The mention that the only Lyrans left who knew how to crew the LCS Invincible were all retired, makes me imagine the ship went on its last ride crewed exclusively by people in their 70s and up. Something about House Kurita losing to the cast of Space Cowboys just makes me smile.
it reminds me of how they brought back sailors from WW2 and Korea, when they reactivated the Missouri class Battleships, nearly 50 years after their initial deployment.
I've heard many people say as much over the years. Having finally read it this Christmas, I can say that I do not agree. The fact that it is ostensibly set in the BT universe does not bother me at all. I also think the author's use of language puts him above several others who have written for BT. Unfortunately, all that is irrelevant because he chose to write one of the strangest stories I have come across and populated it with some of the most bizarre individuals Imaginable. One day I'll make a video on it, and it'll just be 10 minutes of me reading quotes from Goldmember himself; Brian Seagraves.
Most inner spheres only have 2-3 warships left as most inner sphere shipyards got nuked. FWL has a functional shipyard but is too broke to build warships due to both balkanization and falcon jade taking a substantial portion of their remaining territory.
I wanna PLAY the Aerotech piloting role too in some future Mechwarrior game. ...would I die super fast to medium lasers from a Mech that was "watching the Skies?" ...Yes, but that's what's great about multiplayer games, most ppl never look UP
I'm inclined to believe it was a ComStar Agent that caused the LCS-Invincible to be lost. Otherwise, I feel the crew of the ship wouldn't have dared make the trip home if their K-Drive had been damaged during the battle. It be very interesting to see Warships make a return. Everything I've been learning about them makes me think/believe, BattleTech has been missing out a fair bit on them. Although considering how devastating they indeed are. I'm at once optimistic & sceptical at their inclusion back into the setting. Amazing work Sven. This series & others has been so illuminating. Be very interesting to see when you get to the Clans. Awesome work. Well done.
@@SvenVanDerPlankWarships are interesting, sadly they just interfere too much with the True basis of the setting: Battlemechs After all You can't have stompy 4v4 mech combat if a Leopard drop ship is little more than a nat to even the smallest Warships and dies before they can even burn into the system.
One of the reasons why Saturday is great for me? New BattleTech lore videos! Seriously, always love learning new things about one of my favorite series. I just finished Big Red 40-Tech's Warhammer IIC video, loved hearing you voice Khan N'buta! I hope you're doing well today!
Glad you enjoyed both videos. Always happy to be invited to take part in other BT projects, even if I don't think I've got the voice to pull off these characters.
Ah, the last mission of LCS Invincible, my favorite triumph and tragedy of the 2nd succession war. Steiner- kurita must be stopped, no matter the cost, and it was high. Great video Sven, thank you.
Steiners dont have to be stopped. They are the puncbags of BT universe. Actually never a long time capable leader, never realising their industrial advantage, etc. Everyone else can have succes, except lyrians…. And I wonder, how they managed to be still around, never actually overrun, or torn apart by mutiny, rebellion, and so on…. And puncbag status: even their meager succeses are just for to be overturned by fraction of time and effort to they get those achivments. I actually believe, the authors of BT universe hate them, thats why they are constant punching bag.
@@Rorgosh They're kind of too big to die. As Professor Tex once put it, "they will keep throwing meat and metal at you until you are destroyed or they get bored."
@@Cross_Malaki I'd say yes and no, respectively. I mean, you have Solaris! And money. Oh so very much money. Why would the writers make you ever so rich if they hated you? They have you take so many punches because they know you'll barely feel it. Through your massive bags of money. ;)
And with the decommissioning of the last warship, the powers of the Inner Sphere realized the futility of war and commited themselves to complete disarmament. The end.
Agree with you on the warships. Equipment requires a lot of time and effort to maintain. Drop that for a short time and you'll have to make it up with interest to get them working. We had aircraft that would be grounded for a few months for repair and when we finally got everything needed to get them back up, we would always spend at least double the time fixing all the things from just sitting. That's why I always laugh when people talk about bringing the Iowas back into service. It would be cheaper and quicker to just clean sheet a new BB than to get one of those girls back into fighting shape.
You're absolutely right. It's nothing more than a fantasy putting these vessels back into service. When WarShips later become a reality for the Great Houses again, apart from ripping a few salvageable parts off the hulks, they're very quickly abandoned once more.
Yeah, the only one who stood a chance with the older hulls was Comstar/WOB, and only because of the Titan Yards. They still had the Blueprints for most of the SL era ships. Even then, I don't even want to think about how much they spent to refurbish a McKenna.
I'm inclined to think they might have been able to slowly learn back part of what was lost from some of the more intact remaining ships and wrecks. But they would have needed to be free from interruptions and especially free from Comstar.
What awesome entry in your series. It was wonderfully detailed. Thank you working so hard on it. Side note, the FSS Pleiades , the Davion Carrier. Didn't break in half, it KF Drive broke/broke it's back after it arrived in system. The ship was made into museum in system is jumped too, Novaya Zemlya .
Seems dumb that the IS powers never had civilian versions of the Potemkin in order to move large amounts of dropships in their safer areas of their realms.
They had Star Lord and Monolith class JumpShips for moving large forces, but the bigger they make those things, the greater the loss if something goes wrong.
@@SvenVanDerPlank true enough, but I was thinking the Potemkin could carry 25 dropships. It would be used in core areas of their realms, where accidents and attacks would be much rarer. Would have appealed to the Lyrans and economies of scale thinking.
