice 2km on a side. Tug them out to a jump point. Then a fleet of 16 ships in a precise formation (roughly globe shaped) would jump them to the system that needed them. This was in 2177.
(House Kurita Source book p15-17)
This should of course be impossible due to the core proximity issue.
(this was published a year before the release of D&J so obviously like in so may other cases the details of story and technology had not quite been locked down yet)
There's more about Ryan's Iceships in other sources. All those jump drives were controlled from a command vessel. Each was communicating with each other to create an overlapping field.
They could theoretically tug a 28km-radius sphere of ice (but they would need to assemble the JumpDrive right in the centre), so for practical purposes single JumpShips tugged much smaller volumes of ice.
But they also did a more complex manoever where 16 Jump ships arranged in polygon of 28km edges around a mass could all jump at once and drag through hundreds of thousands of cubic kilometeres of ice at once inside the 'bubble-of-bubbles'
@jamesperkins191 I don't know where you're getting 28km from. Every source I've read agrees on 2km³, nowhere near the hundreds of thousands you're suggesting.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Wouldn't the theoretical maximum be the size of the emergence-bubble?
Ginally got around to watching this and, even though you lore videos mention the different jump points, it just dawned on me how much more use of the three dimensional plane the BattleTech interstellar travel lore uses. I think that adds to the realism, because its not just about getting from point A to point B, but rather also factors in the need to respect real life orbital mechanics at the two endpoints.
It's wierd though, solar-systems are 3D but the Jump maps are 2D...
Thank you for this in depth video that clarified a couple of things!
You're welcome. Glad I could clear things up.
Great video! I had the Jumpships and Dropships book, until a "friend" at university stole it with a few others books and BT games boxes....
Great to see another educational vid. Thank you so much!🎉❤
Sidenote: great solar charts. Really assists in the explanation of safe jump points.
Thanks Harbinger, glad you enjoyed it. The solar chart in the thumbnail isn't mine. It's in both Strategic Operations and 25 Years of BattleTech Art.
"I said I was going to do something with the article on jump points on Sarna back in October, and I've got this 12 kB text file of notes and references sitting on my desktop I haven't done anything with since then, maybe I should actually..."
"Meh, it looks like nobody else has touched anything since then anyway. No rush. I doubt there's much demand anyway."
--me, literally last freakin' Tuesday
11:48 This diagram first appeared in DropShips & JumpShips. It's... misleading. In the Terran system, the "Non-Standard Transit Distance" only saves about 6% of travel time at 1G.
15:15 Something that doesn't get specifically pointed out much in BattleTech sourcebooks is that every pair of "primary" and "secondary" has these five points. There's an L1 between Sol and Terra, and there's an L1 between Terra and Luna. 1G transit time from the Sol-Terra L1 is about 7 hours, while time from the Terra-Luna L1 is about 3.25 hours. (Travel time from Terra to Luna is about 3.5 hours).
(For comparison, BattleSpace mentions a "pirate point" [whatever that means!] about 11 hours out from Luthien, probably referring to one of the novels.)
Also: The in-universe instructor in Strategic Operations seems to believe that only L1's (more specifically, a point *near* the L1, long story) are valid jump points. I think there are reasons to treat him as unreliable, though.
19:34 I'm going to sit on my hands here and simply point out that different pages in Strategic Operations (the latest version of the "space rules") disagree with each other on what is and is not a "pirate point."
The Manassas from Living Legends is one such warship with an experimental Jump Drive that popped up after 300 years stuck in hyperspace from the Exodus. While the RPG adventure states that the vessel should be destroyed, crippled or captured by Com Star at the end, it's whereabouts are still unknown. If I ran this adventure again, I'd have it make another 'time-jump' from 3058 to.. maybe the Jihad, Dark Age, or Il Clan era. I whacky way to deliver your players from the 3050 on to the new eras.
Welcome back Sven !
Good video to signal your return, as not everyone take the time to explain fully the basics of space travel in BattleTech.
Thank you, good to get something published again. And yes, it's a topic that does require some explanation that I've neglected myself.
The Kearney Fuchida drive works very well thank you
Hell yeah, new Vanderplank
Masterfully explained. Thank you! ❤
You're welcome, I did my best to explain things clearly.
I thought the Lagrange points WERE the pirate points... I'm learning!
