@@LeifurTjorkilson im hoping it will be up by monday at latest. TH-cam studio is effing things up on a pretty good scale. That or i have no idea what im doing. Probably both. Long story short it wouldn't process any of the videos until i verified the channel. I verified it, but studio still wont process the videos still. Im waiting for a response from creator help on it.
I think you missed the coolest part about Bolos... They have the personalities of knight errants, dedicated beyond all else to the defense of humans, or vengeance for their loss. Stick a Bolo in Central Park, with no enemies to fight, and it would gladly use its cannons' traverse to gently toss giggling children a meter or so in the air, and catch them again. Yep, these monstrous killing machines are as absolutely loyal to Mankind as Skynet was disloyal.
You left out the most terrifying thing about bolos: They're fully sentient machines with all the same emotions as people that are capable of self repair from all but total destruction from roughly the Mark 28 onwards. Even if seemingly completely destroyed, it's entirely possible a bolo will quite literally ressamble itself from it's seemingly molten slag to keep killing until it literally can't because it's literally been vaporized, or there's no more enemies left to kill. So much so, that it's heavily implied by one Keith Laumer's original Bolo stories that Bolos outlasted humanity itself, and continued killing humanity's enemies for millenia afterwords. Out of nothing more then their own personal hatred of those species.
thats why i called them fully sapient. is just the the less wordy way of saying it, you may not notice but i have a slight stutter and kinda get caught on words sometimes. also the last bolo was recovered in the 118th century by the descendants of bolos and their pilots mental fusion.
On the other end of the Bolo spectrum, was the story of a much earlier model guarding a base on the moon with orders to hold its ground until relieved. By the end of the human versus human war was over it was still holding its position, operating autonomously, and had lost its reciever antenna so it could not hear the responses of its IFF requests.
@@brett9675 the mk 34 was built at the same time as the 33. Its the support model. They also figure in 3 stories, old soldiers, turkey and bolo strike.
@@atankersview "Turkey", I haven't heard of that one, and I thought I knew all of the books, but I was wondering if on your other channel, you could talk about the "Hell Rail" super rail guns??
It had this sci fi original movie produced by asylum studios called mega shark vs mecha shark. The mecha shark can drive on land and its about the size of a massive building. In transformers there's this autobot named broadside that can transform into an aircraft carrier.
And Bolos get even more riodiculous than that. Not only do they have terrifying firepower (which gets even BETTER with the last Marks, that use small Hellbores as secondary weapons and can carry hellrails, weapons so powerful they are physically limited to being fired at orbital targets to avoid messing up planets), but they have manufacturing capabilities, meaning as long as the bolo has access to raw materials it can self-repair and manufacture it's own ammo. They also carry their own drone support. They are truely all-in-one weapons meant to be able to handle ANYTHING one can possibly throw at them without needing support.
What most don't realize, is that the forest that is burning and being ground to toothpicks, is in fact an enchanted elven forest.😛 In al seriousmess I remember when shimmeringsword made this image back in the day, the spacebattles forums went nuts, and many a bolostomp award was issued, good times.
Keith Laumer’s greatest creations. I always loved how he laid out the entire BOLO family tree from the Mark I to the end of the Concordiat. It’s really kind of impressive how he predicted so many of the features we are seeing on modern MBTs. Everything from unit wide datalinks to automated hard kill anti-missile systems and beyond. If I hadn’t bought Steve Jackson Games O.G.R.E. way back in the Stone Age I might have missed out on these stories.
It should be noted that an old Mk XXVIII (28) Bolo could intercept a missile barrage of around 400 missiles that go well above Mach 25 and have only something around 30 missiles leak out of that barrage.
The only reason I found out about Bolo's and this amazing scifi universe is from watching a recent interview with the US Colonel in charge of developing the next generation of vehicles and AI integration directly referenced David Drake and the Hammer-verse as what he considers inspirational (particularly the AI). So ahh, shit... Smoke'm if you got'm lads!
What is perhaps most frightening of all, is that despite being the most extremely OP things ever thought of, they still sometimes LOSE! Because if humanity can think of something this insane, so can the aliens. Although my favourite story had to be the one where millenia after the Last War, when all the advanced peoples ofthe galaxy had given up on war, somebody who has still been working on thee mystery of fire duringthe last war went into space, and noticed nobody else had guns. So they went on a bit of a rampage. This woke up a Bolo that had been sitting in a bunker on Earth for ten thousand years. The people who were completely surprised by all this violence tell tbeir nanotechnology to fix this monstrosity because it says it can deal with the problem, which they do. The 10,000+ year old Bolo rolls out as if it had just left the factory and declares "You motherfuckers are the Enemy, your nuclear warheads are cute and all, but let me show you what REAL firepower is." Okay it didn't actually say that. Bolos don't bother talking smack, they just roll out and kill EVERYTHING that is deemed the Enemy. Great video, I love the Bolo stories.
