Stephenson's Rocket was an Early Steam Powered Locomotive built by English engineer Robert Stephenson in 1829. It was not the first Steam Locomotive, but it was among the most influnetial. It was notable for being the first Steam locomotive built in roughly what would become the standard configuration for Steam locomotives and the first Steam Locomotive to achieve a speed of 48 kph.
Ah, House Steiner. An incredibly incompetent faction but with more money than god sending city obliterating killing machines down from low orbit on ‘stealth’ missions because killing everyone who saw you is technically stealth by the loosest definition of the term.
Everyone can make fun of Steiner for being incompetent all they want, and I encourage it, but never forget that Anastasius Focht was originally names Frederick STEINER.
That's why I love them. They're militarily incompetent. For all else, they're one of if not the most competent states in the sphere. Were does that money come from? They earned it through hard work and shrewd administration.
If you ever doubt how cool the BattleTech universe can be, keep this in mind: 1 - Certain giant mechs can be equipped with jump jets, allowing for them to gain a fair amount of altitude 2 - The largest mech in Battletech that can be fitted with jump jets is the 90-ton Highlander (In a setting where most mechs weigh between 20 and 100 tons) 3 - It is an entirely viable tactic to use your jump jet equipped Highlander to dropkick another mech in the face
One does not "dropkick" with the Highlander. One BURIES the enemy with it. It is called the Highlander Burial, and if you are in a mech smaller than the Highlander...pray it does not happen to you
ComStar took over Terra because it was the last vestige of Star League that remained home and letting them have it was a least bad option. If a Successor State took Terra by force, that would be a big deal for them and give them clout as the new masters of Humanity's Homeworld. But while House Steiner, Liao, Kurita, Marik and Davion would wanted this, they most definately did not any of the other four getting it. Nor did anyone want the disgrace of being the guys who burned it. Giving it to a (alleged) neutral party was the stable low risk option on that front for the time being.
Also, if I remember right, each of them said "ah, fuck it, we'll stomp those bastards out when we finish the rest off!" ...and then the Succession Wars happened. And Comstar just kinda SAT THERE on Terra, twiddling thumbs.
Blakes Word was centuries later. Comstar had enough fighting power to be costly to stomp when there was so much else to stomp and they did offer a convenient solution for the problem of 'if I can't have Terra, someone else might take it and claim to be Star League'. Which Comstar didn't do. Then, after the 1st and 2nd Succession War, technology was already so very much fucked, that Comstar became a neccessity. It's really not even that implausible. We do historically know and value neutral entities. Think Switzerland for banking.
@@KillerOrca Not necessarily since Comstar themselves were the causes of a couple of succession wars due to the Inner Sphere being too “peaceful”, which may lead to a house’s own recuperation of their infrastructure and even technological research, which they don’t want.
The biggest problem with comstar was in many ways their own regression societally speaking. It sounds weird when you have a guy that basically goes around cuts a chunk of the old Teran hegemony out. Blake may have been slowly going insane over time. And also these people have been through a major interstellar war in the middle of all been slightly batshit crazy to begin with.
I know two things about BattleTech: - Mechs made by the Clans have two names: one given by them and one by the Inner Sphere. So you can take your Puma, give it the darkest paint scheme you can find and become the Black Adder. - There's a guy called Blake and he had a Word, but I don't know the word and since he got wiped out I imagine that it was a bad word.
As a battletech Fan let me help ya understand: 1. Like IRL NATO designations, the Inner-sphere during the Clan invasion designated vehicles and particularly Battlemechs under a different name then the Clans themselves. So for example, the Timber Wolf, the premier example of Clan Battlemech design, is called a Mad Cat by the Inner sphere due to its resemblance to a Maruader and Catapult. Weirdly enough, at least in the case of the Mad Cat the MK2 is called universally by both Clan and Sphere "Mad Cat Mk II" furthering confusion. In short, just call em' however you want. 2. The Word of Blake where effectively hyper-religious warlike branch of Comstar. Who, after the dissolution of the Second Star League after Obliteration of Clan Smoke Jaguar, decided to take their rage out on the Successor states by casually nuking the entire inner sphere like a Crusade in 40k. However, they ended up like IRL ISIS and had gotten litterally every faction in the setting to bomb them back to the stone age and their ideology publicly humiliated.
@@kyokyodisaster4842 I actually know the reason for #1. Unlike the Tmberwolf/Mad Cat, the Mad Cat MkII is made by Clan Diamond Shark, not Clan Wolf. And Clan Diamond Shark, also known as the Merchant Clan, made the Mad Cat MkII to sell for both Clanners AND Inner Sphere, so to make sales easy for Inner Sphere they called it Mad Cat MkII, this of course pissed off Clan Wolf, however they still buy the mech or salvage it cause it's a really well made mech.
I like that there are still vehicles, infantry and aerospace assets in battletech to use in Battletech, and that it hasn't purely been replaced with mechs, everything is at least somewhat reasonable/makes at least a little sense with how it happened or why it was made... You can also customize your mechs and vehicles however you want, like how my friend made an extremely armored scout aircraft for shits and giggles, or a heavy ground tank that literally refuses to die due to having just as much if not more armor than an assault mech and two hard hitting Autocannon 20s... at the cost of being barely able to move at all-
So… are there infantry games for Battletech? Because that’s the biggest sticking point for me. I’m not big on mechs, I just really like a good old fashioned gritty ground pounder in a sci-fi setting with all of their neat gear and shit. And 40k is the only game I know that does that really well
@@DarthNicky you can play battletech games with mostly infantry, vehicles and aerospace assets, yeah. It is a combined arms setting after all. Always helps to have at least a few 'mechs to move around and help since infantry mobility isn't the best, they seem to be more for securing positions and digging in/holding their ground at an objective, but they are still good fun since they can absorb fire from larger weapons pretty well and only lose a few men at a time from it, making them very survivable.
@@DarthNicky You could play entirely with a vehicle and infantry based force. They're a little less effective but they're also cheaper. So you can field about two to three times as many units on average. The new Kickstarter coming this Autumn is going to have several new plastic vehicle packs. From tanks to helicopters.
The great thing about Battletech lore is that it matters exactly as much or as little as you want it too. Planetary and regional governments and cultures are barely mentioned at all in official lore, but they are also what players will interact with most, so there is a lot of room to just make up whatever you like. Nobody is going to tell you that you are wrong if your unit started off as the planetary militia for a world of space Rastafarians who's primary export is high-quality fish oil - I don't *think* anything like that explicitly exists, but the lore is very non-specific about the details of 99% of the universe, and there is nothing saying that world can't exist. The fact is that people from your space-Rastafarian world probably won't know or care about all the details of what's going on in the larger universe. It not unreasonable to assume that whatever your personal lore-knowledge, that's what your characters know too. It's most normal for players to get into Battletech with minimal knowledge of lore. Originally, there was just a 44-page paperback book with all the rules, mech sheets, and like a page of lore, and that was really all you needed to know about the universe. Most Battletech games will be focused on a battlefield of 2 or 3 square kilometers, so it doesn't matter if your overall perspective of the universe could be summed up in 200 words. No one in the community actually cares if you don't know anything. We're all here for the stompy robots. There is vast lore out there if you want to get into it, but no one knows everything, and it's not all relevant to every story. The reason the lore is so vast is because it's mostly been built by the community rather than curated by a corporation, and has grown up over decades. Even famous units which have become canon began as play-test groups. Most of Battletech lore comes from something someone did at a tournament somewhere, with novels and sourcebooks being printed sometime after that. It's a very easy campaign setting to get into.
The only thing worth noting is that if you pick Magistracy of Canopus to have your dudes be from, your Mechs can be piloted by catboys in oversized hoodies and be canon. Or Ork cosplayers. Or a mixture of Ork cosplayers and catboys. The Magistracy of Canopus is a pathway to fluff the inner sphere and clans would consider... unnatural.
For those looking to get into the meat of the setting, _Tex Talks BattleTech_ is a fantastic series to look into. I can't recommend them enough and the videos are also just fantastic lore pieces in general.
@@padrescout it's the necessary trade-off for the BPL doing their own bits of storytelling and world building... I could see how that might not appeal to some, but I kinda dig it, personally. They don't take themselves too seriously, but they take their telling of the "history" quite seriously... I appreciate that in a semi-immersive lore retelling.
Battletech: We have given up WMDs after the First Succession Crisis as the loss of civilian life was too much to bear. Warhammer 40k: EXTERMINATUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I first dove into battletech lore I was super impressed at how good it was. I've been dissatisfied with GW and battletech really just gave me a way to leave Warhammer 40k behind and never look back. Also if you want to get more into on the Battletech setting, Tex from the Black Pants Legion is great. Also: The Star League deserved it, Tuarian Concordat forever
I will criticize him in that I get the background stuff but still, I don’t need 30 min on another completely different subject just to give a point for the main video.
Battletech lore is fun, a star league general gets PTSD from Tuarian Concordat suicide fire ships and nukes any cities JUST to make sure there is no more suicide bombing.
I like the entirely human aspect of BattleTech. I like how people can be close to building something beautiful in the setting and someone comes along and ruins it for no other reason than they'll gain slightly more power this way, and their enemies will gain slightly less. I like the emotional nature of some stories, because it's all human tragedy. Personal anecdote time, I read this story from the Reunification War that was such an emotional gut punch I started crying, literally crying. It was like someone had a camera on my own traumas from my own wars and changed the names around a bit. That was the day I said "whelp, maybe I really do need to see what the VA can do for me because ef if that doesn't sound like textbook PTSD." So I did. And it was. And now I feel...less bad. Bottom line BattleTech greatly improved my life not only with that personal growth, but in enjoying thousands upon thousands of pages of fiction, and meeting some pretty good friends along the way.
@@KillerOrca Sheliak, because prior to the Clan Invasion it was so far from any major fronts the Draconis Combine saw no point in placing a DCMS garrison there. That North American rules football team was the closest thing to a military they had at all. Also, leaving a planet without a garrison like that would have really pissed off the Ghost Bears because they would see it as like leaving an infant unattended in a hot car.
Finally, the franchise that doesn't kill its entire fan content community overnight for a greedy, corrupt and insane dream of getting a monthly subscription service running for their niche mini game.
@@thecourier9290 Yeah thats definitely concerning, still need more details and even then its nowhere near as bad as what gamesworkshop did- also dont forget they've signed deals with disney and marvel to write for them and produce their upcoming seemingly never materializing show about the einsenhorn novels.
@@WelcomeToDERPLAND Whenever they start doing that it's a downwards spiral. Battletech doing the same Warhammer did, they are just starting to do it later. No future in BT
The nice thing about the modular rules is it can be as simple or complex as you want. The lore is much the same way. At the most basic level after the fall of Space Rome you have a bunch of Space Knights fighting during the Space Middle Ages until the Space Mongols invade. How much deeper you choose to go beyond that is up to you.
Me and a coworker are slowly turning all the warhammer 40k dudes at our job into battletech fans. The ease of entry and the deep complexity of tactics and choose your own rules of it all has them all sorta forgetting about 40k.