Fantastic video and something I've only ever picked up in bits and pieces from lore videos talking about other things.
There are plenty of examples in the lore where the terms Lagrange/Pirate points are used interchangeably, but the rulebooks that focus on this aspect of the lore are quite specific in saying they're different.
Lore for the Lore God! Knowledge for the Fluff Throne!
Another refugee from warhammer.welcome brother AVE IMPERATOR
Ink for the administratum!?
Battletech's FTL travel system is so cool. If only the writers would play with it beyond the occasional abstracted and unspecific use of pirate points. But then, that would require some small degree of attention be paid beyond the planetary surface. And that in turn may result in something for even a moment appearing to be cooler than mechs. Which would naturally destroy the franchise either by making folks interested in other things, or making mech fans feel completely and entirely abandoned by the small diversion away from what must be the only cool thing about the Battletech setting.
Some points of fact that I noticed. Part of the reason the experimentation with K-F physics was not experimented with can be inferred to have been the incredible energy requirements necessary to do so. But it is consistently stated or implied throughout the sourcebooks that the larger factor was academic entrenchment against K & F's claims which violated and necessarily rejected then embraced Einsteinian relativity.
The sanctity of the jumpship also varies in time. Prior to and during the early days of the succession wars there was practically no stigma against striking jump ships beyond that which generally existed towards the assault of innocents and collateral targets which they often were. Beyond the clan invasion this stigma similarly began to weaken. The clans generally played game owing to their abhorrence of waste which they view the destruction of a jumpship as. But they have never viewed that as the extreme violation that the IS did. As I recall there are a couple examples of the Clans attacking jumpships that did not submit to their orders horrifying the IS as a result. Further, as jump drive production increased during the renaissance period and beyond the IS's own stigma has waned. Even after the destruction wrought upon jumpdrive production by the Jihad and the interference of Republican black ops in rebuilding those capabilities, this trend of decreasing concern continued. In the Dark Age and early IlClan eras the destruction of a jumpship is merely a trash move, not the near atrocity it once was at the height of the third succession war.
Battletech jump drive: "You may randomly disappear or re-appear in the middle of solid objects in the course of a interdimensional jump."
(Looks at Warhammer 40K)
"On the other hand, you will not be required to traverse demon-infested hell dimensions to use it, nor let said dimension's madness and their extremely disagreeable denizens into sidereal space. So there's that."
I mean, you say that...
www.sarna.net/wiki/Philadelphia_(Individual_Aquilla-class_JumpShip)
Beautifully done. Now, can you please arrange for an Invader to make a temporal misjump into the Earth-Luna L1? Today.
Can't beat a setting where FTL travel and comms aren't just handwaved away.
This is a great video! I do have an idea for a future video based on this, perhaps maybe part of a Halloween edition, compiled with other similar stories; Missjumps. Perhaps something like what would a group of spacers drinking late at night talk about to mess with new employees or visitors haha. Sort of a campfire story of the future. Other than maybe Far Country, I am not sure how much we actually know about failed jumps in this universe other than ships don’t always end up anywhere where they can report back in.
There's rumours about what happend to the Philadelphia, a few semi-canon stories about ships going backwards or sideways in time, the unoffical but rules-compliant Far No Longer (sequel to Far Country) by Herb Beas, the two Nebula California sourcebooks (the first one riffs on superheroes, the second on Star Wars)
There's the War Of The Worlds sourcebook which as far as I can tell doesn't rely on a MisJump and that Zombie adventure that's fully canonical...
There's probably nore I've forgotten.
I've been doing my own project where the Dragoon Compromise came earlier and went further in the Crusader Clans' favour so a much bigger force leaves to recon the Inner Sphere... but something goes funny with Hyperspace (it was ComStar, but that's not important) and they HyperLock for thousands of years, emerging into the universe of... DUNE!
I'm so glad you did this! For the longest of times I didn't quite understand how it worked. I knew it was different than lightspeed for Star wars and other such things, but I couldn't quite grasp what the difference was. This dose a great job of explaining it. And in many respects I actually like this system better than say Star wars or Star Trek because it feels more grounded believable. Plus the extra rules in place add restrictions that are fun to play around with, mechanically speaking.
I'm glad you found the video useful in explaining how these things function. Like you say, adding a handful of extra restrictions on its use makes the technology so much more flavourful than its peers from other sci-fi.