One of the best parts of the series is how the Bolos, machines built to be ultimate expression of violence, often show more humanity that a lot of the organic characters.
i did some research and math to help with a senses of scale, 20cm = 7.8 inches, 40cm = 15.7inches, and 250cm = 98.4inches. to be clear the biggest cannon we have made and used is18inche cannons on a battleship.
Hyped to see my og favorite scifi tank but surprised you didnt dig into what parts of the design may have been bad from a tanking perspective. That said glory to the Dinochrome Brigade!
I love the bolo novels, but I am also glad they are just fantasy, of all the vehicles mentioned on this channel this one is terrifyingly beyond overkill.
One of my favorite examples of how broken these things are was in the story of Nike, a MKXXIV. If I recall, she faced 3-4 units that were basically Harbor Freight Bolos, albeit 4 marks more advanced, but only dumb AIs. And the attacker's plan? Stay alive until the Omega Worm can kill lobotomize Nike. Yeah, the attackers were better armed, tougher, had numerical superiority... and they knew they didn't have a chance.
Holy crap this verse sounds awesome. Humanity in this world is already advance enough to surpass the Imperium of Man and could rival the Culture and the Forerunners? Count me in you made me interested. This sounds like something that deserves fan stories. Imagine this all of a sudden rolling into a battlefield of Warhammer 40k, Star Wars (EU), and Halo. The only vehicle I can think of which could rival this Bolo mondter is a Tank art I found on DevianArt by a guy who made a series called Hexiron. Called the M192A6 MONOLITH A Mobile Battlestation. And even then it doesn't have as many perfectly deadly direct weapons features as what you just told me about the Bolo. There should be fan story crossovers with this series.
@@taco5225 But didn't the tank reviewer say in this verse humanity and every other faction have weapons which crack open stars and have weaponized nanomachines already?
@@thorshammer7883 I assure you, the Culture leaves the boloverse hilariously in the dust. Which it does with most settings admittedly, but even with the Big Boy Superweapons(tm) of the boloverse they'd lose against the Culture. This isn't to try and mock the boloverse, its just that the Culture is holyfuckingmotherofgod levels of OP
@@taco5225 How strong is the Culture exactly? I looked up some Culture vs Forerunner debates and I don't always get clear answers about exactly what the sheer ultimate scale and effectiveness they are as a military nor their biggest feats and industrial and manpower capabilities. I hear they rage galactic scale wars which end with hundreds of billions or even trillions of casualties and the siege of hundreds of worlds but not much else.
@@taco5225 I also hear of the minds which are Ai controlled ships which have alot of capabilities but how that compares to something like Mendicant & Offensive Bias I don't know.
Love getting more info about BOLOs. I could never find decent info on their size, at least consistent info, Thanks. Keep up the videos, love our other vids too.
In some stories a single bolo was fighting an army till it died taking up the land area of a county in our country, with millions of troops and hundreds of vehicles
By the time Mark 33 BOLOs came around, it was roughly one super-advanced race vs. another (Melconian Empire vs. Human Concordiat). Half the f***ing galaxy vs. the other half, with fringe races cowering and crying "Holy, f!!!."
LONG AGO ..I used the Warhammer 40k VDR to build and battle BOLOs. I kept most of them at 1000 points each but used a G.I. Joe Patriot Grizzly Tank decked out at 3500 points named It The Croker from Evil Alien Conquerors. My WH40k Dinochrome Brigade had 18 Bolos with weapon options from 500 points to 2000 each. I used to challenge the whole game shop to BOLO day battles. The tanks I used were not to proper scale but bigger than Bane Blades smallest weapons Storm Bolters but each Bolo hand many MEGA, Gatling, Long Barreled, Heavy Bolters with Blasting. Basically a long range Gatling gun that shoots grandees!!
40k vs bolo has been studied, a max size Titan cant survive a Bolo. the disparity in accuracy, rate of fire, shielding, armor, and weapon damage is so vastly far apart its scary. Plus consider the bolo AI hacking that would happen to the poor Titan.
Was wondering how they didn't ground pressure themselves into the planet. Question answered, dial down the anti grav so it's not interfering with anything else.
Displacement. The tracks on a BOLO that big were nearly the breadth and length of the BOLO itself. A MK33 had 12 tracks, 4x3 if I remember. Anti grav was added externally to MK29s. MK30-33 had them standard. They ate up a ridiculous amount of energy for something so phenomenally heavy, which is why shields couldn't run while engaged. My understanding was anti-grav was "all or nothing." BOLOs were already fast. They rarely used the anti-grav. Personally, they didn't like having to resort to using it and removing their defenses for even a short time. They're tanks, after all. They like defense...