@@SuperVeganShark Keep in mind that Warship jump drives are much more expensive and advanced so that more mass and volume can be allocated to weapons, armor, cargo, etc. Maybe had the Star League been in better shape for longer, they might have tried that. Though Clan Sea fox has refitted a lot of Potemkins for more pure cargo transport and even mobile mass habitation. But Sea Fox has a LOT of money to throw at problems and fund clan tech solutions. So it has been done, but only by one faction, and even then these aren't purpose built ships, but heavily modified warships made into homes and haulers.
The Eridani Light Horse? Most of that detail came from the ELH anthology No Greater Honour if you want to get the full story. More Merc drama later in this series too. The penultimate episode I'm working on has one of the largest in existence mutiny against their employer, and it won't be the last time that happens to them.
Ah the curse of the scholar: 5 different sources all saying completely different things about the same event, with each of them still having a small bit of the actual truth all nestled deep inside
Finally got a chance to sit down and watch this, it was so worth it! I loved this episode so much! Seriously thank you for all the time and effort you put into this video. House Kurita continues to be just the worst. Honestly when I first learned about Battletech I took a dislike to House Kurita and it kinda just stuck even as my views of favorite houses shifted, but the more I learn of the whole history of the Inner Sphere the more I despise House Kurita. But I do also understand why they are so popular among other players. Anyway, this video was amazing but it also kind of hurt because it’s the end of Warships. I’ve always loved naval stuff and I hated that the warship version of Battletech and Aerotech just arnt played all that much anymore. I understand why but still I yearn for massive naval battles among the stars with warships and fighters followed up by massive invasions of mechs, tanks, and infantry. It’s part of the reason why I think the Age of War is probably one of my favorite times to set a game in.
Love the way they keep enough ambiguity, like the Invincible's disappearance, to allow people to build their own non-canon stories and scenarios incorporating these legends while taking them out of the equation of the main narrative.
You're welcome. Happy to be of service. Never thought I'd be approaching the point where I have almost a full 24 hours of BattleTech Lore & History on the channel.
I don't know quite how I went from, "let's make a quick 10 minute video to help 40K refugees get acclimated," to "I want to cover the entire 1000+ year history of BattleTech in-depth." Talk about feature creep.
They went into hibernation there as well. I haven't read the Operation KLONDIKE sourcebook but the BattleSpace sourcebook suggests that they were all mothballed and only a handful took part in the Exodus Civil War. Don't quote me on that one though because I know the Invading Clans had 100+ by 3050.
The Clans never lose the tech, if that's what you're asking. They're producing new WarShip designs throughout the 29th & 30th centuries. The Inner Sphere doesn't restart construction again until the 3050s.
Davion and Kurita were already drawing up blueprints after the War of 3039, but the costs were going to be so extreme since they'd first have to build all the factories, neither went ahead with the plans until the Clan Invasion began. The first fully functional prototype was completed in late 3057.
Meanwhile in Clan Space: Using McKenna Class hulls as cargo tugs because we've all got too many Warships. Just yank 2000tons of armour off them to fit more pallets inside, it's not like there's any pirates out here anyway.
Sven, this video started to answer a few of my biggest questions: 1) There are various references to the derelict warships, but little about why they were not restored and 2) Why were there not sneak attacks from SS to SS using the Periphery? For 1 - I'd love to see more details. Everything else got a tech downgrade and there were warships before mechs plus every state was making them. Is it possible that ROM was really that thorough? As for 2) Deep-reaching raids through the periphery to bypass entrenched worlds or units disguised as merchants would be fascinating. Keep up the amazing work!
The reason why they didn't continue to build WarShips is because losing the ability to manufacture just one or two critical components, such as the compact KF drives, means that they can no longer complete them, even if all of the other components are still readily available. As for flanking attacks through the periphery, there really isn't much of a need. You're going through mostly uncolonised systems, which brings an extra element of risk if you break down, but your route is longer, increasing the time to get there and chances for something to go wrong. You can just as easily/riskily navigate through abandoned systems within the Inner Sphere. By this point in the war, there are plenty of dead worlds you know the coordinates of but won't get spotted at passing through. Furthermore, you're only likely to strike at other planets on the edge of the periphery, which generally have lower industrial capability or military significance.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Thanks for the answer! I get the point about the drives, but even rehabbing a ship for in-system defense would seem to be a good idea. Is that somehow beyond possibility or was it more of a mechs or ships approach paired with the old axiom of nobody ever won a war on the defense?
The WarShips probably were used as orbital defence stations for a time as you say, but eventually the cost of maintaining the life support and structural integrity after centuries of corrosion and decay makes it not worth it, especially when there hasn't been a credible threat to the interior worlds where they've been parked for so many years.
Comstar had two Cameron class heavy cruisers orbiting between Mars and the Asteroid belt. They used one to service the other for parts. This Cruiser joined task force Serpent and fired the first shells in anger in more than 200 years when the fleet ran into a fleet of clan ships which included a couple of smaller warships. It handily destroyed and severely damaged other Clan ships and the survivors joined the new "clan Serpent" ..
Such a great series especially for us new to the lore. I started reading the novels last year when I first got into table top & am currently reading The Hunter's (3058) so it has been nice to gain and understanding of the SLDF, Succession Wars as I work chronologically through the novels.