Sheeeesh. This is EXACTLY the topic I've been ruminating about this past week. Thank you.
Well hopefully this dispelled some of the mystery around the topic for you.
So maybe things are different in the BattleTech fluff, but in ours the L1 Lagrange point isn't the point where the gravitational pulls equalize.
In the case of the Sun-Earth L1 point the Earths pull is tiny compared to the Suns pull. Which makes some sense when you remember that objects at Lagrange points should be orbiting the sun, and orbits require gravitational attraction to work.
You can do the back of the envelope math really easily:
Earth-L1 distance is about 1.5 million kilometers.
Sun-L1 distance is about 150 million kilometers (i.e. about 100x the Earth-L1 distance)
The Sun is about 330,000x the Earths mass.
Gravitational attraction is proportional to M/r^2.
For Earth at L1 we can call this "1" (1 Earth mass / 1 Earth-L1 distance)
For the Sun at L1 this is 330,000/100^2 = ~33 (330,000 Earth's mass / (100 Earth-L1 distances)^2)
That is completely my failure to explain it properly and not realising what was actually happening until you made me question it. It's on a slower orbit that would normally have it fall into the sun, but the gravity of the planet adds another force bringing it into a more stable orbit.
Kinda wish you had made mention of how JumpShips, WarShips, and the like are internally arranged. While the function of the drive was laid out early in the IP many of the early artists didn't follow the "skyscrapers in space" concept and stuck to the old "space is an ocean" orientation for their designs.
It's one of those things that doesn't make much sense that I just didn't want to get bogged down in. Like you say, the lore is quite clear that the larger vessels are oriented like flying skyscrapers, but the artists obviously didn't get that memo.
There is an explanation given in one sourcebook I read that basically said during the early years of space exploration, the admiralty wanted their ships to look a certain way to align with classical ideas of how a vessel should look, and forced designers to pay homage to that in the placement of windows on the bridge, and then that style has just become ingrained over time.
"It looks like that because that's the way ships look."
Great episode. I would love a few more like these, maybe focused on the basics of battlemech technology, warships, fighters, and the like. Altough i understand the main focus of the channel is on history.
I did have an idea to explore the emergence of new military technologies and starting talking about the evolution of design in the early centuries. It's something you might see on the channel at some point down the line.
I never knew about the "fall into proximity" maneuver. makes total sense
There's a lot of nuance to KF travel that only gets brought up in the very few sourcebooks that provide a deep focus on how that technology works. Most of the authors of sourcebook writers are probably unaware of that and so it never gets a mention.
@@SvenVanDerPlank where was the "fall in" maneuver mentioned?
Strategic Operations somewhere
@@SvenVanDerPlank huh, how'd I miss that
Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into making this video! It’s deeply appreciated and I enjoyed the video. I knew some of the basics of this but I never realized how little I knew the jump drives and the ships that use them which a big deal because I like WarShips a lot.
You're welcome, I'm glad you're enjoying them. Thanks for your continued support.
This is great, never got a great explanation for space jumping in BattleTech!
Another interesting fact is that if you jump far enough away (15AU) the emergence wave is undetectable allowing for stealth insertions into system (although slow)
I did my best to try and keep this video focused on general use. Didn't want to get into strategies for invasion and subterfuge but it's maybe a topic for another video down the line.
I'd been wondering about use of Lagrange points after some of the warship battles of the early succession wars. The risk of there being more mass there than your jump could otherwise displace is a pretty good reason to avoid them normally.
Hell yeah. Not only did some of the authors offer contradictions, only a few of them explained it all correctly, and yet not as well as this rendition.
Happy to hear I did a good job explaining things. Who knows, maybe this video will be used as a reference by some future writer for the series.
The sheer amount of raw STUFF related to FTL travel in BT is one of the reasons I love it so.
And more importantly, the lore NEVER flexes on this (except in some outliers, like Far Country, but thats Far Country)
There is no "Last Jedi using a tiny shuttle to cross half the galaxy in less than a day because we said so" kinda stuff here, no. You're locked in by what is set before and the hard rules do not bend.
Even stuff like the Fortress Wall for the Republic of the Sphere has a solid logic to it that works within the universe. Thats rare in sci-fi these days.