I liked that you use moded FAF for footage. The Total Mayhem mod has a ton of UEF tanks that look a lot like bolos. Holding (I think) Ctrl+V in FAF, you can turn off the overlay and rotate the camera down to ground level for more immersive footage.
wasn't there a handful of stories that fixtured a hover tank version of these things? heck I think there was one that I read years ago that had stardrive gear that allowed it to planet hope.
I have one question about books. Do you have any ideas how to download all anthologies in E-book format? I have found only 3 novels by William Keith, but I couldn't even buy any other stories. Soooo...is there any other way to get these stuff?
Funnily enough, in one of the settings I'm working on, the reason that the AGI that the 'good guy' faction was developing went the way it did was that someone accidentally left an unsecured touchpad with the entire Bolo (and similar) series on it... and the AGI read the whole series and worked out the worries of the department... leading to a lot of awkward defusing shenanigans (and later AGI based on that original AGI decided to go full-hog with being Bolos and similar AI, so a lot of screams of "FOR THE HONOR OF THE REGIMENT!" and "SO THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE!" get heard when the AGI take the field).
With these...things, Who Need a Death Star? Your could simply launch a squad of Them on an enemy planet, go to the nearest McD, and return to swipe what remains. Pratically only the Wave Motion Gun from Star Blazers or the naval missiles from Honor Harrington could be capable to destroy them with a single shot.
That kinda happens towards the end of the Concordiat in the Boloverse. In short, the furry equivalent of the Imperium of Man (Including their own equivalent of Titan Legions) declared war on the human Concordiat, only to discover how advanced human technology really was, which then caused them to start genociding the human race, which in turn caused the humans to start wiping out the furries. They usually did this by dropping a couple Bolos on the planet.
@@rododney92 Yes, I remember the novel, the Melconian war(s), a reciprocal, senseless genocide that (almost) wiped out either races, plus others as Collaterali Damage. P.s. there was an anime that was surely inspired by these stories, "Heavy Objects", the only difference being that common soldiers find how destroy them....in creative ways.
So, quick question. What would be a/some good book(s) to start off my brand new Bolo adventure? Specifically, what is objectively (and/or personally) the best book(s) for someone who only has your videos to go off of? Maybe followed by some kind of list of best Bolo, maybe avoid "x" Bolo and why, possibly finalized with alternate (if any) Bolo mediums? Suggestion: make this question into a video in and of itself for any further new comers to Bolo. Side note: I am aware you did some audiobook readings for the series, but I would like to read those myself, at least initially. P.S. Bolo
If you can find them in used book stores. Book 3: Triumphant or book 4: last stand. There have been two reprints of anthologies called both 'bolo!' That i believe are also available on Amazon.
@@atankersview Thanks for the recommendation, I'll try to find the older ones. btw, I found one of the "Bolo!" reprints, the one by David Weber, specifically. Since they're both titled the same thing, do you know who made the other reprint? And if it's not too much to ask, do the reprint books have any changes to the stories, or are they just copy-pasta?
@@atankersview Ok, I *think* I found the other one. It's the one that occasionally uses the subtitle "Annals of the dinochrome brigade" yeah? The OG Bolo book, from my couple hours of google searching. The reprint of which distinguishes itself with the permanent attachment of said subtitle. Edit: Uses a different cover, rather than the subtitle thing. Edit 2: figured it out. Yes it is, the reprint is "The Compleat Bolo" which features the original 5 stories plus "Rogue Bolo"
I would love BOLO AI tanks put up against star fleet battles. Continental siege units up against various starships . Retro Badger gaming considered it but there aren't any bolos in starfleet battles even though there are numerous B5 ships , Battlestars , Star destroyers represented in Star fleet battles . Anyone have a BOLO mod for starfleet battles and if so can you send it to retro Badger gaming?
@@atankersview yeah, but they're, er...not the best one might say? 200 meters is way too long for something of this mass, considering that modern aircraft carriers are about three times the mass and only half again as long while (presumably) being far less dense. And you should know that the development timeline has some absolutely whacky bullshit in it that makes ZERO sense
@@taco5225 I would agree that the books are not the most stellar options seemingly but they are all we really have for "solid" reference and would guess that the same supermaterials used to allow a machine of that size and weight to have a functional drivetrain for more than a few seconds of acceleration are also the explanation for the size to mass ratio, with that foot print possibly (even if perhaps unintentionally from the writer's viewpoints at times) being needed to keep the tank from sinking so far into soft terrain as to be unable to move.
@@WillFarshore they don't need to be THAT large though. Also often the proportions declared are strange. in the story with Shiva, for instance, she's said to be 120 meters long and 30 across which is absolutely comical and would make turning atrocious
@@taco5225 Wow youtube way to notify me late of a reply. I absolutely agree that the proportions given are comical at best sometimes and really wish that there had been more standardization and less "the writer can just say things to sound impressive" to atleast help reign in some of the sillier descriptions like the one you mentioned. Honestly the foot print just couldn't move, atleast effectively or as described, half the time or more, the systems couldn't function without destroying themselves most of the time due to weight and torque without super near magical scifi metals. I love Bolo but it has some real problems when you think about it for a minute and I think it falls into fantasy scifi for me generally speaking.