@Laken Anderson I wouldn't hold my breath about that. I wouldn't be surprised if Battletech in the next 5 to 10 years got a soft or even hard reboot to pre-clan invasion.
@Laken Anderson Oddly enough, most of the grognards I've talked too say they prefer the new stuff simply because it feels like theres agency and movement in the lore again rather than "everything sucks but we cant get to the 42nd millenium", sic; both of the big multi-national tournament based events resulting, more or less, in ties for both the War for Armageddon and the 13th Black Crusade (which GW promptly retconned with Fall of Cadia). The lack of monopose seems merely to be a stopgap situation as more stuff rolls out. Presuambly COVID didnt help in the least. but we got multipart bits of most of the major Primarus kits now Im pretty sure.
I first encountered this universe through Mechassault on the Original XBOX, which has an OST that'll stay with me to the day I die. Then my friends turned the ruler of the Federated Commonwealth into the Venom Snake to my Big Boss, and I've stayed with the series since. Another positive I would've put in is how much personality is placed in these mechs, you get an idea for a mechwarrior by their mech alone, like how I usually go for a hatchetman or an axeman because I HAVE A GIANT AXE WHY ELSE WOULD I CHOOSE THIS MECH?!
Hah MechAssault is great, but at the time BT / MechWarrior fans hated it because they wanted more MechWarrior so desperately only to get this crazy arcade game.
For the old-timers out there who found Battletech via the original Mechwarrior games, look up Timothy Seals. He redid the soundtrack for MW 2 and it rules. Arkham Bridge is fantastic.
My Dad is HUGE into Battletech. Hell I told him that this one local store had battletechs and his eyes light up like I’ve never seen before! So I got him a metal Atlas, and a box of the Clan Heavy Star box!
Just wait until you stumble onto Rasalhague. They’re arguably the most beloved underdogs in the entire setting, and now they’re part of clan ghost bear, which is arguably the best clan. It’s a low bar, admittedly, but they do their best. Plus the stories involving those factions are awesome. Like the time clan ghost bear won a planet by beating them in an American football game. I am not making that up. Or the time a Rasalhague pilot kamikaze’d herself into the bridge of the head clan ship, killing their big boss and stopping the invasion for an entire year while they elected a new leader and recognized the pilot for her sheer badassery. They even named a dropship class in her honor.
I love Sheliak and it's Three Points of Pride for two reasons. The first is that the planet's American Football Commissioner tried to use the Clan's competitive autism to pull a Space Jam thinking they had no idea how to play, only for the Ghost Bears to say "Oh shit, you still play the Game of Gridiron? Here's our intermural team of 8ft tall GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SUPER SOLDIERS." The second is that Sheliak was STILL able to field enough Players to play through the entire game despite this, as the Ghost Bear Elementals tore through their unaugment freebirth opponents like tissue paper and sent many straight to the emergency room. That the Bears let them have a Field Goal shows they recognized and respected the tenacious spirit of Sheliak to see things through until the Game is Won!
The best clan is no doubt Diamond Sharks: "All the galaxy on fire, We sell anything you desire :3" Who else could create such abomination like Piranha, lost almost all of them on Tukayyid...and then still selling 'em 100 years later!
@@СемёнСемёнов-ы1ь I mean, if we’re going off hilarity factor, it’s hard to beat goliath scorpion. “Hey, let’s huff this venom, trip the absolute fuck out, and get some spirit visions on what to do next. Oh, and we’re Spanish now for some reason.”
@@DonaldWWitt it was not a field goal, it was a three point conversion. Also, Sheliak had to go for a North American rules football game because they had no DCMS garrison since prior to the Clan Invasion that planet was nowhere near any major fronts. With how Clan Ghost Bear views the relationship between the Warrior and civilian Castes that probably pissed them off to no end, like coming across an infant in a locked car parked in a hot day.
So there's two types of tabletop battle tech that people play nowadays. Classic and Alpha Strike. If the Classic is a bit too crunchy for you (i.e. the blank battlemech record sheet, which is party why it's confusing it doesn't have any info on it just a framework) take a look at alpha strike, it's a lot more closer to other war games for rules, lot less micro management of armor pips, critical hits etc. I love classic battle tech because it's so nuanced, but I can understand it's a lot to look at first. Oh and there's a wonderful fan made java software called Megamek that you can play classic battltech on the computer with. Handles a lot of the hard stuff, but can be a bit confusing to learn the first few games
CBT has that great bit of chaos where an opening shot might hit your cockpit at long range, knock out the pilot, have him fall over into a river, fail the breach check, and then die right there. Gotta *embrace* that nuttiness and unpredictability, as it's kind of the stand-in for the various nutty alien sci-fi tropes that other games have.
@@Xeno426thats one of my favourite things about the cbt, in my initial fights teaching friends how to play. One friend I was decemating moving in for the kill, his meck missing left torso and leg just suddenly deleted my head with a gauss and took the win. On other side one of my friends in our first match was pressing my catapult into a corner, I got a lucky two crits on his engine then he fell over right into a river as he was trying to cool off and got slapped with a third crit. Kaboom.
I love Battletech. It's accessible for almost everyone. It's got big stompy mechs with lots of dakka, and who doesn't like big stompy things that go YATATAATATATA. The Lore is well thought out and interesting. And the fact that the setting is the entire Milky Way which is vast adn treated as such means that you can have all types of conflict happening in every pocket which means things rarely go stale.
@@GhostBear3067 yep! The Inner Sphere is just a tiny spec in the galaxy. If you go to Sarna (their wiki) and type in "Inner Sphere" there's a good map of it.
Its worth pointing out that the reason Comstar gets away with so much in the aftermath of the Ameris civil war war is actually threefold, Firstly its because one of the biggest things with the great houses is how petty they are, as long as comstar is in control of something and not one of the other houses they don't actually care all that much, but they'll beat the snot out of one another over a barely habitable moon simply because on of the other houses has it. But perhaps more importantly its because in the immediate aftermath of the Ameris civil war the Com-guard were actually the most well equipped and dangerous fighting force in the galaxy, House armies were limited in size under the star league accords and with comstar inheriting the remains of the star league defence forces (SLDF for short) as well as the industry and equipment of the Terran hegemony tangling with them was going to be extremely costly, combine that with the hegemony being a veritable fortress and the first succession war being very obviously just over the horizon no house was going to waste resources fighting the com guards. and thirdly in the wake of the Civil war the HPG network was severely damaged, and the only people who could fix it were Comstar, with war on the horizon any objection to comstars shenanigans in the hegemony would have meant them simply not fixing a particular states HPG network. going to war with 4 other major nations with no comms is a really bad idea. As a result of all that Comstar just gets away with all kinds of shit until its too powerful and the HPG network too important for anybody to actually do anything about them.
the lore can be great because if you look at the different mech designs, you find that they work a lot like real world military R&D. Some of the lore for explaining why a mech is good, or bad, or good but ignored, or bad but still used anyway, is straight out of Pentagon Wars.
Good examples include the Bushwacker which when first developed nobody could get an engine layout that worked, until the engineers got a look at the engines of salvaged Clan Mad Dogs/Vultures. Also the Charger which was designed and built as a "scout"... that was essentially an 80-ton engine with feet and everything else as an afterthought yet somehow went into production. Once the Succession Wars kicked off almost all Charger production facilities ended up within the Draconis Combine so House Kurita was up to its eyeballs in the damn things and desperate enough for ANY mechs that they were forced to make it work.
@@nitesy381 That one can actually be often seen doing what it's supposed to, and quite well, unlike a stock Charger, which was a bad idea they couldn't pull off, or the Rifleman, which is a specialized platform putt into frontline use.
@@bthsr7113 true, the urbanmech is seen as the line of defense in urban areas. It also helps its cheap and the maintenance crew do not go to suicide watch when assigned to it.
Glad you’re making stuff like this. I love BPL’s videos, but they’re a bit tricky as a basic entrypoint. Also, obligatory lore correction: the Battlemech was created in the 2400s, as a direct result of the Ares Conventions, which are THEMSELVES a result of the Tintavel Massacre, which stemmed from the Age of War, and so on and so on. Interconnected lore like that is great for fans, but it makes the setting a bitch to summarize.
One of us one of us one of us Ok on a more serious note, the rules may be a bit daunting but they make sense in practice as you play: For example: Your mech fires its weapons, This causes heat build up which your heatsinks dissipate Excess heat causes debuffs which are applied to the mech, ranging form slight movement problems to emergency shutdown or your ammunition doing a little trolling. Most of the rules come naturally rather than having an arbitrary use case
I can confirm that almost all players are happy to play you even if you have a quarter with a sharpy mark to indicate forward facing. Proxy mechs are the rule and not the exception.
Glad to see ya diving into BattleTech a bit, I got into it with Mechwarrior and the fact it hasn't hit critical mass like Warhammer (there no real "annoying space marine poster" equivalent). There's a real attention to detail that most other "expanded universe" type settings can never mange to get right and yet it still manages to have fun. Probably one of the better fan communities too, not that the bar is particularly high.
About the aliens not being there, I'm one of the people that likes Battletech because of that. Fact is, in most cases of sci fi aliens, they're not really aliens. They're almost universally presented as something else "but alien". For instance there's an early Star Trek TNG episode where a one-off alien race is in one episode where they are just humans but the women rule over the men in their society. Great. Battletech has a nation that does that, too. You don't need aliens to tell that story. You're really telling a human story while trying to pretend you're not.
Battletech is great to run like a D&D game too. There are on foot character rules that you can use to supplement the main battle rules. Run your own mercenary company. The main battle rules support everything from guys on horseback with bolt-action rifles to mechs.
My god... Amazing.... More alternative systems please... GW isn't the only game in town and given the way you present information you could make the growth cycle of potatoes crops interesting...
The nice thing about Battletech is they have two main rule sets. There's a simplified version called Alpha Strike that will be a lot easier for people to get into and then there's the Classic rules for those who really want to get into the meat of it.
I'm gonna make a bold prediction and say that your self depricating humor and constant pisstaking with the subjects of your videos (and overall just much funnier than any of the others) will make this will be one of the top 3 warhammer related channels on youtube within a year.
@@aliceorion2118 I don't do any tabletop, in fact I'm not even 2 years into watching lore video's. I've not bought any mini's and currently don't plan to either.
The thing with the original Battletech game is that it came out in a time where people were trying to simulate reality with their games. There are actually rules for Newtonian physics when playing space combat. (they are not the standard rules, just optional rules) While the game has gone through multiple hands over the years, the rules for Battletech haven't changed that much. You can not have played a game since the 80s and your experience will still carry over. Instead of coming out with a new edition and forcing you to buy everything all over again, they simply came out with new systems. Like the old system, it is still supported and updated. Want something grander in scale that is less complex, there is Alpha Strike. Which is also played on a traditional wargaming table, instead of a hex grid. So if you are making the jump from 40k, Alpha Strike would probably be the place to start. And the models and scale are the same so you can swap back and forth. There is no one way to get into or enjoy Battletech. Some people only play the MechWarrior games. Some people only read the books. I have a very wonky work schedule so I only play Mega Mek (The unofficial digital table top with an AI to play against). Heck, the whole reason I got into the universe was from the 90s cartoon.