I agree in principle but I did sneak in a couple lines into the video to cover some of the novels I've read playing a little loose with the rules that the sourcebooks say are absolute. In Blood of Heroes, a GDL JumpShip does a double-jump to get from Glengarry to Skye then Mizar, both slightly over 30LY. And there's defo at least one instance of a vessel making a dramatic escape by jumping before the drive core is fully charged but I can't recall exactly where I read it. We'll say it was 99% finished.
@@SvenVanDerPlank But KillerOrca's right: Not many franchises would repeatedly use the (very tedious) movement trope of a jump drive or a "pony express" chain to move their characters about, and do it with pride. Distances feel real and troubling vast in BT, unlike things starting with "Star".
Thank you for making this video, it's wonderfully detailed. You're diligent video maker!!!
No problem, Wrangler. I was surprised to learn just how much information there was on this topic when I first started doing the research for it. The more I found out, the more detail I wanted to include either because I've seen others get it wrong or it was something I was mistaken on myself.
Excellent topic! We are getting a lot of BT lore now but we are definetly still missing basics. Thanks for your efforts!
Same confusion happens with how HPGs work, which is how we get monstrosities like live video teleconferences during the FedCom civil war emerging.
One of my favorite videos you've done! Very interesting! I'd love to see a follow up on any of the different weapon types; how the tech was invented and evolved to the "modern era". Battlefield uses and limitations.
Your videos are some of the best I've seen, in depth and extremely detailed. I've loved the game and setting since I was a teenager in the 80's. Several friends and I still play tabletop at least once a month.
I can't wait to see what you have next time.
Thank you, I'm pleased you found it interesting. I may do some more tech breakdowns in the future, but I want to get back to the main history for now.
@SvenVanDerPlank I'm very excited for your take the 3rd succession war.
Hello Sven.
A very nicely made video, and informative. Even to us old 'Grey Warriors' that have been around for 4 decades.
The L-4 and L-5 jump points are not used as often as the polar points of the target star, even in solar systems where the orbital paths are well known, and maps are highly detailed.
The systems where this is done regularly are, in the vast majority, highly developed and with substantial space-based infrastructure, military outposts, and military bases.
Although 'safer' than using a 'Pirate' point, it is 'risky' to use such jump points in a system that is now well documented. This has not kept various military uses for such jump points from being leveraged to shorten the time needed to transit to a target.
It can take upwards of a week or more to boost out to, or inwards from, one of the Polar jump points for interstellar transit. Jumping to the L-4, or L-5 points results in a far shorter transit time to the target planet or space-based target. The reduction in the transit time from Emergence Point to Target makes it worth the risk of using such jump points for military purposes.
Civilian cargo shipping though, usually uses the Polar Points for safety reasons and takes the 'hit' on transit times between a planet and a jump point. It is just better to take longer to deliver goods than risk the ship to an accidental mis-jump. Civilian Jump Ships that do use the L-4 and L-5 points are usually crewed by personnel that have extensive databanks about the systems they will most likely jump to, or have former military personnel that have experience using such points.
After the initial newness of Battletech wore off on my playing group, we all started to keep records of our battles, salvage, money, etc. About 7 years after the initial release of Battletech, My Mercenary Company had been successful enough to buy a 'spare' Overlord Drop Ship, which they towed out to the L-4 point in a fairly busy solar system. There, they outfitted it with the equipment necessary to recharge jump ships via the use of microwave beaming of power.
After a few more years, another Overlord was obtained and the two were mounted base to base (engine area to engine area) and spun for 'gravity'. Since neither had workable engines and had to be towed into place, the engine areas were useful for the resulting 'space station'. To make things 'easier', I had caused to have built a 'connector' that the two Drop Ship hulls would anchor to. Accessible via the axis of spin, since the 'connector' looked like a 'tin can', and had docking ports built at the zero Gee axis of spin points of the 'can'. Over the years, these two former Overlords were extensively refitted as spin-gravity habitats with all the 'bells and whistles' one could want in space. Accommodations, hospital, aid stations, gardens, hydroponics bays, power generation decks, etc.
After a couple of character decades, this 'station' was making more money than the Mercenary Company itself, and the profits were used to 'tide things over' when contracts were either sparse or proved less than profitable.
Since this 'station' was not in a high-traffic solar system that already had extensive space-based infrastructure, it did well for itself. Further expansions to the L-5, and L-1 points were invested in, with a deal with the planetary government and an understanding with the planetary militia.