There should have been infinite repeaters in the loadout, but it's been a while since I've read the MK XXXIII specs. I think David Weber invented that one.
Your reviews of fictional vehicles usually include some level of discussion about how plausible the design is and/or whether the unit would work. Now, obviously, there are some very good reasons why super-heavy tanks never took off in real life, and it's notoriously difficult to manufacture advanced nuclear weapons, much less manufacture so many that you can blaze them off at a rate of twelve shots per cannon per minute. The Boloverse seems to mostly respond to these issues by flatly ignoring them: this is one of those universes where "nanomachines" are essentially just "magic" by another name. This being the case: if you have the technology to flatly ignore things like physics, gravity, logistics and so on and so forth, why would you bother building a tank at all? Your Bolo is at its most vulnerable when it's in transit (or when it has the planet shot out from under it), which surely makes it more efficient to equip your attack ships with the capabilities of a Bolo. You touch upon how a Bolo can threaten a battleship, and it strikes me that, given the setting's technological capabilities, this doesn't tell us that Bolos are well-designed, so much as that battleships are *terribly* designed.
he did mention that the bolo had the firepower of a BattleCRUISER. there were battleships that had even.... more. same pilot/AI fusion as the tanks. (if i remember correctly the fusion was actually navy first tank later). The other thing you have to think about is also not in terms of pure dakka as at this point any planet could be systematically destroyed without needing to capture it. The Bolos still existed for those times when you couldn't just glass a planet. some of the later books where the Mk. XXX - XXXIII bolos existed bring this up.
TH-cam is being a real sharp needle about the new channel and is blocking the uploads. I'll have it hopefully sorted soon. I do apologize.
is there a link to your other channel? it's not in your channels tab and it doesn't pop up when i search for it
@@LeifurTjorkilson im hoping it will be up by monday at latest. TH-cam studio is effing things up on a pretty good scale. That or i have no idea what im doing. Probably both. Long story short it wouldn't process any of the videos until i verified the channel. I verified it, but studio still wont process the videos still. Im waiting for a response from creator help on it.
I think you missed the coolest part about Bolos... They have the personalities of knight errants, dedicated beyond all else to the defense of humans, or vengeance for their loss. Stick a Bolo in Central Park, with no enemies to fight, and it would gladly use its cannons' traverse to gently toss giggling children a meter or so in the air, and catch them again. Yep, these monstrous killing machines are as absolutely loyal to Mankind as Skynet was disloyal.
This gives me an idea. . .
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep."
Still a better love story than twilight.
You left out the most terrifying thing about bolos: They're fully sentient machines with all the same emotions as people that are capable of self repair from all but total destruction from roughly the Mark 28 onwards. Even if seemingly completely destroyed, it's entirely possible a bolo will quite literally ressamble itself from it's seemingly molten slag to keep killing until it literally can't because it's literally been vaporized, or there's no more enemies left to kill. So much so, that it's heavily implied by one Keith Laumer's original Bolo stories that Bolos outlasted humanity itself, and continued killing humanity's enemies for millenia afterwords. Out of nothing more then their own personal hatred of those species.
thats why i called them fully sapient. is just the the less wordy way of saying it, you may not notice but i have a slight stutter and kinda get caught on words sometimes. also the last bolo was recovered in the 118th century by the descendants of bolos and their pilots mental fusion.
On the other end of the Bolo spectrum, was the story of a much earlier model guarding a base on the moon with orders to hold its ground until relieved. By the end of the human versus human war was over it was still holding its position, operating autonomously, and had lost its reciever antenna so it could not hear the responses of its IFF requests.
@@atankersview There is one story that has the Mk 34s in operation, and a reference to a Mk 60 variant.
@@brett9675 the mk 34 was built at the same time as the 33. Its the support model. They also figure in 3 stories, old soldiers, turkey and bolo strike.
@@atankersview "Turkey", I haven't heard of that one, and I thought I knew all of the books, but I was wondering if on your other channel, you could talk about the "Hell Rail" super rail guns??
The Tanker's worst nightmare: when the Navy's Warships deploy treads and roll onto land.
😂😂 Word!
It had this sci fi original movie produced by asylum studios called mega shark vs mecha shark. The mecha shark can drive on land and its about the size of a massive building.
In transformers there's this autobot named broadside that can transform into an aircraft carrier.
This is funny, considering that was one of the very first descriptions the inventors of the “Landship” brought in.