Hearing you reference Black Pants Legion was surprising to me. I found BPL years ago because of the Space Station 13 videos. I know nothing about Battle Tech and only recently got into 40k. Seeing my interest in 40k end up looping me back to SS13 is kind of fun
I discovered battletech completely by accident by getting a steam recommendation for the TBS game of the same name. I had too much fun conquering the Aurigan reach in the name of House Arano
It’d be cool to see your takes on certain battlemechs once you’ve gotten a decent way into the lore, but, like, you do you dude, I’m not gonna demand that level of detail, you’re channel’s great without needing to do that
Battletech, the Mechanicus oil dream. We got catgirls, and boys on Canopus. Clan elementals, basically BT's Astartes equivalent, except Kerensky made girl elementals too, and the 40K Emperor thinks we're icky. Gladiatorial mech matches on Solarus 7. Battletech is also a 90's cartoon, which has since been retconned into an in universe propaganda campaign. th-cam.com/play/PLRlu7nBFPfe2DtSj1apNPNnGfMJbVhxBJ.html Tex from the Black Pants Legion is like the Leutin of Battletech, Big Red 40K also does great Battletech lore. farseer animation does great mech animation videos
Love love love battle tech and BPL. Tex is a whiskey soaked saint. Battletech is cool if midichlorians piss you or wizards annoy you in your sci fi setting. There aren't any wizards. There are cults with mystical beliefs but there isn't any hint that this stuff is real in any way. They're just crazy, and there is a lot of that in battletech.
This is one of the best "what the fuck *IS* Battletech?" videos that I've ever stumbled across... And I've been playing off and on since the 90s. Well done!
This is great pancreasnowork, I really do love the setting, but if you're looking to do more videos on it, I would recommend doing do's and dont's on the clan and innersphere as a whole for both a lore perspective and a tabletop perspective, as they really are the closest thing you get to separate playable factions. But that's my bias; excellent video and sum-up of battletech without having a brain aneurysm.
UrbanMech with Rotary AC/5 go brrr Also fun note: Battletech mechs are very light. The heaviest ones are 100 tons, there have been heavier tanks IRL, though none were practical. Battletech mechs are big but very light relative to their size, which makes them physically plausible.
Or as Tex said in a stream, in the invention of the Battlemech or sometime prior the Star League invented its own weight system, so mechs and the like could be in “Star League Tons”
@@amishrambo4096 But aren't the vehicle in Battletech also in tonnage? Those are some pretty damn heavy vehicles then. if they weigh as much as some battlemechs
@@ASNS117Zero Myomer also operates using relatively small amounts of energy compared to a standard drive system. That means less weight spent on engines and fuel.
Very happy to see more Battletech content, and from the funny man that has a malfunctioning organ to boot. The start of the video already has me grinning, this should be good.
Well done. Battletech has been my go-to hobby since ~1993. I love the lore. When people ask me about it these days I always describe it simply as "Game of Thrones in space... with robots." I think that summarizes it pretty well. I have some quibbles with the game itself but it's still fun and I continue to play it close to 30 years after discovering it. Also, you picked the right faction. Peace of Blake be with you.
Your take on ComStar had me cracking up. I can almost see your point. Almost. Peace of Blake be upon you, I guess. Yes, I know that the WoB separated from ComStar, but ComStar still gave them a safe place to fester initially, so they are definitely partially at fault there. Whether that bothers you or not is up to you. Lol
I remember the first time I played a game of BattleTech. A friend of mine introduced me and two other guys so we had a simple 2v2 match. He and I were the last men standing. I remember I used the Warhammer because I liked its symmetrical arm cannons. I was just moving in for the finishing blow on his mech's torso or leg when he pulled a random headshot and dropped me. We laughed our heads off because that was literally the only thing that could have saved him. And it did. Great game.
What i love about battletech is how they managed to take the simple action of shooting a guy and made it a 50 page long rule im paraphrasing but only slightly
Earliest memory of Battletech was being annoyed of them just straight up stealing the Veritech fighter and Zentraedi mech from Macross. Fan of it since tho
I LOVE your closing statement on Comstar. EVERY WORD OF IT! Great intro video into Btech. Loved the whole thing actually! Keep it up and welcome to the vast and awesome world of Battletech!
I finally got into Battletech thanks to the steam sale offering Mechwarrior 5, and i cant believe i havent got into it earlier. Big stompy mechs with powerful weapons, locational damage and all the tools and options you could ask for (with a little modding). Combined with a lore that i find actually interesting and, yeah, i think i found a new franchise to overinvest my free time into Thanks for the video, i look forward to more
As a fan for almost 35 years, I'd say you got all of the important stuff right. Well, except for the part about the Blakists being the good guys, of course. Any errors were so tiny and nitpicky as to be irrelevant, or were likely committed intentionally to meet the sarcasm quota. There are two things to take away from BT: 1) It was designed in the '80s as a way to put Big Stompy Robots into a wargame (with future generations of developers performing yeoman's work filling in the gaps and papering over the cracks), and 2) It has always cribbed heavily from history. The Fall of Rome? The War of the Roses? The Mongol Invasions (they even kept the part where the invasion stopped for a while because the invaders had to go all the way home to elect a new boss, just like in history)? They're all in there, and more. And that grounding in history and human nature, as you pointed out, is what makes a setting involving literal feudal knights driving Big Stompy Robots actually feel like a (mostly) real setting that could actually happen.
Oh, and you did leave out one additional way to play BattleTech (aside from the HBS games): Megamek, an open-source Java port of the *entire* ruleset (complete with all of the optional rules, if you want them) that just turned 20 and is still being developed by a cadre of unpaid volunteers. There's even a rudimentary campaign system that operates much like the HBS game, but uses the actual tabletop rules (which HBS doesn't).
Absolutely glorious! I have been a fan of Battle Tech books and video games for more than 30 years. Your descriptions were great and really capture the Battle Tech world.
We welcome you all into the BattleTech world. Short version of the lore, think Game of Thrones, but instead of dragons, zombies and magical stuff, you have giant stompy murder robots. And if you can't find a faction or mercenary unit that you like, just make one. If the BattleTech owners like it enough, they will actually ret-con it into the lore. Because they are cool like that, unlike certain other companies.
Not bad. I liked it. I played 40k quit 10 years ago. A friend got me back into Battletech 3 years ago. I played more Battletech games in 3 years than 40k games in 10 years. Lovin it!
You talk about how surprisingly fast people regressed in tech. But it's actually not that far-fetched. Russia in its current invasion of Ukraine has gone from using T-80 tanks to T-72 mainly to now a shocking amount of T-62 tanks. Meanwhile some troops have switched from 5th generation kalashnikov to 4th generation kalashnikovs because of better availability of scopes for them. Not to mention soldiers being outfitted with soviet steel helmets and the 19th century Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifles.. or that they have to buy artillery shells from North Korea of all places.
The roots of Battle Tech: Somewhere, billions of years ago, on an insignificant rock, a vaguely newt-like creature crawled from a primordial swamp. That creature is the root of Battle Tech. . When the newt reached primordial Heaven and was told all the crap his descendants would cause, he was understandably embarrassed.
I know it probably hurts your channel analytics. Every time you do not do something Warhammer related and you need to pay for that insulin somehow, but I would like to wholeheartedly support and encourage you to continue talking about random ass things that interest you. I don’t know shit about battle tech but I’m here and willing to learn, as I will be with anything else you deem appropriate to talk about. Learning about new things is interesting, and this is a very good format for beginners
I thoroughly enjoyed that. And I was a Comstar fanboy when I first got into the setting too. Now it's the brutal lunacy of space Japan that does it for me. And yeah, the stat sheet looks really insane but that's because it's covered in reference material so you don't have to keep busting out rule books. There aren't a lot of special rules in basic play and pretty much everything you need is on that sheet. the turns themselves are rather complex as the game keeps that hard sci-fi approach forcing you to not only account for ranges, facing, and line of sight but also heat management and ammo counts as well as piloting stats changing certain aspects of how effective your actions are. It's a complex game but compared to 40k the rules are really straight forward.
One of the advantages of that sheet is you can build your own mech from scratch and that sheet allows for that. As stated above once you have a mech on the sheet it makes a lot more sense and is very streamlined. Probably the most complex aspect of the game is knowing what tables to use and it takes several rolls and tables to resolve an attack. But as someone who has played full campaign you eventually memorize those tables. One of the best parts of battle tech campaigns make more sense. You can use money, equipment and the record sheets to make a continuous narrative that makes sense. when a battle mech retreats or is salvaged you have precisely what happened at the end of a battle and it affects players campaign options. Other games it becomes much more difficult to provide the level of detail. example when 40k happens those units will be fielded full strength each time and there is no salvage. This makes the narrative aspect of the campaign a little more loose.
Finally someone competent talking about Battletech...i love the Books...hands down my most favorite Science Fiction setting. I glad you make videos about it...highlight of my day
Ah the ending cutscene for Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries....where the strings give way to that brassy gong is the BEST and I still get chills hearing that beat!
@@frankb3347 40k also does, Battletech is just extremely more nuanced about it, the history of a faction or event in 40k sounds off like a sort of legend while in Battletech it seems like your opening a history book. Its a lot more mature when compared to Warhammer
I always see w40k like its a mythological story. For Battletech, I see it like a historical, also helps that its a lot more politics focused than w40k. Imagine Three Kingdoms, Game of Thrones, and War of the Roses, merged into one, and launched into space.
@@Dogue83thats my issue with 40k lately and why I personally switched, 40k began to feel like children in a play box boasting about how strong their perticular faction was and how like no matter how many times you kill him he comes back and annd and hes super good at combat and and hes so angry he hits his own men and and hes super cool looking.
Here's another way to sum up Battletech lore: "This is the Inner Sphere, thousands of planets colonized by humankind. Once it was united under the Star League, but for the past 300 years it has been consumed by savage wars. Until a new enemy appeared. Mysterious invaders known as: the Clans. Powerful and ruthless they struck like lightning attacking every sector at once. But they made one big mistake. THEY ATTACKED MY HOME PLANET. Now, in the spirit of the Star League ancient enemies have reunited. And we are going to take back our galaxy."
Honestly, I tried a game of BattleTech at a war games con my uncle took me to once and I dont have fond memories of it. Took the entire afternoon, felt like it had rules way too complicated and in depth, yet, the best strategy was making a conga line of mechs kicking each other's shins. Might just have been an unlucky afternoon with rather poor teachers, but it left a terrible first impression of the game
Yeah, big mechs are a slugfest, light and medium mechs, which are the backbone of the setting however… once you put in the XL engines and stronk weapons, they are chaotic fun that explode in two seconds flat
@@patrickkenyon2326 I would but I´ve had awfull experience with RNG deciding my fate in games like this and seen videos that show Battletech games can be particularly scummy in that regard.