Thank you. I'm glad you're finding the series useful for learning the history. I haven't made it to Twilight of the Clans in my own reading yet. Just finished the two Refusal War books, but I'm hoping to make a start on the Twilight octology (if that's a word) by the end of the year.
@SvenVanDerPlank Jeez Sven, you still have like 20-30 novels to go before you hit the WOB era. You still have the break up of the FEDCOM, the Fights in the Chaos March, and the Dragoons Civil War before you even get to Twilight of the Clans. And whatever you do, DO NOT READ Far Country!!
@SvenVanDerPlank I'm sorry I couldn't get to you before you read Far Country; nobody should have to be subjected to that abomination. Only 10 to go till Twilight (with the Capellan Solution novels right in the middle of Serpent/Bulldog), then the fun of the FEDCOM Civil War. Plus, there's the assorted Mech Warriors novels, which honestly weren't too bad. The Dark Age novels, on the other hand...
Even ignoring the degradation centuries of neglect wrought upon those ships, the simple loss of knowledge and capabilities for production, operation and general maintenance are beyond crimpling. people like to talk about the US bringing the Iowa class battleships back into active service, but even those which are carefully preserved and cared for would be monumental over takings to get operational again. We dont make engines like theirs for decades. We dont make boilers like that anymore. We dont have the cranes required to heft 400 ton turrets out of their holes let alone the equipment to replace or even reline the barrels. ammunition of that caliber is not made anymore. we dont have the foundries required to produce armor plates that thick or that strong. and every year, we lose more and more of the men that served on those ships, reducing any real knowledge for their operation. now apply that onto a spaceborn warship that is several orders of magnitude more complex and degraded...
ComStar has a hidden army and fleet!? Gasp! Surely you jest! ComStar is a wholly neutral company that has nothing but the Inner Sphere's best interest at heart! They are the preservers of knowledge, not destroyers! And yes, I do have a ROM Agent standing behind me, why do you ask? 😜
Just about every Successor state has lost a ruler in combat, except the Combine it seems. Very , very shameful. So shameful that there is only one way to atone ......
How much do you want to bet that the invincible was sabotaged by Comstar? With the destruction of all of the remaining Kuritan Warships it becomes a necessity for comstar to maintain the balance by taking the invincible off the board.
You may already know, but it actually ends up in ComStar hands. I don't know the story of whether they found it by accident or not, but it might not ever have malfunctioned or been sabotaged, but rather infiltrated and then captured.
It was mentioned in the First Jihad Hot Spots that they had found her as a Derelict, and she had suffered a drive malfunction, probably due to battle damage. She was supposed to be presented as a gift upon WOB's induction into the Second Star League. We know how that turned out.
I wish they tracked the number of WarShips more closely in the 2ndSW sourcebook, because we don't really know anything about the numbers after 2821 until 2853 when it declares that only six Combine vessels remain, everything else is scrapped or decommissioned.
And to think Invincible would return again in the Jihad, wielded by the Blakists instead. I get it's stupid but man I really love that story beat. Like imagine the horror of the average Lyran seeing something that's likely a storied part of the martial tradition (at least for the navy) returning to obliterate their capital. That would be like CVN-65 returning today to drop a nuke on New York or something along those lines. Just talk about cool - even if unbelievable, even for Battletech
I've said it before, I'll say it again. No one covers BT history as well as you do. You bring to life events that were merely background fluff for 30+ years.
Well thank you very much. A lot of this project is based on the excellent Historical series of sourcebooks, so I have to give credit to those for really fleshing out the early history that was only ever covered in brief before then.
Kuritan Palace is figuratively the meeting and gathering place of the intelligence services of the inner sphere and likely there are retirement houses in the palace grounds for them.
I swear, some power of the universe keeps having Sven put his video premieres just 5 minutes shy of when I go to work. So weird. Kurita continues to be jerks, and space boats go extinct. What an odd episode.
Assuming you're talking about PRAYING MANTIS, the Housebooks were alright on that point. The Kurita and Steiner books obviously blame the LIC, but the Davion one introduced the MIIO angle. The Intelligence Agencies sourcebook then blames Roweena and the Kurita Handbook later introduces the whole SAFE angle. I'm sure there is another I'm forgetting about that.
Sven, love the series and the visuals but one thing bugged me. Your lower-thirds with the characters names was kinda cut of on one of my monitors. Be careful of title safe!
Thank you for the feedback. Was it one specific instance where I had it in the wrong position or a consistent issue where all of the text is too close to the edge of the screen?
@@SvenVanDerPlank it was the whole video. I'm sure if I watched on a phone, TV, or different display it could look different. Just wanted to give a heads up.
I'd be really curious to know what kind of remaining stockpiles of WMDs the successor states have left by this point. WMDs are a lot easier to make than a battlemech, so surely stockpiles would still be decently high.
There are no figures given in any sourcebook I've read, but the Succession War sourcebooks make it clear they didn't come close to exhausting their supplies before the gentleman's agreement outlawed their use. The Word of Blake would later seize these stockpiles and make use of them during the Jihad.
Yeah, but that falls into the territory of myths as opposed to what we know for certain. I did address the ComStar "rumours" in the episode, and if anything happened at Merope, it could well have been them.
The Draks had a really good shot at doing it and winning, had the Commonwealth not pulled a surprising ace out of their sleeve. I mean, what are the odds of the US suddenly restarting production of 16 inch shells and refitting USS Iowa for active service?