The resulting solar system became my 'base of operations' for what was now a Mercenary Regiment, and the planet became the 'home' of the Regiment's dependents. The technical staff were split between the various stations and planet-side bases.
By the time we 'gave up' playing (sometime during the Dark Age) as a group, my Mercs had expanded operations to include several other stations. Including extensive ones at the Polar Jump Points. The unit also was engaged in extensive mining efforts on several of the available moons of the other planets, as well as mining a fairly extensive asteroid field.
I figure that by the time the game got to the ILKhan Era, that solar system would be a major trade hub, and the Mercs would have expanded to upwards of three Regiments in size, as well as their 'spin-off' corporations investing in building a manufacturing facility to build Jump Drives out at the System's edge. By the way, the System in question is located outside the Inner Sphere, and just past the nearer Periphery governmental areas.
Thank you, Frank. Interesting to hear about a group who delved into that aspect of the lore when I imagine so many handwave it away in their own adventures.
@@SvenVanDerPlank I think it was mostly due to the players wanting to have the battles they played mean something. That, and the fact that almost all of us had firm backgrounds in roleplaying games with continuing characters.
Another great video, it's great to see the inner workings of the BT universe
Excellent work Sven!
First episode I get to watch when it drops, yay!
Well I'm hoping to get back to regular weekend uploads in July.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Yay! Also.
I appreciate the detail that went into this.
My fiance, who is a huge BT fan, made mention of..."things" rumored to be seen by people who momentarily get stuck in hyperspace, despite a successful trip. Any comment on those occurrences?
Or "jump psychosis?"
Fact or fiction? You decide.
www.sarna.net/wiki/Philadelphia_(Individual_Aquilla-class_JumpShip)
A really great jump can reach Far Country!
A really terrible jump, you mean.
Great video, well worth the wait! Thank you so much sir!
My pleasure. Glad you enjoyed.
nice in universe voice. I am honestly kind of curious about the wobblies and the hansiatic league. there is not that much available on them on youtube.
Can you somewhat expand upon it, and make a video on how a pirate/mercs raid on a planet would go? The process, how long will it take, etc. (and the time it will take for the reinforcement sent by nearby garrison after receiving the sos hpg to get there to help)
What would also be interesting in a future video(s) is the HPG Blackout & the Fortress Wall, but that probably will be something covered should you get around to the Dark Age period.
It's something I'll get to eventually but I only have a very loose understanding of them at the moment since that's much further into the timeline than I've read myself.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Lots of timeline to work through. No rush! Quality before quantity, though you seem to have matched both! Thank you for the work you do!
The Blackout was caused by the Clarion Note device, which somehow introduced a kind of 'Hyperspace software virus' into the medium of Hyperspace itself
The Wall was actually a network of weaponised HPGs shooting at emerging JumpShips. The Word Of Blake was also experimenting with smaller ship-scale HPG cannons, and in at least one instance, one mounted on a Mech.
In all cases they needed insane amounts of Germanium to work, in the case of the Wall the Republic Of The Sphere and the Fortress Republic burning through most of their supplies of it (which is why they had to stop and get conquered by the Clans)
Super well done vid... defintely expands my understanding of the BT universe. Also, the idea of a ship misjumping and arriving in some unknown Time/Location makes for a fun story in my head (not sure if thats something that been explored by anyone officially...)
The Living Legends sourcebook is the only canon instance I'm aware of (2784 to 3058) but the Strategic Operations sourcebook describes it as a very rare event, which maybe suggests it's happened more than once. Travelling backwards is just conjecture from that same book and may not be possible.
@@SvenVanDerPlank And the Novel Far Country if you are willing to tolerate intelligent aliens in the BT universe. Admittedly in a far off unknown section of the universe where they will never/cannot interact with the main plot.
They didn't travel in time. We know the dates of the two misjumps and when they get to the planet, the earlier arrivals tell them how many hundreds of years they've been there. Since it all matches up, the only other possibility is they both time travelled the exact same amount as well as arriving at the same destination.
@@SvenVanDerPlank A hypothesis I had going for a while was that they DID jump into the future (the same length of time both times) and that the Tetatae were failed Clanner experiments at trying to make winged infantry out of himans spliced with Jade Falcons (as in the actual birds)... but I don't think it works.