Mech sheets were always hard. Mechwarrior 2:31st century combat introduced me to wiggling points around to make a mech - and there is a -lot- of room for altering the actual loadouts. TBH, the piloting games were always my favorite - and there's something to be said about piloting a walking tank while blowing another walking tank apart right in front of you. But the lore CAN really get to you - much as I assume warhammer can. More depends which gets you first I guess. I mean, from memory - "We are Clan Wolf, Children of Kerensky. We carry the honor of this name on our shoulders as our fathers did before us The remembrance speaks to us of the evil in man's will- of the reason for exodus, and the rights of the traveler. Arcadia is our destiny and our right - enlightenment is our gift. By the blood name's of the founders, we must return - return and protect that which is unique among the stars. Terra awaits us, as it was written - We are the last of the Wardens. The sole hope for the Earth." That's a monologue from a 27 year old game... and it still gives me chills. LOT of story in Battletech.
You want chills? Try this on for size: ANCIENT EPITAPH 2439 IN HIS ARROGANCE MANKIND BUILT GODS IN HIS OWN IMAGE AND DESCENDED INTO MADNESS… 2787 THE SUCCESSION WARS PLUNGED THE INNER SPHERE INTO CENTURIES OF INTERSTELLAR WARFARE 3030 IN THIS TECHNOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL AGE OF LOSTECH HUMANITY SOON FOUGHT WITH BATTLEMECHS THAT WERE LITERALLY DECADES, IF NOT CENTURIES OLD AND IN A SORRY STATE OF REPAIR 3045 ANCIENT AUTOMATED FACTORIES CONTINUED TO PRODUCE BATTLEMECHS EVEN WHEN THEIR TECHNOLOGY WAS *NOT UNDERSTOOD ANYMORE*
@@ryanparrinello2272 Mechwarrior 2. It was the first of the Mechwarrior games to let you play as the Clans. There were actually two campaigns. One from the Wardens (Clan Wolf) and the other from the Crusaders (Clan Jade Falcon). The other intro speech is this one: We are Jade Falcon, great among the Clans. We are warriors who fight with the strength of the falcon's claws and ascend to the heavens on wings of the same. We remember with the clarity of falcon sight the words of Kerensky. Through the smoke of time he speaks to us, his chosen, and urges us onwards with the promise of Eden. We will retake what is ours by right: that shinning jewel Terra. Not the vastness of space, nor the Wolf's obstinate howl will stay us from our righteous goal. We are Crusaders and will trample all who stand in our way. Here are the intro videos for each campaign: th-cam.com/video/2YkfIJ8HUWs/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/g7_rSyRD8XM/w-d-xo.html
@@randlebrowne2048 Oh I know, I just resonate better with Clan Wolf. I beat both campaigns more times than I care to admit hehe. I think that's the first game I attempted to download mods for.
Yea... BT lore is more a little extensive. The actual starting point is divergence from our own timeline in the cold war. Then, with various novels, short stories, and sourcebooks it fills in details events and stories for every century and most decades. This leads to an continuous chain of cause and effect and effect and effect that lasts for 1200s years. So it absolutely builds in on itself a bunch. To make things worse, there are several different points were you can start off. Age of war, succession wars, clan invasion, dark age, and now ilclan. And for a couple of them, the first three in particular, parts of the fandom can't even agree on where you *should* start off. Age of war is the earliest point were the setting is distinctly battletech with space travel, mechs, neofeudalism, and most of the important factions, and it is argued it is best to start from the beginning. The late succession wars in 3025 is were the setting started IRL and as such is the intended starting off point. And finally there is the clan invasion which isn't super far off from late succession war, and is were the clans are introduced, who are, it is argued, so integral to the setting that folks should not be introduced to the setting without them. Then lore channels come and complicate all this even more. Being very digestible ways to get introduced to new settings lore channels have become the defacto way that people learn about settings. And lore channels focus disproportionately on the age of war and star league eras which are relatively unwritten about, narratively separate from the majority of the lore, and aren't in any way intended or written to be introductory parts of the lore by the creators. Great bits of lore to be sure, and fun eras to play in, but relatively daunting and inexcess-able making them not the best of places to start for new folks. Personally I believe the late succession wars in 3025 is the best place to start. It was and still is written and treated as the introductory period of the setting by the creators. As such all the lore and narrative is written around it either as backstory to it, or sequels assuming some level of familiarity with what happened in it. Plus from a gameplay standpoint it comes at the tail end of the tech regression. As such it can be played with the basic introductory technology and the relatively simple rules for it while still allowing for newer better stuff to be tacked on and introduced to players as it is (re)introduced in setting. For lore I say start in that era. Say there is background and reasoning and in general more to it, but just put a pin in that for later. Give a basic overview of each of the main factions. Explain that they are all varying levels of neofeudal and that they take political, social, and cultural aspects from various real places on earth with new sci-fi future twists. They all want to be crowned the head of the long dead future roman empire called the star league which they had all once participated in and have been fighting for centuries over that throne. Explain what a battlemech is and that it is the current king of the battlefield. Explain that the inner sphere is in a state of post nuclear holocaust from those wars with devastated industry and the loss scientific advancement and theory from the fallout of the first exchanges, time, and the brutal grind of the wars. Explain what jumpships and hpgs are and their import. Give some more details and overviews of the key characteristics of each of the factions. Then, build outward from there. Overall I really liked the video. I really love how you presented the morality of the setting and its characters and factions. It is very much grey, but too often folks dismiss it as black with nothing but edgy grimdarkness were everyone is evil. Nothing against the settings that do that, but it isn't battletech. For all the vices that plague the entities of the inner sphere, there are plenty of virtues and heroism to go around. P.S. Remember that red mech with the dumb stupid face? Yep, there is a merc driving one and kicking butt in the newest era. Non other than Ronan Carlyle of the Grey Death Legion.
![ประสบการณ์ จ้าง Developer ที่ผมจะไม่มีวันลืม [ภาค2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pZbsSDRrmXA/mqdefault.jpg)
Stephenson's Rocket was an Early Steam Powered Locomotive built by English engineer Robert Stephenson in 1829. It was not the first Steam Locomotive, but it was among the most influnetial. It was notable for being the first Steam locomotive built in roughly what would become the standard configuration for Steam locomotives and the first Steam Locomotive to achieve a speed of 48 kph.
Thank you for this train fact.
Incredible, you have changed my life
You joke but in battle tech, this would be important in some way.
Pretty steamy
Yes, exactly!
I just now saw this. We're humbled. Thank you.
Ah, House Steiner. An incredibly incompetent faction but with more money than god sending city obliterating killing machines down from low orbit on ‘stealth’ missions because killing everyone who saw you is technically stealth by the loosest definition of the term.
Survivors can't raise the alarm if there are no survivors....
Not our fault you plebs had to oppose us.
Everyone can make fun of Steiner for being incompetent all they want, and I encourage it, but never forget that Anastasius Focht was originally names Frederick STEINER.
@@philipkelly7369 Some Steiners are actually very capable commanders.
That's why I love them. They're militarily incompetent. For all else, they're one of if not the most competent states in the sphere. Were does that money come from? They earned it through hard work and shrewd administration.
There is one thing to take away from the setting as a whole: "To the black watch, nukes are merely inconvenient."
God bless Tex
Amen brother tex talks go the right idea
I prefer "the black watch has seen enough nukes to find them frankly boring"
Is that your mr2 in the pic? It cute
Nukes are for losers who don’t respect the simplicity of the god given satchel charge
If you ever doubt how cool the BattleTech universe can be, keep this in mind:
1 - Certain giant mechs can be equipped with jump jets, allowing for them to gain a fair amount of altitude
2 - The largest mech in Battletech that can be fitted with jump jets is the 90-ton Highlander (In a setting where most mechs weigh between 20 and 100 tons)
3 - It is an entirely viable tactic to use your jump jet equipped Highlander to dropkick another mech in the face
The 100-ton Marauder II also has jump jets, as do other 100-ton and 95-ton models.
Sold
Pretty sure none of those things were explicitly new in science fiction even at the time that BattleTech was.
One does not "dropkick" with the Highlander.
One BURIES the enemy with it.
It is called the Highlander Burial, and if you are in a mech smaller than the Highlander...pray it does not happen to you
I see your Highlander, and raise you the 95-ton Executioner and the 100-ton Dire Wolf in S-configuration.
ComStar took over Terra because it was the last vestige of Star League that remained home and letting them have it was a least bad option. If a Successor State took Terra by force, that would be a big deal for them and give them clout as the new masters of Humanity's Homeworld. But while House Steiner, Liao, Kurita, Marik and Davion would wanted this, they most definately did not any of the other four getting it. Nor did anyone want the disgrace of being the guys who burned it. Giving it to a (alleged) neutral party was the stable low risk option on that front for the time being.
Also, if I remember right, each of them said "ah, fuck it, we'll stomp those bastards out when we finish the rest off!"
...and then the Succession Wars happened. And Comstar just kinda SAT THERE on Terra, twiddling thumbs.
And then "Blakes Word" came and just took terra xD
Blakes Word was centuries later.
Comstar had enough fighting power to be costly to stomp when there was so much else to stomp and they did offer a convenient solution for the problem of 'if I can't have Terra, someone else might take it and claim to be Star League'. Which Comstar didn't do.
Then, after the 1st and 2nd Succession War, technology was already so very much fucked, that Comstar became a neccessity. It's really not even that implausible. We do historically know and value neutral entities. Think Switzerland for banking.
@@KillerOrca Not necessarily since Comstar themselves were the causes of a couple of succession wars due to the Inner Sphere being too “peaceful”, which may lead to a house’s own recuperation of their infrastructure and even technological research, which they don’t want.
The biggest problem with comstar was in many ways their own regression societally speaking. It sounds weird when you have a guy that basically goes around cuts a chunk of the old Teran hegemony out. Blake may have been slowly going insane over time. And also these people have been through a major interstellar war in the middle of all been slightly batshit crazy to begin with.
It’s also amazingly funny how legit real world companies now canonically are still kicking in the BattleTech universe.
Boeing makes spaceships. GM made mechs
Driving a Ford in 3050.
The founder of Ford Motors would be proud!
GM is 2 years late on making a fusion reactor.
@@GhostBear3067 I KNOW!
I have to note, that the whole alternative Battle-tech time-line started when USSR broke loose and started war on Ukraine!
I know two things about BattleTech:
- Mechs made by the Clans have two names: one given by them and one by the Inner Sphere. So you can take your Puma, give it the darkest paint scheme you can find and become the Black Adder.
- There's a guy called Blake and he had a Word, but I don't know the word and since he got wiped out I imagine that it was a bad word.