The idea is that while these things are able to project an enormous amount of power, they can be fairly swiftly dealt with by much cheaper means, such as Aerospace fighters carrying nuclear payloads. Once the gloves come off as far as WMDs are concerned, it's just not sensible to construct them given the extreme cost. Any time someone faces one without WarShips of their own, they're going to resort to the nuclear option. By the time the Inner Sphere agrees to limiting weapons of mass destruction, they've lost the technology base needed to build WarShips.
That's pretty much what Assault DropShips are. They carry the firepower to defend a system from attack, but lack the Jump Drives needed to travel between stars.
@@SvenVanDerPlank ok. But then its totally unreasonable that they actually have a treaty limiting nuclear use....given the severity of warfare, war crimes and clan invasion!!!🤨🤔🤐
@@youtmeme Space warfare became limited to DropShips and Aerospace fighters, as even JumpShips were considered too precious to lose because of the limited means to build them or maintain them. Total warfare just became too risky for so little gain, as the Great Houses massive losses started to destabilize them internally. With even planet colonisation being a capacity lost across humanity, warfare became more ritualised and codified, as even BattleMech technology was severely limited (if not lost). War crimes still happened later on, but rarely through the means of WMDs. Yes, the Clan Invasion did brought back the threat of WarShips from the Clans (despite rarely using them outside of a support role), with the Inner Sphere rebuilding their space capacities in time as ComStar deployed their hidden fleets.
The mention that the only Lyrans left who knew how to crew the LCS Invincible were all retired, makes me imagine the ship went on its last ride crewed exclusively by people in their 70s and up.
Something about House Kurita losing to the cast of Space Cowboys just makes me smile.
it reminds me of how they brought back sailors from WW2 and Korea, when they reactivated the Missouri class Battleships, nearly 50 years after their initial deployment.
Comstar: Uhhh... Yes, LCS Invincible suffered a "Jump Drive malfunction". Never found them though...
Obviously since it is neutral ComStar we can trust them at their word (of Blake).
No, it's fine, they will be seen in Far Country 2.
I pray to Blake that such a thing never becomes reality.
@SvenVanDerPlank I maintain that if you take Far Country as just being a fun "Sci Fi" story with Battletech flavoring it's just fine.
I've heard many people say as much over the years. Having finally read it this Christmas, I can say that I do not agree.
The fact that it is ostensibly set in the BT universe does not bother me at all. I also think the author's use of language puts him above several others who have written for BT. Unfortunately, all that is irrelevant because he chose to write one of the strangest stories I have come across and populated it with some of the most bizarre individuals Imaginable.
One day I'll make a video on it, and it'll just be 10 minutes of me reading quotes from Goldmember himself; Brian Seagraves.
I was not expecting the last warships to have such an epic battle, I was expecting more and more to be abandoned or decommissioned. That was amazing!
Right? What is more amazing is what happens to the Invincible.
"Explosively disassembled" - well, you're not wrong.
Very enjoyable video.
Rapid, unplanned, energetic disassembly is what we used to call it in the corps of engineers.
I was keeping a rough mental tally of how many Warships still survived as each episode went by. This will be a somber one indeed...
Most inner spheres only have 2-3 warships left as most inner sphere shipyards got nuked.
FWL has a functional shipyard but is too broke to build warships due to both balkanization and falcon jade taking a substantial portion of their remaining territory.
Yup it ain't a Battletech video if the Kuritans don't commit at least one mass murder, even if its their own palace staff.
It's traditions.
as kuritans would say "it is za grindu"
All according to kekaku.
Gotta stay on-brand!
lol at least they are consistent
I love BattleTech but I hope one day Catalyst game Labs or whoever owns the BattleTech IP bring back the Aerospace version of BattleTech
It has never gone away, you can simply buy the manual.
Ngl given the Urbie LAM box is going to be followed up by other LAMs its only a matter of time until we get aerospace minis again.
I wanna PLAY the Aerotech piloting role too in some future Mechwarrior game. ...would I die super fast to medium lasers from a Mech that was "watching the Skies?" ...Yes, but that's what's great about multiplayer games, most ppl never look UP
I would love a rules-revised version of aerotech to make it more useable on the tabletop. The rules as is just make my head spin.
I'm inclined to believe it was a ComStar Agent that caused the LCS-Invincible to be lost. Otherwise, I feel the crew of the ship wouldn't have dared make the trip home if their K-Drive had been damaged during the battle.
It be very interesting to see Warships make a return. Everything I've been learning about them makes me think/believe, BattleTech has been missing out a fair bit on them. Although considering how devastating they indeed are. I'm at once optimistic & sceptical at their inclusion back into the setting.
Amazing work Sven. This series & others has been so illuminating. Be very interesting to see when you get to the Clans. Awesome work. Well done.
Yeah, sure, it’s “lost” ;) ;) ;) ;)
Amazing as always. Warships in Battletech have always fascinated me so it's great to see the last action of these behemoths.
I'm with you. I really love hearing about the WarShips. Probably chose the wrong sci-fi franchise to get invested in if that's my area of interest.
@@SvenVanDerPlankWarships are interesting, sadly they just interfere too much with the True basis of the setting: Battlemechs
After all You can't have stompy 4v4 mech combat if a Leopard drop ship is little more than a nat to even the smallest Warships and dies before they can even burn into the system.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Warships trigger Big Red. How dare you 😄
@18:37
“Enemy Suppression Fire, all batteries execute.”