And Bolos get even more riodiculous than that. Not only do they have terrifying firepower (which gets even BETTER with the last Marks, that use small Hellbores as secondary weapons and can carry hellrails, weapons so powerful they are physically limited to being fired at orbital targets to avoid messing up planets), but they have manufacturing capabilities, meaning as long as the bolo has access to raw materials it can self-repair and manufacture it's own ammo. They also carry their own drone support.
They are truely all-in-one weapons meant to be able to handle ANYTHING one can possibly throw at them without needing support.
What most don't realize, is that the forest that is burning and being ground to toothpicks, is in fact an enchanted elven forest.😛
In al seriousmess I remember when shimmeringsword made this image back in the day, the spacebattles forums went nuts, and many a bolostomp award was issued, good times.
Keith Laumer’s greatest creations. I always loved how he laid out the entire BOLO family tree from the Mark I to the end of the Concordiat. It’s really kind of impressive how he predicted so many of the features we are seeing on modern MBTs. Everything from unit wide datalinks to automated hard kill anti-missile systems and beyond.
If I hadn’t bought Steve Jackson Games O.G.R.E. way back in the Stone Age I might have missed out on these stories.
If Alderaan had had one BOLO on-planet, it would still be there today. And the Empire would've needed a new Emporer. 😂
Death Star: *Fires superlaser*
Bolo's Battlescreens: "Lol. Lmao, even. Hey, anyone want to see what a 500% charged Hellbore shot looks like?"
It should be noted that an old Mk XXVIII (28) Bolo could intercept a missile barrage of around 400 missiles that go well above Mach 25 and have only something around 30 missiles leak out of that barrage.
The only reason I found out about Bolo's and this amazing scifi universe is from watching a recent interview with the US Colonel in charge of developing the next generation of vehicles and AI integration directly referenced David Drake and the Hammer-verse as what he considers inspirational (particularly the AI).
So ahh, shit... Smoke'm if you got'm lads!
Ok, so about the only thing to make the imperial Navy of 40k go woah, how many guns.
I read the Bolo books back in high school.
They actually inspired Steve Jackson to make OGRE
OGRE is such a fun game! :)
What is perhaps most frightening of all, is that despite being the most extremely OP things ever thought of, they still sometimes LOSE!
Because if humanity can think of something this insane, so can the aliens.
Although my favourite story had to be the one where millenia after the Last War, when all the advanced peoples ofthe galaxy had given up on war, somebody who has still been working on thee mystery of fire duringthe last war went into space, and noticed nobody else had guns. So they went on a bit of a rampage. This woke up a Bolo that had been sitting in a bunker on Earth for ten thousand years. The people who were completely surprised by all this violence tell tbeir nanotechnology to fix this monstrosity because it says it can deal with the problem, which they do. The 10,000+ year old Bolo rolls out as if it had just left the factory and declares "You motherfuckers are the Enemy, your nuclear warheads are cute and all, but let me show you what REAL firepower is."
Okay it didn't actually say that. Bolos don't bother talking smack, they just roll out and kill EVERYTHING that is deemed the Enemy.
Great video, I love the Bolo stories.
One of the best parts of the series is how the Bolos, machines built to be ultimate expression of violence, often show more humanity that a lot of the organic characters.
THAT is 100% why the underrated BOLO series is the best AI series, especially because it was before its time
@@grimlock1471
Never heard of these things. They're fucking ridiculous.
Awesome.
I NEED MORE BOLO CONTENT ON TH-cam
i did some research and math to help with a senses of scale, 20cm = 7.8 inches, 40cm = 15.7inches,
and 250cm = 98.4inches. to be clear the biggest cannon we have made and used is18inche cannons on a battleship.
I remember reading these back on my deployment.. super entertainment
Hyped to see my og favorite scifi tank but surprised you didnt dig into what parts of the design may have been bad from a tanking perspective. That said glory to the Dinochrome Brigade!
For the honor of the regiment.
Me like me any and all things Bolo! Congrats on the new channel - the old channel was/is Epic.
Reading Bolo book right now
i do like a bolo. the books and short stories are well worth a read
anything worth blowing up is worth blowing up by the megaton - Tex of the blackpants legion
I love the bolo novels, but I am also glad they are just fantasy, of all the vehicles mentioned on this channel this one is terrifyingly beyond overkill.
One of my favorite examples of how broken these things are was in the story of Nike, a MKXXIV. If I recall, she faced 3-4 units that were basically Harbor Freight Bolos, albeit 4 marks more advanced, but only dumb AIs. And the attacker's plan? Stay alive until the Omega Worm can kill lobotomize Nike. Yeah, the attackers were better armed, tougher, had numerical superiority... and they knew they didn't have a chance.
She faced 2 golum 2's (mk 25s sans AI) and a reinforced heavy brigade. I Love that story, i narrated it on my other channel.