As a battletech Fan let me help ya understand:
1. Like IRL NATO designations, the Inner-sphere during the Clan invasion designated vehicles and particularly Battlemechs under a different name then the Clans themselves. So for example, the Timber Wolf, the premier example of Clan Battlemech design, is called a Mad Cat by the Inner sphere due to its resemblance to a Maruader and Catapult. Weirdly enough, at least in the case of the Mad Cat the MK2 is called universally by both Clan and Sphere "Mad Cat Mk II" furthering confusion. In short, just call em' however you want.
2. The Word of Blake where effectively hyper-religious warlike branch of Comstar. Who, after the dissolution of the Second Star League after Obliteration of Clan Smoke Jaguar, decided to take their rage out on the Successor states by casually nuking the entire inner sphere like a Crusade in 40k. However, they ended up like IRL ISIS and had gotten litterally every faction in the setting to bomb them back to the stone age and their ideology publicly humiliated.
Peace of Blake upon my brothers - to everyone else, Peace for 60.000.000 c-bills.
One more thing you should know: stay out of Concordat space, we don't take kindly to your types around there.
It was the n word.
@@kyokyodisaster4842 I actually know the reason for #1. Unlike the Tmberwolf/Mad Cat, the Mad Cat MkII is made by Clan Diamond Shark, not Clan Wolf. And Clan Diamond Shark, also known as the Merchant Clan, made the Mad Cat MkII to sell for both Clanners AND Inner Sphere, so to make sales easy for Inner Sphere they called it Mad Cat MkII, this of course pissed off Clan Wolf, however they still buy the mech or salvage it cause it's a really well made mech.
"Nobody is evil."
*looks over at House Kurita, Liao, the emerald parakeet, space AT&T*
An argument could be made.
Looks at the Clans who were made specifically with the worst elements of the worst ideologies the authors could think of.
Don't forget 3050s-era Smoked Kitties
You dare to slander the glorious space AT&T?!
@@ItsAweeb Once the Blakists rendered them almost a non entity, yes, and only then.
Hey if Space Chase wants to fund a couple proxy wars and get fined a few billion space credits then that's their prerogative.
I like that there are still vehicles, infantry and aerospace assets in battletech to use in Battletech, and that it hasn't purely been replaced with mechs, everything is at least somewhat reasonable/makes at least a little sense with how it happened or why it was made...
You can also customize your mechs and vehicles however you want, like how my friend made an extremely armored scout aircraft for shits and giggles, or a heavy ground tank that literally refuses to die due to having just as much if not more armor than an assault mech and two hard hitting Autocannon 20s... at the cost of being barely able to move at all-
So… are there infantry games for Battletech? Because that’s the biggest sticking point for me. I’m not big on mechs, I just really like a good old fashioned gritty ground pounder in a sci-fi setting with all of their neat gear and shit. And 40k is the only game I know that does that really well
@@DarthNicky you can play battletech games with mostly infantry, vehicles and aerospace assets, yeah. It is a combined arms setting after all.
Always helps to have at least a few 'mechs to move around and help since infantry mobility isn't the best, they seem to be more for securing positions and digging in/holding their ground at an objective, but they are still good fun since they can absorb fire from larger weapons pretty well and only lose a few men at a time from it, making them very survivable.
@@DarthNicky You could play entirely with a vehicle and infantry based force. They're a little less effective but they're also cheaper. So you can field about two to three times as many units on average. The new Kickstarter coming this Autumn is going to have several new plastic vehicle packs. From tanks to helicopters.
For the Emperor!!!
It's not even a tank anymore. It's a mobile Pillbox
I cordially invited all Clannerscum to go pound sand.
ClannerCum? Tf is that
Thanks dyslexia
@@foxgamer1793 i thought you were joking XD
@@THEmp31875 you know what, I regret nothing.
@@foxgamer1793 that’s what they call me after a hard night
The great thing about Battletech lore is that it matters exactly as much or as little as you want it too. Planetary and regional governments and cultures are barely mentioned at all in official lore, but they are also what players will interact with most, so there is a lot of room to just make up whatever you like. Nobody is going to tell you that you are wrong if your unit started off as the planetary militia for a world of space Rastafarians who's primary export is high-quality fish oil - I don't *think* anything like that explicitly exists, but the lore is very non-specific about the details of 99% of the universe, and there is nothing saying that world can't exist.
The fact is that people from your space-Rastafarian world probably won't know or care about all the details of what's going on in the larger universe. It not unreasonable to assume that whatever your personal lore-knowledge, that's what your characters know too.
It's most normal for players to get into Battletech with minimal knowledge of lore. Originally, there was just a 44-page paperback book with all the rules, mech sheets, and like a page of lore, and that was really all you needed to know about the universe. Most Battletech games will be focused on a battlefield of 2 or 3 square kilometers, so it doesn't matter if your overall perspective of the universe could be summed up in 200 words.
No one in the community actually cares if you don't know anything. We're all here for the stompy robots.
There is vast lore out there if you want to get into it, but no one knows everything, and it's not all relevant to every story. The reason the lore is so vast is because it's mostly been built by the community rather than curated by a corporation, and has grown up over decades. Even famous units which have become canon began as play-test groups. Most of Battletech lore comes from something someone did at a tournament somewhere, with novels and sourcebooks being printed sometime after that.
It's a very easy campaign setting to get into.
The only thing worth noting is that if you pick Magistracy of Canopus to have your dudes be from, your Mechs can be piloted by catboys in oversized hoodies and be canon.
Or Ork cosplayers.
Or a mixture of Ork cosplayers and catboys.
The Magistracy of Canopus is a pathway to fluff the inner sphere and clans would consider... unnatural.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 the Magistracy of Canopus is pretty much Space Las Vegas if Las Vegas had less scruples and standards.
If they have Catgirls I'm sure there should be space Rastafarians around.
The Arrow-IV nuke Urbie.
Look it up.
For those looking to get into the meat of the setting, _Tex Talks BattleTech_ is a fantastic series to look into. I can't recommend them enough and the videos are also just fantastic lore pieces in general.
Mage Leader is also great.
Tex has good lore videos but he’s becoming increasingly self referential and that shit makes me tired.
@@padrescout it's the necessary trade-off for the BPL doing their own bits of storytelling and world building... I could see how that might not appeal to some, but I kinda dig it, personally.
They don't take themselves too seriously, but they take their telling of the "history" quite seriously... I appreciate that in a semi-immersive lore retelling.
Big Red 40K is also doing regular videos and daily live streams.
Same train just recently got into the story last month and need more content from tex talks
Battletech: We have given up WMDs after the First Succession Crisis as the loss of civilian life was too much to bear.
Warhammer 40k: EXTERMINATUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Imperium makes the Great Houses look reasonable and that is really saying something.
@@pancreasnowork9939 Even Kurita.
Gajin is still around?
40k is infested with dumbarses and triggerhappy morons
@@GaijinGoombah Sort of, there was that whole Kentares thing.
When I first dove into battletech lore I was super impressed at how good it was. I've been dissatisfied with GW and battletech really just gave me a way to leave Warhammer 40k behind and never look back. Also if you want to get more into on the Battletech setting, Tex from the Black Pants Legion is great.
Also: The Star League deserved it, Tuarian Concordat forever
Taurian Concordat - "Fuck Around and Find Out" The Faction
I will criticize him in that I get the background stuff but still, I don’t need 30 min on another completely different subject just to give a point for the main video.
I assure you I have been looking into Tex and the Legion more and more as of late. Love their stuff.
@@pancreasnowork9939 Big Red 40k is pretty good for Battletech lore and Mage Leader as well.
Battletech lore is fun, a star league general gets PTSD from Tuarian Concordat suicide fire ships and nukes any cities JUST to make sure there is no more suicide bombing.
I like the entirely human aspect of BattleTech. I like how people can be close to building something beautiful in the setting and someone comes along and ruins it for no other reason than they'll gain slightly more power this way, and their enemies will gain slightly less. I like the emotional nature of some stories, because it's all human tragedy. Personal anecdote time, I read this story from the Reunification War that was such an emotional gut punch I started crying, literally crying. It was like someone had a camera on my own traumas from my own wars and changed the names around a bit. That was the day I said "whelp, maybe I really do need to see what the VA can do for me because ef if that doesn't sound like textbook PTSD." So I did. And it was. And now I feel...less bad. Bottom line BattleTech greatly improved my life not only with that personal growth, but in enjoying thousands upon thousands of pages of fiction, and meeting some pretty good friends along the way.
Which story from the Reunification War was it?
Every time I sit down to learn about battletech lore my eyes glaze over without funny green football hooligans I just can't focus.
It's certainly a challenge to get into but one I'm very much enjoying.
Get ADHD meds buddy
Read up on clan Ghost Bear taking a planet by winning a football game.
@@KillerOrca Sheliak, because prior to the Clan Invasion it was so far from any major fronts the Draconis Combine saw no point in placing a DCMS garrison there. That North American rules football team was the closest thing to a military they had at all. Also, leaving a planet without a garrison like that would have really pissed off the Ghost Bears because they would see it as like leaving an infant unattended in a hot car.
My favorite thing about Battletech is how you can always figure out when and why any single piece of your war machines was built.
I raise you the Xanthos.
Love that thing.
YES! JOIN US IN THE GLORY OF THE MECHWARRIORS!
Nah, join the Enforcers from warpath universe
Finally, the franchise that doesn't kill its entire fan content community overnight for a greedy, corrupt and insane dream of getting a monthly subscription service running for their niche mini game.
Battletech fired one of its writers because of politics weeks ago thiugh
@@thecourier9290 Yeah thats definitely concerning, still need more details and even then its nowhere near as bad as what gamesworkshop did- also dont forget they've signed deals with disney and marvel to write for them and produce their upcoming seemingly never materializing show about the einsenhorn novels.
@@WelcomeToDERPLAND Whenever they start doing that it's a downwards spiral. Battletech doing the same Warhammer did, they are just starting to do it later. No future in BT
@@thecourier9290 that's not that big of a deal
WOA. What channel did GW take down?????
The nice thing about the modular rules is it can be as simple or complex as you want. The lore is much the same way. At the most basic level after the fall of Space Rome you have a bunch of Space Knights fighting during the Space Middle Ages until the Space Mongols invade. How much deeper you choose to go beyond that is up to you.
Space Rome is strong.
The Marian Hegemony thrives under the protection of its Legions.
Me and a coworker are slowly turning all the warhammer 40k dudes at our job into battletech fans. The ease of entry and the deep complexity of tactics and choose your own rules of it all has them all sorta forgetting about 40k.
The modular nature of the rules is great. It can be as simple or complex as you want it to be.
@Laken Anderson I mean 40k was basically kinda stuck in 999 M41 for god knows how many years and it only just NOW changed...but yes.
@Laken Anderson I wouldn't hold my breath about that. I wouldn't be surprised if Battletech in the next 5 to 10 years got a soft or even hard reboot to pre-clan invasion.
@Laken Anderson Oddly enough, most of the grognards I've talked too say they prefer the new stuff simply because it feels like theres agency and movement in the lore again rather than "everything sucks but we cant get to the 42nd millenium", sic; both of the big multi-national tournament based events resulting, more or less, in ties for both the War for Armageddon and the 13th Black Crusade (which GW promptly retconned with Fall of Cadia).