-Commander William Adama
One of the reasons why Saturday is great for me? New BattleTech lore videos! Seriously, always love learning new things about one of my favorite series.
I just finished Big Red 40-Tech's Warhammer IIC video, loved hearing you voice Khan N'buta! I hope you're doing well today!
Glad you enjoyed both videos. Always happy to be invited to take part in other BT projects, even if I don't think I've got the voice to pull off these characters.
Ah, the last mission of LCS Invincible, my favorite triumph and tragedy of the 2nd succession war. Steiner- kurita must be stopped, no matter the cost, and it was high. Great video Sven, thank you.
It's a great send-off to the era of WarShips. Glad you enjoyed the video.
Steiners dont have to be stopped. They are the puncbags of BT universe. Actually never a long time capable leader, never realising their industrial advantage, etc. Everyone else can have succes, except lyrians…. And I wonder, how they managed to be still around, never actually overrun, or torn apart by mutiny, rebellion, and so on…. And puncbag status: even their meager succeses are just for to be overturned by fraction of time and effort to they get those achivments. I actually believe, the authors of BT universe hate them, thats why they are constant punching bag.
@@Rorgosh They're kind of too big to die. As Professor Tex once put it, "they will keep throwing meat and metal at you until you are destroyed or they get bored."
@Archangelm127 Yeah but they aren't wrong in saying we're the punching bags of BattleTech and the writers hate us.
@@Cross_Malaki I'd say yes and no, respectively. I mean, you have Solaris! And money. Oh so very much money. Why would the writers make you ever so rich if they hated you?
They have you take so many punches because they know you'll barely feel it. Through your massive bags of money. ;)
And with the decommissioning of the last warship, the powers of the Inner Sphere realized the futility of war and commited themselves to complete disarmament.
The end.
*dismemberment
@@brandonclark435 I now have the image of a chainsaw-wielding Atlas stuck in my head. And for that, I thank you.
And they all did a Gangam style dance to celebrate.
@@AtreidesT660 Have you reading ComStar's top secret intelligence reports?!?!?!
@@AtreidesT660 I love this pro-peace, non-violent setting.
Sven that was amazing. Everything i hoped for and more.
Glad it lived up to your expectations.
Agree with you on the warships. Equipment requires a lot of time and effort to maintain. Drop that for a short time and you'll have to make it up with interest to get them working. We had aircraft that would be grounded for a few months for repair and when we finally got everything needed to get them back up, we would always spend at least double the time fixing all the things from just sitting.
That's why I always laugh when people talk about bringing the Iowas back into service. It would be cheaper and quicker to just clean sheet a new BB than to get one of those girls back into fighting shape.
You're absolutely right. It's nothing more than a fantasy putting these vessels back into service. When WarShips later become a reality for the Great Houses again, apart from ripping a few salvageable parts off the hulks, they're very quickly abandoned once more.
Yeah, the only one who stood a chance with the older hulls was Comstar/WOB, and only because of the Titan Yards. They still had the Blueprints for most of the SL era ships. Even then, I don't even want to think about how much they spent to refurbish a McKenna.
I'm inclined to think they might have been able to slowly learn back part of what was lost from some of the more intact remaining ships and wrecks. But they would have needed to be free from interruptions and especially free from Comstar.
For further current evidence, reference 80% of Russian armor in Ukraine
Great video. We got to see the Invincible! For the chancellor, I mean the archon; for the archon!
What awesome entry in your series. It was wonderfully detailed. Thank you working so hard on it. Side note, the FSS Pleiades , the Davion Carrier. Didn't break in half, it KF Drive broke/broke it's back after it arrived in system. The ship was made into museum in system is jumped too, Novaya Zemlya .
What a banger of an episode!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
As a warship wonk, I think this episode is both awesome and kinda sad.
"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
The last ride of the space cowboys and the Last Resort is the stuff of legends.
Seems dumb that the IS powers never had civilian versions of the Potemkin in order to move large amounts of dropships in their safer areas of their realms.
They had Star Lord and Monolith class JumpShips for moving large forces, but the bigger they make those things, the greater the loss if something goes wrong.
@@SvenVanDerPlank true enough, but I was thinking the Potemkin could carry 25 dropships. It would be used in core areas of their realms, where accidents and attacks would be much rarer. Would have appealed to the Lyrans and economies of scale thinking.
@@SuperVeganShark Keep in mind that Warship jump drives are much more expensive and advanced so that more mass and volume can be allocated to weapons, armor, cargo, etc. Maybe had the Star League been in better shape for longer, they might have tried that.
Though Clan Sea fox has refitted a lot of Potemkins for more pure cargo transport and even mobile mass habitation. But Sea Fox has a LOT of money to throw at problems and fund clan tech solutions.
So it has been done, but only by one faction, and even then these aren't purpose built ships, but heavily modified warships made into homes and haulers.
I liked hearing about the mercenary drama. I'm really interested in learning about more
The Eridani Light Horse? Most of that detail came from the ELH anthology No Greater Honour if you want to get the full story. More Merc drama later in this series too. The penultimate episode I'm working on has one of the largest in existence mutiny against their employer, and it won't be the last time that happens to them.
Excellent work Sven! To the LCS Invincible I raise a glass.
Ah the curse of the scholar:
5 different sources all saying completely different things about the same event, with each of them still having a small bit of the actual truth all nestled deep inside
Hesperus can't keep getting away with it!