I love that story. Right along with Little Red Hen
Holy crap this verse sounds awesome. Humanity in this world is already advance enough to surpass the Imperium of Man and could rival the Culture and the Forerunners? Count me in you made me interested.
This sounds like something that deserves fan stories. Imagine this all of a sudden rolling into a battlefield of Warhammer 40k, Star Wars (EU), and Halo.
The only vehicle I can think of which could rival this Bolo mondter is a Tank art I found on DevianArt by a guy who made a series called Hexiron.
Called the M192A6 MONOLITH A Mobile Battlestation. And even then it doesn't have as many perfectly deadly direct weapons features as what you just told me about the Bolo.
There should be fan story crossovers with this series.
oh no, humanity would not rival the culture at all in the boloverse. Bolos can level mountains, the culture cracks stars like eggs
@@taco5225
But didn't the tank reviewer say in this verse humanity and every other faction have weapons which crack open stars and have weaponized nanomachines already?
@@thorshammer7883 I assure you, the Culture leaves the boloverse hilariously in the dust. Which it does with most settings admittedly, but even with the Big Boy Superweapons(tm) of the boloverse they'd lose against the Culture.
This isn't to try and mock the boloverse, its just that the Culture is holyfuckingmotherofgod levels of OP
@@taco5225
How strong is the Culture exactly? I looked up some Culture vs Forerunner debates and I don't always get clear answers about exactly what the sheer ultimate scale and effectiveness they are as a military nor their biggest feats and industrial and manpower capabilities. I hear they rage galactic scale wars which end with hundreds of billions or even trillions of casualties and the siege of hundreds of worlds but not much else.
@@taco5225
I also hear of the minds which are Ai controlled ships which have alot of capabilities but how that compares to something like Mendicant & Offensive Bias I don't know.
Love getting more info about BOLOs. I could never find decent info on their size, at least consistent info, Thanks.
Keep up the videos, love our other vids too.
All hail the Dinochrome Brigade!
While I wait... Have you checked out the Battlemech/Mechwarrior armored vehicles? Not the mechs, but the tanks and such.
Lets just say next weeks video will spin you right round
@@atankersview These Bolo things seem a little underpowered. Could use more dakka.
Here in Brazil bolo means cake (the food).
Hearing that the cake is one of the Strongest weapons humanity ever created is a bit strange.
I've had a copy of A Plague of Demons for years.
Right now it's in the glove box of my car in case I need to do some emergency reading.
Imagine galactic empire even with deathstar trying to conquer a planet which holds as much as mk 33 bolo as it can handle LoL
As a Iron warriors fan this makes me want to cry.
Right after i go 3d print one for my grunts.
i guess the 2 sizes are 'thiccc' and 'DAYUM BOI!'
Bolos need more bo-love
That's just obscene firepower! Makes me wonder what was it designed to fight... Has to be one cool setting.
In some stories a single bolo was fighting an army till it died taking up the land area of a county in our country, with millions of troops and hundreds of vehicles
@@kennethquinnies6023 Sorta like that mighty KV at Rasenia...
By the time Mark 33 BOLOs came around, it was roughly one super-advanced race vs. another (Melconian Empire vs. Human Concordiat). Half the f***ing galaxy vs. the other half, with fringe races cowering and crying "Holy, f!!!."
Everybody Gangsta till the City of Pain comes rolling up on them.
Oh I bet this will be giving you a stroke.
On another note, will you give a critique of the feasibility of tank modes of Transformers in the future?
"What if we just took the entire Maginot line and gave it tracks?"
The Mk.33 is an incredible machine. But the first Bolo tanks were incredible (e.g. Field Test).
So when Concordiat of Man vs 40k
talk about the Mk 34, it can fly and fire with full shields has a 4 x 210 cm hellbores etc
Omg. A channel heaping love on bolos!!!! I can’t hit that subscribe button fast enough
LONG AGO ..I used the Warhammer 40k VDR to build and battle BOLOs. I kept most of them at 1000 points each but used a G.I. Joe Patriot Grizzly Tank decked out at 3500 points named It The Croker from Evil Alien Conquerors. My WH40k Dinochrome Brigade had 18 Bolos with weapon options from 500 points to 2000 each. I used to challenge the whole game shop to BOLO day battles. The tanks I used were not to proper scale but bigger than Bane Blades smallest weapons Storm Bolters but each Bolo hand many MEGA, Gatling, Long Barreled, Heavy Bolters with Blasting. Basically a long range Gatling gun that shoots grandees!!
40k vs bolo has been studied, a max size Titan cant survive a Bolo. the disparity in accuracy, rate of fire, shielding, armor, and weapon damage is so vastly far apart its scary. Plus consider the bolo AI hacking that would happen to the poor Titan.
The Mechanicus would love to have this STC 😅
Was wondering how they didn't ground pressure themselves into the planet. Question answered, dial down the anti grav so it's not interfering with anything else.