The lack of monopose seems merely to be a stopgap situation as more stuff rolls out. Presuambly COVID didnt help in the least. but we got multipart bits of most of the major Primarus kits now Im pretty sure.
Information is ammunition :3
I first encountered this universe through Mechassault on the Original XBOX, which has an OST that'll stay with me to the day I die. Then my friends turned the ruler of the Federated Commonwealth into the Venom Snake to my Big Boss, and I've stayed with the series since. Another positive I would've put in is how much personality is placed in these mechs, you get an idea for a mechwarrior by their mech alone, like how I usually go for a hatchetman or an axeman because I HAVE A GIANT AXE WHY ELSE WOULD I CHOOSE THIS MECH?!
Hah MechAssault is great, but at the time BT / MechWarrior fans hated it because they wanted more MechWarrior so desperately only to get this crazy arcade game.
That games Main Menu music is one of my favorite pieces of video game music.
For the old-timers out there who found Battletech via the original Mechwarrior games, look up Timothy Seals. He redid the soundtrack for MW 2 and it rules. Arkham Bridge is fantastic.
My Dad is HUGE into Battletech. Hell I told him that this one local store had battletechs and his eyes light up like I’ve never seen before! So I got him a metal Atlas, and a box of the Clan Heavy Star box!
Thats super nice to hear. You did a grsat thing.
If you were my son I’d disown you for buying me clan mechs
Just wait until you stumble onto Rasalhague. They’re arguably the most beloved underdogs in the entire setting, and now they’re part of clan ghost bear, which is arguably the best clan. It’s a low bar, admittedly, but they do their best. Plus the stories involving those factions are awesome.
Like the time clan ghost bear won a planet by beating them in an American football game. I am not making that up.
Or the time a Rasalhague pilot kamikaze’d herself into the bridge of the head clan ship, killing their big boss and stopping the invasion for an entire year while they elected a new leader and recognized the pilot for her sheer badassery. They even named a dropship class in her honor.
I love Sheliak and it's Three Points of Pride for two reasons.
The first is that the planet's American Football Commissioner tried to use the Clan's competitive autism to pull a Space Jam thinking they had no idea how to play, only for the Ghost Bears to say "Oh shit, you still play the Game of Gridiron? Here's our intermural team of 8ft tall GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SUPER SOLDIERS."
The second is that Sheliak was STILL able to field enough Players to play through the entire game despite this, as the Ghost Bear Elementals tore through their unaugment freebirth opponents like tissue paper and sent many straight to the emergency room.
That the Bears let them have a Field Goal shows they recognized and respected the tenacious spirit of Sheliak to see things through until the Game is Won!
The best clan is no doubt Diamond Sharks:
"All the galaxy on fire,
We sell anything you desire :3"
Who else could create such abomination like Piranha, lost almost all of them on Tukayyid...and then still selling 'em 100 years later!
@@СемёнСемёнов-ы1ь I mean, if we’re going off hilarity factor, it’s hard to beat goliath scorpion.
“Hey, let’s huff this venom, trip the absolute fuck out, and get some spirit visions on what to do next. Oh, and we’re Spanish now for some reason.”
@@DonaldWWitt that’s such a fantastic moment. That and the legend of Tyra miraborg, it’s no wonder that ghost bear respects them so deeply.
@@DonaldWWitt it was not a field goal, it was a three point conversion. Also, Sheliak had to go for a North American rules football game because they had no DCMS garrison since prior to the Clan Invasion that planet was nowhere near any major fronts. With how Clan Ghost Bear views the relationship between the Warrior and civilian Castes that probably pissed them off to no end, like coming across an infant in a locked car parked in a hot day.
So there's two types of tabletop battle tech that people play nowadays. Classic and Alpha Strike. If the Classic is a bit too crunchy for you (i.e. the blank battlemech record sheet, which is party why it's confusing it doesn't have any info on it just a framework) take a look at alpha strike, it's a lot more closer to other war games for rules, lot less micro management of armor pips, critical hits etc. I love classic battle tech because it's so nuanced, but I can understand it's a lot to look at first.
Oh and there's a wonderful fan made java software called Megamek that you can play classic battltech on the computer with. Handles a lot of the hard stuff, but can be a bit confusing to learn the first few games
That’s really helpful thanks
Yep! Alpha Strike will be a lot easier for people to get into if they're used to more typical war games.
CBT has that great bit of chaos where an opening shot might hit your cockpit at long range, knock out the pilot, have him fall over into a river, fail the breach check, and then die right there.
Gotta *embrace* that nuttiness and unpredictability, as it's kind of the stand-in for the various nutty alien sci-fi tropes that other games have.
@@Xeno426thats one of my favourite things about the cbt, in my initial fights teaching friends how to play.
One friend I was decemating moving in for the kill, his meck missing left torso and leg just suddenly deleted my head with a gauss and took the win.
On other side one of my friends in our first match was pressing my catapult into a corner, I got a lucky two crits on his engine then he fell over right into a river as he was trying to cool off and got slapped with a third crit. Kaboom.
Honestly, Battle tech videos would be pretty cool to see as a regular on the channel imo
I love Battletech. It's accessible for almost everyone. It's got big stompy mechs with lots of dakka, and who doesn't like big stompy things that go YATATAATATATA. The Lore is well thought out and interesting. And the fact that the setting is the entire Milky Way which is vast adn treated as such means that you can have all types of conflict happening in every pocket which means things rarely go stale.
Hell it is not even the whole Milky Way, just a tiny corner of it.
@@GhostBear3067 yep! The Inner Sphere is just a tiny spec in the galaxy. If you go to Sarna (their wiki) and type in "Inner Sphere" there's a good map of it.
Its worth pointing out that the reason Comstar gets away with so much in the aftermath of the Ameris civil war war is actually threefold,
Firstly its because one of the biggest things with the great houses is how petty they are, as long as comstar is in control of something and not one of the other houses they don't actually care all that much, but they'll beat the snot out of one another over a barely habitable moon simply because on of the other houses has it.
But perhaps more importantly its because in the immediate aftermath of the Ameris civil war the Com-guard were actually the most well equipped and dangerous fighting force in the galaxy, House armies were limited in size under the star league accords and with comstar inheriting the remains of the star league defence forces (SLDF for short) as well as the industry and equipment of the Terran hegemony tangling with them was going to be extremely costly, combine that with the hegemony being a veritable fortress and the first succession war being very obviously just over the horizon no house was going to waste resources fighting the com guards.
and thirdly in the wake of the Civil war the HPG network was severely damaged, and the only people who could fix it were Comstar, with war on the horizon any objection to comstars shenanigans in the hegemony would have meant them simply not fixing a particular states HPG network. going to war with 4 other major nations with no comms is a really bad idea.
As a result of all that Comstar just gets away with all kinds of shit until its too powerful and the HPG network too important for anybody to actually do anything about them.
the lore can be great because if you look at the different mech designs, you find that they work a lot like real world military R&D. Some of the lore for explaining why a mech is good, or bad, or good but ignored, or bad but still used anyway, is straight out of Pentagon Wars.
That actually cool
Good examples include the Bushwacker which when first developed nobody could get an engine layout that worked, until the engineers got a look at the engines of salvaged Clan Mad Dogs/Vultures. Also the Charger which was designed and built as a "scout"... that was essentially an 80-ton engine with feet and everything else as an afterthought yet somehow went into production. Once the Succession Wars kicked off almost all Charger production facilities ended up within the Draconis Combine so House Kurita was up to its eyeballs in the damn things and desperate enough for ANY mechs that they were forced to make it work.
*remembers the trashcan*
@@nitesy381 That one can actually be often seen doing what it's supposed to, and quite well, unlike a stock Charger, which was a bad idea they couldn't pull off, or the Rifleman, which is a specialized platform putt into frontline use.
@@bthsr7113 true, the urbanmech is seen as the line of defense in urban areas. It also helps its cheap and the maintenance crew do not go to suicide watch when assigned to it.
Glad you’re making stuff like this. I love BPL’s videos, but they’re a bit tricky as a basic entrypoint. Also, obligatory lore correction: the Battlemech was created in the 2400s, as a direct result of the Ares Conventions, which are THEMSELVES a result of the Tintavel Massacre, which stemmed from the Age of War, and so on and so on. Interconnected lore like that is great for fans, but it makes the setting a bitch to summarize.
very classy use of FTL soundtracks
I always enjoy using that soundtrack, one of my favorite games.
One of us one of us one of us
Ok on a more serious note, the rules may be a bit daunting but they make sense in practice as you play:
For example:
Your mech fires its weapons,
This causes heat build up which your heatsinks dissipate
Excess heat causes debuffs which are applied to the mech, ranging form slight movement problems to emergency shutdown or your ammunition doing a little trolling.
Most of the rules come naturally rather than having an arbitrary use case
I can confirm that almost all players are happy to play you even if you have a quarter with a sharpy mark to indicate forward facing. Proxy mechs are the rule and not the exception.
Glad to see ya diving into BattleTech a bit, I got into it with Mechwarrior and the fact it hasn't hit critical mass like Warhammer (there no real "annoying space marine poster" equivalent). There's a real attention to detail that most other "expanded universe" type settings can never mange to get right and yet it still manages to have fun. Probably one of the better fan communities too, not that the bar is particularly high.
About the aliens not being there, I'm one of the people that likes Battletech because of that. Fact is, in most cases of sci fi aliens, they're not really aliens. They're almost universally presented as something else "but alien". For instance there's an early Star Trek TNG episode where a one-off alien race is in one episode where they are just humans but the women rule over the men in their society. Great. Battletech has a nation that does that, too. You don't need aliens to tell that story. You're really telling a human story while trying to pretend you're not.
Battletech is great to run like a D&D game too. There are on foot character rules that you can use to supplement the main battle rules. Run your own mercenary company.
The main battle rules support everything from guys on horseback with bolt-action rifles to mechs.
My god... Amazing.... More alternative systems please... GW isn't the only game in town and given the way you present information you could make the growth cycle of potatoes crops interesting...
The nice thing about Battletech is they have two main rule sets. There's a simplified version called Alpha Strike that will be a lot easier for people to get into and then there's the Classic rules for those who really want to get into the meat of it.
Has he done Brikwars?
Does he know about Brikwars?
Try mantic game’s Warpath
When the Age of Mythology OST track started playing, I was so surprised and so happy. Much nolstalgia.
Ikr? I got whiplash just hearing it. Lol
When I started playing Battletech almost 30 years ago, I drew mapsheets on pieces of notebook paper, and used Lego mini-figs for mechs!
I'm gonna make a bold prediction and say that your self depricating humor and constant pisstaking with the subjects of your videos (and overall just much funnier than any of the others) will make this will be one of the top 3 warhammer related channels on youtube within a year.
GW shooting themselves in the foot feels VERY evident today as I just finished my binge of TTS.