(it will)
You cannot beat the mountain!
Watching this video late due to reasons but now I can binge on two more superb videos. Awesome work as always Sven.
Thank you, hope you enjoy them.
Finally got a chance to sit down and watch this, it was so worth it! I loved this episode so much! Seriously thank you for all the time and effort you put into this video.
House Kurita continues to be just the worst. Honestly when I first learned about Battletech I took a dislike to House Kurita and it kinda just stuck even as my views of favorite houses shifted, but the more I learn of the whole history of the Inner Sphere the more I despise House Kurita. But I do also understand why they are so popular among other players.
Anyway, this video was amazing but it also kind of hurt because it’s the end of Warships. I’ve always loved naval stuff and I hated that the warship version of Battletech and Aerotech just arnt played all that much anymore. I understand why but still I yearn for massive naval battles among the stars with warships and fighters followed up by massive invasions of mechs, tanks, and infantry. It’s part of the reason why I think the Age of War is probably one of my favorite times to set a game in.
Love the way they keep enough ambiguity, like the Invincible's disappearance, to allow people to build their own non-canon stories and scenarios incorporating these legends while taking them out of the equation of the main narrative.
Well… it becomes important later.
Thank you again for another amazing video and your continued devotion to the battletech community.
You're welcome. Happy to be of service. Never thought I'd be approaching the point where I have almost a full 24 hours of BattleTech Lore & History on the channel.
@SvenVanDerPlank I still find it hard to believe anyone would take up a task like this, but here you are doing us this great service
I don't know quite how I went from, "let's make a quick 10 minute video to help 40K refugees get acclimated," to "I want to cover the entire 1000+ year history of BattleTech in-depth." Talk about feature creep.
@SvenVanDerPlank me either, but please keep it up.
I do love how the mantis plot has been bloated enough that you could essentially have kuritas entire house staff in on it to some degree.
With the loss of The Invicible the age of warships ended
Meanwhile... in the Kerensky Cluster :|
They went into hibernation there as well. I haven't read the Operation KLONDIKE sourcebook but the BattleSpace sourcebook suggests that they were all mothballed and only a handful took part in the Exodus Civil War. Don't quote me on that one though because I know the Invading Clans had 100+ by 3050.
@@SvenVanDerPlank So when do they get the tech to produce WarShips again?
The Clans never lose the tech, if that's what you're asking. They're producing new WarShip designs throughout the 29th & 30th centuries. The Inner Sphere doesn't restart construction again until the 3050s.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Ok,thanks. I just wondered when the Inner Sphere resumed construction due to the damage to their shipyards in the succession wars.
Davion and Kurita were already drawing up blueprints after the War of 3039, but the costs were going to be so extreme since they'd first have to build all the factories, neither went ahead with the plans until the Clan Invasion began. The first fully functional prototype was completed in late 3057.
Meanwhile in Clan Space: Using McKenna Class hulls as cargo tugs because we've all got too many Warships. Just yank 2000tons of armour off them to fit more pallets inside, it's not like there's any pirates out here anyway.
EXCELLENT WORK, BROTHER👍🤘
Sven, this video started to answer a few of my biggest questions: 1) There are various references to the derelict warships, but little about why they were not restored and 2) Why were there not sneak attacks from SS to SS using the Periphery? For 1 - I'd love to see more details. Everything else got a tech downgrade and there were warships before mechs plus every state was making them. Is it possible that ROM was really that thorough? As for 2) Deep-reaching raids through the periphery to bypass entrenched worlds or units disguised as merchants would be fascinating. Keep up the amazing work!
The reason why they didn't continue to build WarShips is because losing the ability to manufacture just one or two critical components, such as the compact KF drives, means that they can no longer complete them, even if all of the other components are still readily available.
As for flanking attacks through the periphery, there really isn't much of a need. You're going through mostly uncolonised systems, which brings an extra element of risk if you break down, but your route is longer, increasing the time to get there and chances for something to go wrong. You can just as easily/riskily navigate through abandoned systems within the Inner Sphere. By this point in the war, there are plenty of dead worlds you know the coordinates of but won't get spotted at passing through. Furthermore, you're only likely to strike at other planets on the edge of the periphery, which generally have lower industrial capability or military significance.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Thanks for the answer! I get the point about the drives, but even rehabbing a ship for in-system defense would seem to be a good idea. Is that somehow beyond possibility or was it more of a mechs or ships approach paired with the old axiom of nobody ever won a war on the defense?
The WarShips probably were used as orbital defence stations for a time as you say, but eventually the cost of maintaining the life support and structural integrity after centuries of corrosion and decay makes it not worth it, especially when there hasn't been a credible threat to the interior worlds where they've been parked for so many years.
Comstar had two Cameron class heavy cruisers orbiting between Mars and the Asteroid belt. They used one to service the other for parts. This Cruiser joined task force Serpent and fired the first shells in anger in more than 200 years when the fleet ran into a fleet of clan ships which included a couple of smaller warships. It handily destroyed and severely damaged other Clan ships and the survivors joined the new "clan Serpent" ..
The Turpitz? Funny story about that! I heard that Comstar was resp-
You heard nothing.
Great stuff !
Such a great series especially for us new to the lore. I started reading the novels last year when I first got into table top & am currently reading The Hunter's (3058) so it has been nice to gain and understanding of the SLDF, Succession Wars as I work chronologically through the novels.