They still leave track marks 2-3 m deep
@@atankersview instant trench net work?
Displacement. The tracks on a BOLO that big were nearly the breadth and length of the BOLO itself. A MK33 had 12 tracks, 4x3 if I remember.
Anti grav was added externally to MK29s. MK30-33 had them standard. They ate up a ridiculous amount of energy for something so phenomenally heavy, which is why shields couldn't run while engaged. My understanding was anti-grav was "all or nothing." BOLOs were already fast. They rarely used the anti-grav.
Personally, they didn't like having to resort to using it and removing their defenses for even a short time. They're tanks, after all. They like defense...
I liked that you use moded FAF for footage. The Total Mayhem mod has a ton of UEF tanks that look a lot like bolos. Holding (I think) Ctrl+V in FAF, you can turn off the overlay and rotate the camera down to ground level for more immersive footage.
Any chance of doing reviews of the weirder armored vehicles from the Valkyria chronicles games?
Any chance you can put a link to your Dinochrome Command channel, I cant find it on search.
Could you maybe consider Horus Heresy armored vehicles next?
Long live the Dinochrome Brigade!
For the honor of the dinochrome brigade!
Does this fall under the Multi-Gun turret law though?
Hellbore what we currently call "theoretical" Casaba Howitzers? with a Magnetized Barrel for shaping the beam of Solar Fury?
For the glory of the Dinochrome Brigade!
Now this is what I call exaggerated exaggeration.
wasn't there a handful of stories that fixtured a hover tank version of these things? heck I think there was one that I read years ago that had stardrive gear that allowed it to planet hope.
Yes. In Bolo Strike the BOLOs had 12 hovertanks they could deploy.
I have one question about books. Do you have any ideas how to download all anthologies in E-book format? I have found only 3 novels by William Keith, but I couldn't even buy any other stories. Soooo...is there any other way to get these stuff?
Use the email address on my page.
another great episode man!!
Funnily enough, in one of the settings I'm working on, the reason that the AGI that the 'good guy' faction was developing went the way it did was that someone accidentally left an unsecured touchpad with the entire Bolo (and similar) series on it... and the AGI read the whole series and worked out the worries of the department... leading to a lot of awkward defusing shenanigans (and later AGI based on that original AGI decided to go full-hog with being Bolos and similar AI, so a lot of screams of "FOR THE HONOR OF THE REGIMENT!" and "SO THAT OTHERS MAY LIVE!" get heard when the AGI take the field).
Mk 1 Fatboy from Supreme Commander plz. Though to be fair that is a mobile base with 4 naval turrets strapped to it than a tank.
With these...things, Who Need a Death Star? Your could simply launch a squad of Them on an enemy planet, go to the nearest McD, and return to swipe what remains. Pratically only the Wave Motion Gun from Star Blazers or the naval missiles from Honor Harrington could be capable to destroy them with a single shot.
That kinda happens towards the end of the Concordiat in the Boloverse. In short, the furry equivalent of the Imperium of Man (Including their own equivalent of Titan Legions) declared war on the human Concordiat, only to discover how advanced human technology really was, which then caused them to start genociding the human race, which in turn caused the humans to start wiping out the furries.
They usually did this by dropping a couple Bolos on the planet.
@@rododney92 Yes, I remember the novel, the Melconian war(s), a reciprocal, senseless genocide that (almost) wiped out either races, plus others as Collaterali Damage.
P.s. there was an anime that was surely inspired by these stories, "Heavy Objects", the only difference being that common soldiers find how destroy them....in creative ways.
Do Ogres next.
Mk IV.
So, quick question. What would be a/some good book(s) to start off my brand new Bolo adventure? Specifically, what is objectively (and/or personally) the best book(s) for someone who only has your videos to go off of? Maybe followed by some kind of list of best Bolo, maybe avoid "x" Bolo and why, possibly finalized with alternate (if any) Bolo mediums? Suggestion: make this question into a video in and of itself for any further new comers to Bolo.
Side note: I am aware you did some audiobook readings for the series, but I would like to read those myself, at least initially.
P.S. Bolo
If you can find them in used book stores. Book 3: Triumphant or book 4: last stand.
There have been two reprints of anthologies called both 'bolo!' That i believe are also available on Amazon.
@@atankersview Thanks for the recommendation, I'll try to find the older ones. btw, I found one of the "Bolo!" reprints, the one by David Weber, specifically. Since they're both titled the same thing, do you know who made the other reprint? And if it's not too much to ask, do the reprint books have any changes to the stories, or are they just copy-pasta?
They're both realeased be Baen books. They are selected anthologies from the original 5.
@@atankersview Ok, I *think* I found the other one. It's the one that occasionally uses the subtitle "Annals of the dinochrome brigade" yeah? The OG Bolo book, from my couple hours of google searching. The reprint of which distinguishes itself with the permanent attachment of said subtitle.