Great video as always.
Glad you're back brother.
Cheers. We'll see if I'm back for good next weekend depending on if I can get another video out.
Ahh @Sven van der Plank. You are doing the seminal aspects of the Battletech Universe that make it different from all other SF/Game Universes. These both limit and give it greater depth.
I expect you will soon cover other such videos, such as for Communication and Water. This can then lead on to one of the aspects of Battletech that long-time players take for granted, but new players find hard to wrap their heads around - the Neo-Feudalism found in the Inner Sphere and Periphery.
Thank you very much for the donation, jefaus. I really appreciate it. As you say, interstellar travel in BattleTech has a unique flavour to it compared to other sci-fis, and it's something that feeds directly into the rise of feudalism in the setting.
Awesome video! Would not mind more videos of the various technologies of the BattleTech universe.
Thank you. I'm not sure how many other technical aspects have enough depth to make a video on. The construction of BattleMech armour and internals maybe, but I feel like that's a topic better suited to a channel that gives more focus to the machines of war than I do, whereas explaining jump travel nicely complements the history series I'm working on since it plays a part in the way interstellar government developed in the setting. I could do HPGs but that might get me into trouble with ComStar.
@@SvenVanDerPlank the HPGs workings, operations, and placements would be real interesting, but as you say ComStar might not be to happy. 😆
what a lovely Monday Surprise! New Sven!
Well done sven, this is actually a super cool video
Thank you, glad you thought so.
My wife asks me, are you watching history documentaries... With a very serious look, I reply "Yes"
Hope you had a good break, thanks for the Friday upload
It wasn't a good break. Totally burned out, struggled to get anything written, then got really ill for a week. But I'm ready to move forwards again now.
@@SvenVanDerPlank As someone struggling with health related issues since years now please prioritize your well being. We can all wait a week or too for your quality content but you only have one body. Keep up the good work and stay healthy!
Thanks for the concern, but it was just a really bad fever that took me out of action for a while. Confident it wasn't work or stress related, just an unfortunate virus or something. Receiving so many kind comments has reminded me how much I miss working on these videos so I'm looking forward to getting back to it properly in July.
Thank you for this informative Installment! Please do more videos on topics such as Communications, Water and then Neo-Feudalism!
Funny you should mention water. It's actually a topic I'm exploring in an upcoming mini-series I scripted last month, though it's just part of a wider history project.
The crew of SLS Manassas was not harmed during the making of this motion picture.
Amazing as always mate
Love these types of videos!
Thanks, glad to hear it. I do want to focus on the history ones, but it is nice to talk about a more specific topic every now and again.
Yei! You are back with more videos! Happy I am! 😁
Glad to hear it. Hopefully more to come in July.
Jump ships and Dropships was a great book. It gave us the mighty Baron!
May I suggest Issac Arthur's youtube channel if you don't watch him already? His thing is "Science Futurism" to which you might call extremely realistic scifi and he covers all sorts of topics inside and out with no stones unturned on them. Main reason I say is towards the end you said that interstellar civilizations were impossible and....I want to say I recall that's not actually the case?
Sure faster than light travel makes things extremely easier but I want to say he's covered plenty how it's possible without...and really his videos open the eyes of what can be quite a bit to the point many scifi franchises suddenly leave a lot to be desired in all the things they can or could have done....though, with that said I still find the Battletech universe to be one of the better flushed out and realistic in that respect and he does respect the franchise even if he seems to like WH40K more based on frequency of mentioning it compared to me having only ever seen him mention BT once for it's implication heat management.
That said? Awesome video, it's always been a topic I've wondered about and it's really nice to see Battletech flushes that out too.
Home, home on Lagrange
Where the space debris always collects.
We possess, so it seems, two of man's greatest dreams:
Solar power, and zero-G sex!
Long time no hear, thank you again for your dedication and work.
You're welcome. It's been quite a while since the last upload. I've been pretty miserable trying to get the scripts for the next project finished but I'm hoping I can get going with those in early July.
Great video as always. Are there any available metrics for the cost, personnel and time needed to construct a standard jumpship?
The prices and crew count can be found in the respective TROs, or you can search for them on Sarna. I didn't want to go in to all the different specific classes in this video.
Sorry was late to the party getting to this video. Very much liked it!