Thank you. I'm glad you're finding the series useful for learning the history.
I haven't made it to Twilight of the Clans in my own reading yet. Just finished the two Refusal War books, but I'm hoping to make a start on the Twilight octology (if that's a word) by the end of the year.
@SvenVanDerPlank Jeez Sven, you still have like 20-30 novels to go before you hit the WOB era. You still have the break up of the FEDCOM, the Fights in the Chaos March, and the Dragoons Civil War before you even get to Twilight of the Clans. And whatever you do, DO NOT READ Far Country!!
It's only ten novels left before Twilight. Dragoon Civil War is behind me, and I've read Far Country already.
@SvenVanDerPlank I'm sorry I couldn't get to you before you read Far Country; nobody should have to be subjected to that abomination. Only 10 to go till Twilight (with the Capellan Solution novels right in the middle of Serpent/Bulldog), then the fun of the FEDCOM Civil War. Plus, there's the assorted Mech Warriors novels, which honestly weren't too bad. The Dark Age novels, on the other hand...
Even ignoring the degradation centuries of neglect wrought upon those ships, the simple loss of knowledge and capabilities for production, operation and general maintenance are beyond crimpling. people like to talk about the US bringing the Iowa class battleships back into active service, but even those which are carefully preserved and cared for would be monumental over takings to get operational again. We dont make engines like theirs for decades. We dont make boilers like that anymore. We dont have the cranes required to heft 400 ton turrets out of their holes let alone the equipment to replace or even reline the barrels. ammunition of that caliber is not made anymore. we dont have the foundries required to produce armor plates that thick or that strong. and every year, we lose more and more of the men that served on those ships, reducing any real knowledge for their operation. now apply that onto a spaceborn warship that is several orders of magnitude more complex and degraded...
Kurita Commander: Here we go, boys: Eighth time's the charm!
"Doing precisely what we've done seven times before, is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time."
Awesome ep 💯💯💯
I enjoyed this video over an entire package of strawberry starbursts, life is good today
A man of high culture, I see.
You could seriously make a full-on epic movie about the Invincible and the battle of Hesperus. Such feats are the stuff of legends.
Excellent stuff. :)
HUZZAR!
THE LAST WARSHIPS COMETH!
There were two female coordinators - Siriwan's granddaughter Sanethia also served in that office.
Damn, stupid oversight on my part. I mentioned Sanethia in my Golden Age series as well.
Awesome information and making it real of what the source books says.
ComStar has a hidden army and fleet!? Gasp! Surely you jest! ComStar is a wholly neutral company that has nothing but the Inner Sphere's best interest at heart! They are the preservers of knowledge, not destroyers! And yes, I do have a ROM Agent standing behind me, why do you ask? 😜
Don't worry, it's just an unfounded rumour.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Hesperus is always a good place for a battle.
You're guaranteed to get a good fight out of Steiner if nothing else.
Seems pretty exciting!!!
HYPE! HYPE! HYPE!
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Thank you, Jeffery.
Awesome video!! Had to watch it twice i enjoyed it so much lol. Keep up the good work 👏
I'm really pleased you enjoyed it.
Just about every Successor state has lost a ruler in combat, except the Combine it seems. Very , very shameful. So shameful that there is only one way to atone ......
I'd imagine they would want the old ships for the salvage alone..... the armor plates would make for great base defense.
How much do you want to bet that the invincible was sabotaged by Comstar? With the destruction of all of the remaining Kuritan Warships it becomes a necessity for comstar to maintain the balance by taking the invincible off the board.
You may already know, but it actually ends up in ComStar hands. I don't know the story of whether they found it by accident or not, but it might not ever have malfunctioned or been sabotaged, but rather infiltrated and then captured.
It was mentioned in the First Jihad Hot Spots that they had found her as a Derelict, and she had suffered a drive malfunction, probably due to battle damage. She was supposed to be presented as a gift upon WOB's induction into the Second Star League. We know how that turned out.
Amazing work as usual I'm suprised at the amount of DCS that were fielded
I wish they tracked the number of WarShips more closely in the 2ndSW sourcebook, because we don't really know anything about the numbers after 2821 until 2853 when it declares that only six Combine vessels remain, everything else is scrapped or decommissioned.
@@SvenVanDerPlank still 6 vessels of destroyer or smaller is pretty good after the destruction of 1st war
And to think Invincible would return again in the Jihad, wielded by the Blakists instead. I get it's stupid but man I really love that story beat. Like imagine the horror of the average Lyran seeing something that's likely a storied part of the martial tradition (at least for the navy) returning to obliterate their capital. That would be like CVN-65 returning today to drop a nuke on New York or something along those lines. Just talk about cool - even if unbelievable, even for Battletech
I'm late for the premiere. AGAIN!!
But it's still good,thanks for giving us this masterpiece.
And now I'm going to do waiting mode till next video.
No worries. Rendering the next chapter now, will premiere same time next Saturday if you're interested.
How did a Barron class live this long
No-one wanted to use it until it was the only choice left.
Thank you, I really like these videos.
You're welcome. Glad you like them.
Brilliant just brilliant
I've said it before, I'll say it again. No one covers BT history as well as you do. You bring to life events that were merely background fluff for 30+ years.
Well thank you very much. A lot of this project is based on the excellent Historical series of sourcebooks, so I have to give credit to those for really fleshing out the early history that was only ever covered in brief before then.