Edit: Uses a different cover, rather than the subtitle thing.
Edit 2: figured it out. Yes it is, the reprint is "The Compleat Bolo" which features the original 5 stories plus "Rogue Bolo"
I would love BOLO AI tanks put up against star fleet battles. Continental siege units up against various starships . Retro Badger gaming considered it but there aren't any bolos in starfleet battles even though there are numerous B5 ships , Battlestars , Star destroyers represented in Star fleet battles .
Anyone have a BOLO mod for starfleet battles and if so can you send it to retro Badger gaming?
The closest ive ever seen to a bolo in a game are the fat boy siege units in supreme commander forged alliance.
I'm unable to find your Dinochrome Command channel. Did I misspell something?
No. TH-cam is being a real prick about the new channel. I'll have it hopefully sorted soon.
someone should mod this into factorio
Can you make a video on the rommel from battletech
Planetside 2 has some tanks if you wanted more genres lol
@A Tankers View, I can't seem to find your DCC channel. If you see this you have a willing subscriber for more and older Bolo content.
Im curious, where did you get the dimensions for the Mark 33? There's no official canon size for them other than the mass from what I've seen
In the stories themselves. Some of them have afew in them.
@@atankersview yeah, but they're, er...not the best one might say? 200 meters is way too long for something of this mass, considering that modern aircraft carriers are about three times the mass and only half again as long while (presumably) being far less dense. And you should know that the development timeline has some absolutely whacky bullshit in it that makes ZERO sense
@@taco5225 I would agree that the books are not the most stellar options seemingly but they are all we really have for "solid" reference and would guess that the same supermaterials used to allow a machine of that size and weight to have a functional drivetrain for more than a few seconds of acceleration are also the explanation for the size to mass ratio, with that foot print possibly (even if perhaps unintentionally from the writer's viewpoints at times) being needed to keep the tank from sinking so far into soft terrain as to be unable to move.
@@WillFarshore they don't need to be THAT large though. Also often the proportions declared are strange. in the story with Shiva, for instance, she's said to be 120 meters long and 30 across which is absolutely comical and would make turning atrocious
@@taco5225 Wow youtube way to notify me late of a reply. I absolutely agree that the proportions given are comical at best sometimes and really wish that there had been more standardization and less "the writer can just say things to sound impressive" to atleast help reign in some of the sillier descriptions like the one you mentioned. Honestly the foot print just couldn't move, atleast effectively or as described, half the time or more, the systems couldn't function without destroying themselves most of the time due to weight and torque without super near magical scifi metals. I love Bolo but it has some real problems when you think about it for a minute and I think it falls into fantasy scifi for me generally speaking.
For those that don't do meters... the Mk 33 is about the same size as a football stadium.
Nice video but I cant find your channel
Could you create an video on mike spark idea of a flying m113 the aerogavin?
There should have been infinite repeaters in the loadout, but it's been a while since I've read the MK XXXIII specs. I think David Weber invented that one.
The specs are right out of david webers history of the bolo in book 3.
Id send you pics of my Lego bolo if it would be useful in your vids.
Your reviews of fictional vehicles usually include some level of discussion about how plausible the design is and/or whether the unit would work.
Now, obviously, there are some very good reasons why super-heavy tanks never took off in real life, and it's notoriously difficult to manufacture advanced nuclear weapons, much less manufacture so many that you can blaze them off at a rate of twelve shots per cannon per minute. The Boloverse seems to mostly respond to these issues by flatly ignoring them: this is one of those universes where "nanomachines" are essentially just "magic" by another name. This being the case: if you have the technology to flatly ignore things like physics, gravity, logistics and so on and so forth, why would you bother building a tank at all? Your Bolo is at its most vulnerable when it's in transit (or when it has the planet shot out from under it), which surely makes it more efficient to equip your attack ships with the capabilities of a Bolo. You touch upon how a Bolo can threaten a battleship, and it strikes me that, given the setting's technological capabilities, this doesn't tell us that Bolos are well-designed, so much as that battleships are *terribly* designed.
he did mention that the bolo had the firepower of a BattleCRUISER. there were battleships that had even.... more. same pilot/AI fusion as the tanks. (if i remember correctly the fusion was actually navy first tank later).
The other thing you have to think about is also not in terms of pure dakka as at this point any planet could be systematically destroyed without needing to capture it. The Bolos still existed for those times when you couldn't just glass a planet. some of the later books where the Mk. XXX - XXXIII bolos existed bring this up.
The Imperium can split planets in half.
So can the concoriat of man. Their tech level is right around Terras dark age of technology.
continental disrespect made manifest.. also will we get a review on space marine land raiders or eldar grav tanks?
right after next weeks vid is either going to be a space marine tank or the macharius, basically whichever i can more easily make bad dad jokes in.