Move on to other tabletop properties, be free! The world is vast and too wonderful to be confined to one ip
@@aliceorion2118 I don't do any tabletop, in fact I'm not even 2 years into watching lore video's. I've not bought any mini's and currently don't plan to either.
@@alemorikec other settings lores are great! Take a peak at vampire why wont'ya ?
The thing with the original Battletech game is that it came out in a time where people were trying to simulate reality with their games. There are actually rules for Newtonian physics when playing space combat. (they are not the standard rules, just optional rules) While the game has gone through multiple hands over the years, the rules for Battletech haven't changed that much. You can not have played a game since the 80s and your experience will still carry over.
Instead of coming out with a new edition and forcing you to buy everything all over again, they simply came out with new systems. Like the old system, it is still supported and updated. Want something grander in scale that is less complex, there is Alpha Strike. Which is also played on a traditional wargaming table, instead of a hex grid. So if you are making the jump from 40k, Alpha Strike would probably be the place to start. And the models and scale are the same so you can swap back and forth.
There is no one way to get into or enjoy Battletech. Some people only play the MechWarrior games. Some people only read the books. I have a very wonky work schedule so I only play Mega Mek (The unofficial digital table top with an AI to play against). Heck, the whole reason I got into the universe was from the 90s cartoon.
Hearing you reference Black Pants Legion was surprising to me. I found BPL years ago because of the Space Station 13 videos. I know nothing about Battle Tech and only recently got into 40k. Seeing my interest in 40k end up looping me back to SS13 is kind of fun
I discovered battletech completely by accident by getting a steam recommendation for the TBS game of the same name. I had too much fun conquering the Aurigan reach in the name of House Arano
Neat, there's a mod called Roguetech for the game if you want to have an overhaul.
For the Reach!
Co-founders of the BattleTech developer used to work for FASA. They did a pretty good job of capturing the feel of the tabletop, imo.
It’d be cool to see your takes on certain battlemechs once you’ve gotten a decent way into the lore, but, like, you do you dude, I’m not gonna demand that level of detail, you’re channel’s great without needing to do that
Your weird analogies to thank your patrons at the end of every video are genuinely some of my favorite things on the channel.
Battletech, the Mechanicus oil dream. We got catgirls, and boys on Canopus. Clan elementals, basically BT's Astartes equivalent, except Kerensky made girl elementals too, and the 40K Emperor thinks we're icky. Gladiatorial mech matches on Solarus 7.
Battletech is also a 90's cartoon, which has since been retconned into an in universe propaganda campaign. th-cam.com/play/PLRlu7nBFPfe2DtSj1apNPNnGfMJbVhxBJ.html
Tex from the Black Pants Legion is like the Leutin of Battletech, Big Red 40K also does great Battletech lore. farseer animation does great mech animation videos
That feel when deploying Magistracy of Canopus catboys
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Especially since they'll work for catnip
is it true that in the 4th succession war, they reinvented fax machines and used it instead of HPG?
@@nitesy381 To be fair, it was an FTL, *interstellar* fax machine.
Manei Domini > elements
Love love love battle tech and BPL. Tex is a whiskey soaked saint. Battletech is cool if midichlorians piss you or wizards annoy you in your sci fi setting. There aren't any wizards. There are cults with mystical beliefs but there isn't any hint that this stuff is real in any way. They're just crazy, and there is a lot of that in battletech.
This is one of the best "what the fuck *IS* Battletech?" videos that I've ever stumbled across... And I've been playing off and on since the 90s.
Well done!
This is great pancreasnowork, I really do love the setting, but if you're looking to do more videos on it, I would recommend doing do's and dont's on the clan and innersphere as a whole for both a lore perspective and a tabletop perspective, as they really are the closest thing you get to separate playable factions. But that's my bias; excellent video and sum-up of battletech without having a brain aneurysm.
UrbanMech with Rotary AC/5 go brrr
Also fun note: Battletech mechs are very light. The heaviest ones are 100 tons, there have been heavier tanks IRL, though none were practical. Battletech mechs are big but very light relative to their size, which makes them physically plausible.
Or as Tex said in a stream, in the invention of the Battlemech or sometime prior the Star League invented its own weight system, so mechs and the like could be in “Star League Tons”
@@amishrambo4096 But aren't the vehicle in Battletech also in tonnage? Those are some pretty damn heavy vehicles then. if they weigh as much as some battlemechs
@@MrWheelman82 an easier pill to swallow of chunked vehicles vs helium filled mechs i say,
@@MrWheelman82 My headcanon is it's due to how much of the mechs are made of Myamer bundles, and the bundles themselves are extremely light.
@@ASNS117Zero Myomer also operates using relatively small amounts of energy compared to a standard drive system. That means less weight spent on engines and fuel.
The Battletech game that came out in 2018 is fantastic for those that take an interest in this universe
And the mods make it even better.
Very happy to see more Battletech content, and from the funny man that has a malfunctioning organ to boot. The start of the video already has me grinning, this should be good.
My favorite fact about Battletech is that the Blackwatch's favored hand grenade is a Satchel Charge.
The background and lore is what I love about both settings 😁
Well done. Battletech has been my go-to hobby since ~1993. I love the lore. When people ask me about it these days I always describe it simply as "Game of Thrones in space... with robots." I think that summarizes it pretty well. I have some quibbles with the game itself but it's still fun and I continue to play it close to 30 years after discovering it.
Also, you picked the right faction. Peace of Blake be with you.
Pancreas, I love your channel man, your sarcastic way of describing lore is just so entertaining! Please never stop
Your take on ComStar had me cracking up. I can almost see your point. Almost. Peace of Blake be upon you, I guess.
Yes, I know that the WoB separated from ComStar, but ComStar still gave them a safe place to fester initially, so they are definitely partially at fault there. Whether that bothers you or not is up to you. Lol
You: *dipping toes in*
The kraken of lore wrapping you in its warm embrace: buenos dias, beetus boi.
I remember the first time I played a game of BattleTech. A friend of mine introduced me and two other guys so we had a simple 2v2 match. He and I were the last men standing. I remember I used the Warhammer because I liked its symmetrical arm cannons. I was just moving in for the finishing blow on his mech's torso or leg when he pulled a random headshot and dropped me. We laughed our heads off because that was literally the only thing that could have saved him. And it did. Great game.
What i love about battletech is how they managed to take the simple action of shooting a guy and made it a 50 page long rule
im paraphrasing but only slightly
Earliest memory of Battletech was being annoyed of them just straight up stealing the Veritech fighter and Zentraedi mech from Macross. Fan of it since tho
I LOVE your closing statement on Comstar. EVERY WORD OF IT! Great intro video into Btech. Loved the whole thing actually! Keep it up and welcome to the vast and awesome world of Battletech!
I finally got into Battletech thanks to the steam sale offering Mechwarrior 5, and i cant believe i havent got into it earlier. Big stompy mechs with powerful weapons, locational damage and all the tools and options you could ask for (with a little modding). Combined with a lore that i find actually interesting and, yeah, i think i found a new franchise to overinvest my free time into
Thanks for the video, i look forward to more
HOLY TOLEDO THATS MY ARTWORK! I’VE NEVER BEEN MORE HONORED IN MY LIFE! @7:07
Glad to see more people getting into Battletech. I shall be watching your career with great interest...
As a fan for almost 35 years, I'd say you got all of the important stuff right. Well, except for the part about the Blakists being the good guys, of course. Any errors were so tiny and nitpicky as to be irrelevant, or were likely committed intentionally to meet the sarcasm quota. There are two things to take away from BT: 1) It was designed in the '80s as a way to put Big Stompy Robots into a wargame (with future generations of developers performing yeoman's work filling in the gaps and papering over the cracks), and 2) It has always cribbed heavily from history. The Fall of Rome? The War of the Roses? The Mongol Invasions (they even kept the part where the invasion stopped for a while because the invaders had to go all the way home to elect a new boss, just like in history)? They're all in there, and more. And that grounding in history and human nature, as you pointed out, is what makes a setting involving literal feudal knights driving Big Stompy Robots actually feel like a (mostly) real setting that could actually happen.
Oh, and you did leave out one additional way to play BattleTech (aside from the HBS games): Megamek, an open-source Java port of the *entire* ruleset (complete with all of the optional rules, if you want them) that just turned 20 and is still being developed by a cadre of unpaid volunteers. There's even a rudimentary campaign system that operates much like the HBS game, but uses the actual tabletop rules (which HBS doesn't).
I think the Clan's resemble the Turkic invasions more. Different waves, different tribes, different aesthetics between each other etc.
Absolutely glorious! I have been a fan of Battle Tech books and video games for more than 30 years. Your descriptions were great and really capture the Battle Tech world.
Well done. Very enjoyed. I am a small Battletech content creator here on TH-cam. Love to see new people hopping in!
"small Battletech content creator" my ass. You're one of the top 5 content creators on TH-cam!
Ah, Battletech. The sci-fi setting where every conflict can be summed up with the phrase "Oops, all war crimes."
Btw for anyone interested in the Battletech Universe i highly recommend the "Gray Death Trilogie" very good entrance into the Battletech universe
I look forward to barely knowing this universe's lore with you! Godspeed o7
We welcome you all into the BattleTech world. Short version of the lore, think Game of Thrones, but instead of dragons, zombies and magical stuff, you have giant stompy murder robots. And if you can't find a faction or mercenary unit that you like, just make one. If the BattleTech owners like it enough, they will actually ret-con it into the lore. Because they are cool like that, unlike certain other companies.
Heck, if you get really lucky, you might even get a mech or mech variant added to the lore. Like Orca or the UM-AIV variant of the Urbanmech.
Not bad. I liked it. I played 40k quit 10 years ago. A friend got me back into Battletech 3 years ago. I played more Battletech games in 3 years than 40k games in 10 years. Lovin it!
You talk about how surprisingly fast people regressed in tech. But it's actually not that far-fetched.
Russia in its current invasion of Ukraine has gone from using T-80 tanks to T-72 mainly to now a shocking amount of T-62 tanks.
Meanwhile some troops have switched from 5th generation kalashnikov to 4th generation kalashnikovs because of better availability of scopes for them. Not to mention soldiers being outfitted with soviet steel helmets and the 19th century Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifles.. or that they have to buy artillery shells from North Korea of all places.
I JUST deep dived into the lore for the first time last night only to find you post this the next day, that's some weird shit.
The roots of Battle Tech:
Somewhere, billions of years ago, on an insignificant rock, a vaguely newt-like creature crawled from a primordial swamp.
That creature is the root of Battle Tech.
.
When the newt reached primordial Heaven and was told all the crap his descendants would cause, he was understandably embarrassed.
I know it probably hurts your channel analytics. Every time you do not do something Warhammer related and you need to pay for that insulin somehow, but I would like to wholeheartedly support and encourage you to continue talking about random ass things that interest you. I don’t know shit about battle tech but I’m here and willing to learn, as I will be with anything else you deem appropriate to talk about. Learning about new things is interesting, and this is a very good format for beginners
I've been catching up on battle tech lore by binge watching videos on the mechs so this is awesome
Forgot to mention the small part of Armored Core fans who found battletech. And thanks to AC6, even more people have found both franchises
Praise Blake! Never forget the battle of Tukayyid!