Kuritan Palace is figuratively the meeting and gathering place of the intelligence services of the inner sphere and likely there are retirement houses in the palace grounds for them.
It's a real melting pot of ideas. Unfortunately, most of those ideas involve the assassination of a head of state.
I swear, some power of the universe keeps having Sven put his video premieres just 5 minutes shy of when I go to work.
So weird.
Kurita continues to be jerks, and space boats go extinct. What an odd episode.
AWESOME JUST AWESOME!!!!!
You need to remember the OG sourcebooks where ComStsr material , take with grain of salt the details
Assuming you're talking about PRAYING MANTIS, the Housebooks were alright on that point. The Kurita and Steiner books obviously blame the LIC, but the Davion one introduced the MIIO angle. The Intelligence Agencies sourcebook then blames Roweena and the Kurita Handbook later introduces the whole SAFE angle. I'm sure there is another I'm forgetting about that.
I'm glad the Eredani Light Horse thinks like I do: blow the pirates' dropships to hell and just leave them for the enemy garrison to deal with. 🤣
An inspired choice. It's not like the garrison of the world you're raiding is going to ask you to stick around and clean up the mess.
@@SvenVanDerPlank Plus clean getaway while they're fighting each other!
Sven, love the series and the visuals but one thing bugged me. Your lower-thirds with the characters names was kinda cut of on one of my monitors. Be careful of title safe!
Thank you for the feedback. Was it one specific instance where I had it in the wrong position or a consistent issue where all of the text is too close to the edge of the screen?
@@SvenVanDerPlank it was the whole video. I'm sure if I watched on a phone, TV, or different display it could look different. Just wanted to give a heads up.
15:04 Santander a name that will come up again . For even more ills
Santander was first colonised at an unknown point during the Second Succession War. Maybe he fled there in shame and ignominy after the battle.
🤘
I'd be really curious to know what kind of remaining stockpiles of WMDs the successor states have left by this point. WMDs are a lot easier to make than a battlemech, so surely stockpiles would still be decently high.
There are no figures given in any sourcebook I've read, but the Succession War sourcebooks make it clear they didn't come close to exhausting their supplies before the gentleman's agreement outlawed their use. The Word of Blake would later seize these stockpiles and make use of them during the Jihad.
While the age of the warship had long been past,
Even its memory is not almost gone
Crazy how they shed that amount of blood and regressed their tech so much, and nobody decided it was futile to continue when the lines barely moved.
They didn't know what they were fighting for anymore. All they knew was, they had hate in their gut.
Are we going to predict clan war coming in the end of year? lol or september or october?
ROM, I see what you did there.
Isn't there also another warship ghost story, "the lost battleship of Merope" or something?
Yeah, but that falls into the territory of myths as opposed to what we know for certain. I did address the ComStar "rumours" in the episode, and if anything happened at Merope, it could well have been them.
Space at&t don't want you to have a satphone 😄
I love BattleTech as a setting, but the trope of "lost in hyperspace jump" always struck me as cheap and over used.
Well if it makes you feel any better, it wasn't quite as lost as people in 3025 think it was.
Texas Class?
We don't know of a single Texas-class that remained behind after Kerensky's exodus.
daddy Kerensky flew away with all the good stuff™
It may look like a good idea, to fight the Lyrans on Hesperus.
But it is not.
Surely there is no greater setting for a battle than the mountains and valleys of Hesperus? Who could turn down the opportunity if it arose?
The Draks had a really good shot at doing it and winning, had the Commonwealth not pulled a surprising ace out of their sleeve. I mean, what are the odds of the US suddenly restarting production of 16 inch shells and refitting USS Iowa for active service?
Seems stupid..soo many dropships and jumpships, and continual warfare...yet...no warship construction..🤨🤨😒🙄🙄🙄
Excellent vid!!!😉👏🙌👍✌
The idea is that while these things are able to project an enormous amount of power, they can be fairly swiftly dealt with by much cheaper means, such as Aerospace fighters carrying nuclear payloads. Once the gloves come off as far as WMDs are concerned, it's just not sensible to construct them given the extreme cost. Any time someone faces one without WarShips of their own, they're going to resort to the nuclear option. By the time the Inner Sphere agrees to limiting weapons of mass destruction, they've lost the technology base needed to build WarShips.
I'm surprised they never tried to make any patrol boat type vessels.
That's pretty much what Assault DropShips are. They carry the firepower to defend a system from attack, but lack the Jump Drives needed to travel between stars.
@@SvenVanDerPlank ok. But then its totally unreasonable that they actually have a treaty limiting nuclear use....given the severity of warfare, war crimes and clan invasion!!!🤨🤔🤐
@@youtmeme Space warfare became limited to DropShips and Aerospace fighters, as even JumpShips were considered too precious to lose because of the limited means to build them or maintain them. Total warfare just became too risky for so little gain, as the Great Houses massive losses started to destabilize them internally.
With even planet colonisation being a capacity lost across humanity, warfare became more ritualised and codified, as even BattleMech technology was severely limited (if not lost). War crimes still happened later on, but rarely through the means of WMDs.
Yes, the Clan Invasion did brought back the threat of WarShips from the Clans (despite rarely using them outside of a support role), with the Inner Sphere rebuilding their space capacities in time as ComStar deployed their hidden fleets.
:'(
press F for the last warships