Clans: "Contractions are decadence."
Also Clans: "All of our slang is paramilitary contractions."
That alone should get every Clanner *shot.*
I thoroughly enjoyed that. And I was a Comstar fanboy when I first got into the setting too. Now it's the brutal lunacy of space Japan that does it for me. And yeah, the stat sheet looks really insane but that's because it's covered in reference material so you don't have to keep busting out rule books. There aren't a lot of special rules in basic play and pretty much everything you need is on that sheet. the turns themselves are rather complex as the game keeps that hard sci-fi approach forcing you to not only account for ranges, facing, and line of sight but also heat management and ammo counts as well as piloting stats changing certain aspects of how effective your actions are. It's a complex game but compared to 40k the rules are really straight forward.
One of the advantages of that sheet is you can build your own mech from scratch and that sheet allows for that. As stated above once you have a mech on the sheet it makes a lot more sense and is very streamlined. Probably the most complex aspect of the game is knowing what tables to use and it takes several rolls and tables to resolve an attack. But as someone who has played full campaign you eventually memorize those tables.
One of the best parts of battle tech campaigns make more sense. You can use money, equipment and the record sheets to make a continuous narrative that makes sense. when a battle mech retreats or is salvaged you have precisely what happened at the end of a battle and it affects players campaign options. Other games it becomes much more difficult to provide the level of detail. example when 40k happens those units will be fielded full strength each time and there is no salvage. This makes the narrative aspect of the campaign a little more loose.
Its like dnd sheets, first time you look at them it looks super complicated. After a few games its super simple.
Finally someone competent talking about Battletech...i love the Books...hands down my most favorite Science Fiction setting. I glad you make videos about it...highlight of my day
So I thought battletech was just a video game with a lot of lore for a pretty good video game. This explains a lot
There are actually tons of novels in the setting as well.
Ah the ending cutscene for Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries....where the strings give way to that brassy gong is the BEST and I still get chills hearing that beat!
Battletech is like 40k but more political and "Realistic"
And not greedy as a hobby.
They draw on real life history for inspiration.
@@frankb3347 40k also does, Battletech is just extremely more nuanced about it, the history of a faction or event in 40k sounds off like a sort of legend while in Battletech it seems like your opening a history book.
Its a lot more mature when compared to Warhammer
I always see w40k like its a mythological story. For Battletech, I see it like a historical, also helps that its a lot more politics focused than w40k. Imagine Three Kingdoms, Game of Thrones, and War of the Roses, merged into one, and launched into space.
@@Dogue83thats my issue with 40k lately and why I personally switched, 40k began to feel like children in a play box boasting about how strong their perticular faction was and how like no matter how many times you kill him he comes back and annd and hes super good at combat and and hes so angry he hits his own men and and hes super cool looking.
Casual use of FTL: Faster Than Light music, I approve
One of my favorite things about Battletech is that the cartoon that was made in the 90s is now in lore propaganda the Steiners made
nice i cant wait for Do's and Donts of the great houses+everything else
Here's another way to sum up Battletech lore: "This is the Inner Sphere, thousands of planets colonized by humankind. Once it was united under the Star League, but for the past 300 years it has been consumed by savage wars. Until a new enemy appeared. Mysterious invaders known as: the Clans. Powerful and ruthless they struck like lightning attacking every sector at once. But they made one big mistake. THEY ATTACKED MY HOME PLANET. Now, in the spirit of the Star League ancient enemies have reunited. And we are going to take back our galaxy."
Spheroid propaganda!
My exposure to Battletech is pretty much just MechAssault. And it's wonderful
Same here. I played both mech assault games and loved them both so much.
Honestly, I tried a game of BattleTech at a war games con my uncle took me to once and I dont have fond memories of it.
Took the entire afternoon, felt like it had rules way too complicated and in depth, yet, the best strategy was making a conga line of mechs kicking each other's shins.
Might just have been an unlucky afternoon with rather poor teachers, but it left a terrible first impression of the game
Yeah, big mechs are a slugfest, light and medium mechs, which are the backbone of the setting however… once you put in the XL engines and stronk weapons, they are chaotic fun that explode in two seconds flat
You could try the PC game.
Let the computer handle the rules.
@@patrickkenyon2326 I would but I´ve had awfull experience with RNG deciding my fate in games like this and seen videos that show Battletech games can be particularly scummy in that regard.
@@axios4702 It has its moments, but not as bad as X-com.
I'd suggest checking out the Alpha Strike rules set. It's a simplified version that is a lot easier for new players to get into.
This is probably one of the better introduction to BattleTech videos I've seen. Also forever Clan Wolf
Mech sheets were always hard. Mechwarrior 2:31st century combat introduced me to wiggling points around to make a mech - and there is a -lot- of room for altering the actual loadouts. TBH, the piloting games were always my favorite - and there's something to be said about piloting a walking tank while blowing another walking tank apart right in front of you. But the lore CAN really get to you - much as I assume warhammer can. More depends which gets you first I guess. I mean, from memory -
"We are Clan Wolf,
Children of Kerensky.
We carry the honor of this name on our shoulders as our fathers did before us
The remembrance speaks to us of the evil in man's will-
of the reason for exodus, and the rights of the traveler.
Arcadia is our destiny and our right - enlightenment is our gift.
By the blood name's of the founders, we must return - return and protect that which is unique among the stars.
Terra awaits us, as it was written -
We are the last of the Wardens. The sole hope for the Earth."
That's a monologue from a 27 year old game... and it still gives me chills. LOT of story in Battletech.
You want chills?
Try this on for size:
ANCIENT EPITAPH
2439
IN HIS ARROGANCE
MANKIND BUILT GODS
IN HIS OWN IMAGE
AND DESCENDED INTO MADNESS…
2787
THE SUCCESSION WARS
PLUNGED THE INNER SPHERE INTO
CENTURIES OF INTERSTELLAR WARFARE
3030
IN THIS TECHNOLOGICAL AND
CULTURAL AGE OF LOSTECH
HUMANITY SOON FOUGHT WITH
BATTLEMECHS THAT WERE LITERALLY
DECADES, IF NOT CENTURIES OLD
AND IN A SORRY STATE OF REPAIR
3045
ANCIENT AUTOMATED FACTORIES
CONTINUED TO PRODUCE
BATTLEMECHS EVEN WHEN
THEIR TECHNOLOGY WAS
*NOT UNDERSTOOD ANYMORE*
@@combativeThinker Yup, I'm going to be that guy - what is this from?
@@ryanparrinello2272 Mechwarrior 2. It was the first of the Mechwarrior games to let you play as the Clans. There were actually two campaigns. One from the Wardens (Clan Wolf) and the other from the Crusaders (Clan Jade Falcon).
The other intro speech is this one:
We are Jade Falcon, great among the Clans.
We are warriors who fight with the strength of the falcon's claws and ascend to the heavens on wings of the same.
We remember with the clarity of falcon sight the words of Kerensky.
Through the smoke of time he speaks to us, his chosen, and urges us onwards with the promise of Eden.
We will retake what is ours by right: that shinning jewel Terra.
Not the vastness of space, nor the Wolf's obstinate howl will stay us from our righteous goal.
We are Crusaders and will trample all who stand in our way.
Here are the intro videos for each campaign:
th-cam.com/video/2YkfIJ8HUWs/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/g7_rSyRD8XM/w-d-xo.html
@@randlebrowne2048 Oh I know, I just resonate better with Clan Wolf. I beat both campaigns more times than I care to admit hehe. I think that's the first game I attempted to download mods for.
I really hope you continue this series and we get some more of you getting baffled by all the stuff that happens
Yea... BT lore is more a little extensive. The actual starting point is divergence from our own timeline in the cold war. Then, with various novels, short stories, and sourcebooks it fills in details events and stories for every century and most decades. This leads to an continuous chain of cause and effect and effect and effect that lasts for 1200s years. So it absolutely builds in on itself a bunch.
To make things worse, there are several different points were you can start off. Age of war, succession wars, clan invasion, dark age, and now ilclan. And for a couple of them, the first three in particular, parts of the fandom can't even agree on where you *should* start off. Age of war is the earliest point were the setting is distinctly battletech with space travel, mechs, neofeudalism, and most of the important factions, and it is argued it is best to start from the beginning. The late succession wars in 3025 is were the setting started IRL and as such is the intended starting off point. And finally there is the clan invasion which isn't super far off from late succession war, and is were the clans are introduced, who are, it is argued, so integral to the setting that folks should not be introduced to the setting without them.
Then lore channels come and complicate all this even more. Being very digestible ways to get introduced to new settings lore channels have become the defacto way that people learn about settings. And lore channels focus disproportionately on the age of war and star league eras which are relatively unwritten about, narratively separate from the majority of the lore, and aren't in any way intended or written to be introductory parts of the lore by the creators. Great bits of lore to be sure, and fun eras to play in, but relatively daunting and inexcess-able making them not the best of places to start for new folks.
Personally I believe the late succession wars in 3025 is the best place to start. It was and still is written and treated as the introductory period of the setting by the creators. As such all the lore and narrative is written around it either as backstory to it, or sequels assuming some level of familiarity with what happened in it. Plus from a gameplay standpoint it comes at the tail end of the tech regression. As such it can be played with the basic introductory technology and the relatively simple rules for it while still allowing for newer better stuff to be tacked on and introduced to players as it is (re)introduced in setting.
For lore I say start in that era. Say there is background and reasoning and in general more to it, but just put a pin in that for later. Give a basic overview of each of the main factions. Explain that they are all varying levels of neofeudal and that they take political, social, and cultural aspects from various real places on earth with new sci-fi future twists. They all want to be crowned the head of the long dead future roman empire called the star league which they had all once participated in and have been fighting for centuries over that throne. Explain what a battlemech is and that it is the current king of the battlefield. Explain that the inner sphere is in a state of post nuclear holocaust from those wars with devastated industry and the loss scientific advancement and theory from the fallout of the first exchanges, time, and the brutal grind of the wars. Explain what jumpships and hpgs are and their import. Give some more details and overviews of the key characteristics of each of the factions. Then, build outward from there.
Overall I really liked the video. I really love how you presented the morality of the setting and its characters and factions. It is very much grey, but too often folks dismiss it as black with nothing but edgy grimdarkness were everyone is evil. Nothing against the settings that do that, but it isn't battletech. For all the vices that plague the entities of the inner sphere, there are plenty of virtues and heroism to go around.
P.S. Remember that red mech with the dumb stupid face? Yep, there is a merc driving one and kicking butt in the newest era. Non other than Ronan Carlyle of the Grey Death Legion.
As a huge fan of battletech, this intro is freaking hilarious and great.
I’m looking forward to a video on the warrior pope.