In Warhammer terms, going up against House Steiner is like sending an army to attack one of your enemy's minor settlements and discovering that that their garrison is oops all Steam Tanks, and you're still on turn 9. Then you're overrun by an endless horde of doomstacks, each army lead by a generic lord decked out in the best magical items money can buy, but he's only got the upgrades that give him more income.
@@TheLegitWeebs It gets even better. The enemy in question constantly makes the most ridiculous tactical choices which actually gives you a chance to not get completely rolled over, and yet... they still win. Why? They just throw dozens on dozens of doomstacks at you. Some of which aren't even manned and you just... get free steam tanks for no reason. Steiner will bury you under the weight of the military industrial complex, either by giving you infinite handouts or by shooting in your general direction, often at the same time!
It is important to note: Tex of the BPL = TH-cam Creator. Professor Tex = A character he created in the Battletech Universe for the purpose of teaching Battletech History.
Battletech's Lore is fucking *deep* to the point where I'd argue that it can and does challenge WH40k with one of the more intriguing parts being how the various factions have swung back and forth between being heroic or villainous. It's also a sci-fi setting that places a great emphasis on politics and intelligence; you could run a whole role playing campaign with zero use of Mechs and still have something that is deep thoughtful and fulfilling to your players.
12:10 As a matter of fact, that particular 'mech is named the Centurion. 32:30 So, Tex's in-universe mercenary character was married to a Clan Ghost Bear woman known as an Elemental. They're very big and very strong. And in his character lore, she ripped his arm off when he asked for a divorce, and she still has it in a jar and they occasionally have fights over it. You can learn about the Clans in the BPL two-parter, From Exodus to Elementals, which basically tells you the entire history of the Clans, starting immediately from the end of the Amaris Civil War two-parter.
@@TheLegitWeebs Well, if you're gonna be a Black Pants Legion fan and watch all their Battletech stuff, you'll catch the snippets here and there. I didn't piece the whole thing together until maybe their Hunchback video, I think. He also has a character who has become canon in the Battletech universe, a historian by the name of Randolph P. Checkers, Esq.
@@TheLegitWeebs oh, also, you can watch their Battle of Tukkayid video, which was originally released on May 20th, several years ago. It details one of the most important events in the modern Battletech timeline, a world-spanning honor duel between the invading Clans and the phone company, ComStar.
@@TheLegitWeebs worth noting is that each Tex Talks intro and outro has a little bit of a self-contained story, which won't make sense if you're doing the episodes out of order. Nothing too big to stress about, but if you're wondering why he's gone from a warehouse to a drop ship, that's why. Also, each episode has some pre-credits skits and some of the later episodes have stuff going on during the credits.
The "crouch cannon" mech is the "Mackie" the 1st prototype battlemech. The feudal structure of the intersphere is due to FTL travel was invented before FTL communications
@The Legit Weebs - I didn't see anyone mention this. ComStar (the Phone Company) is in 40k terms, kind of the Mechanicum. They are the sole faster-than-light communication system, as well as the keepers of otherwise lost knowledge. They also have colonies on Mars, and use cybernetics, so yeah... The Clans are kind of Space Marines. Gene engineered, self-righteous, and often more advanced technically than other forces, but few in numbers, and kind of stunted socially.
Oh there are aliens. Lots of them. Every planet that already has indigenous life by definition has aliens. Just none besides the tetatae and *maybe* those pre-neolithic creatures described in the GDL books that could quality as "human-level intelligence".
In terms of the tabletop game: BT follows a model of "Robot as Walking Tank/AFV" instead of Gundam, Crusher Joe, or Macross doing "Robot as Fighter" (fast, heavily armed, fragile) or other shows "Robot as Infantry" models. The last matters because a lot of the classic designs come from an 80s series called "Fang of the Sun Dougram" and that's how the robots felt: glorified infantry. This has caused issues over the decades with mismatched expectations by players who expected play to resemble source material- and it does not. (That said, the source material closest to BT is Dougram; if you can find it, watch it- that's a Free Worlds League civil war story in all but name.) There are also playable conventional armor (tanks, AFVs), conventional and power-armored infantry, conventional helos and aircraft, artillery (rarely seen in play), and the space side is dominated by Aerospace Fighters and Dropship combats with the occasional Warship showing up depending on the era of time. Dont' worry about all of that for now if you want to learn the game; stompy robot action will keep you engaged for a while by itself. BT also has a tabletop RPG plug-in (currently "A Time of War", formerly "Mechwarrior"), a fast-playing alternative game (Alpha Strike), and yes plenty of media tie-ins of varying quality. (The animated series it notoriously bad, such that it's been ret-conned into in-setting risible propaganda.) In addition to Harebrained's PC version (which is a variation of the tabletop game), MegaMek exists and is a straight up port of tabletop to a free PC game with multiplayer allowed out of the box, a unit database (so you can print out sheets for IRL use too), and user-generated content capacities. For lore (etc.) there is also Big Red-40Tech, Mage Leader, Sven van der Plank, and Mechanical Frog out there doing lore and unit reviews. You need not wait on Tex and the BPL once you've run through their playlist.
Designs came from Dougram (Wolverine, Shadow Hawk, Griffin, Scorpion, Thunderbolt, Goliath, Battlemaster), Crusher Joe (Locust, Leopard CV, Corsair), and Macross (Wasp, Stinger, Valkyrie, Phoenix Hawk, Crusader, Rifleman, Archer, Warhammer, Longbow, Marauder; the Behemoth, Ostscout, Ostsol, and Ostroc were inspired by existing designed but deviated heavily). Most designs came from Macross, though Dougram is a very close second. What's kinda funny is that the Corsair ASF never changed its look even after the whole Unseen thing. Same with the Scorpion tank. Just odd things that were left in. There's a fan PDF book called "Unseen: A History of FASA, Battledroids and BattleTech", which can be found on Sarna, which gives the best and most detailed account of the whole "unseen" ordeal that can be garnered based on publicly available information. It also provides a lot of info on how the original BattleDroids game differed from BattleTech. Credit has to be given to Duane Loose, one of the early BT artists. While his designs look rather janky and dated today (kinda like old D&D artwork), he was instrumental in helping give BT an identity that was separate from the mecha style that it grew up from.
Mechs in lore don't work like in MechWarrior. A battlemech is more of a giant armored soldier in terms of mobility. They take cover, climb, roll, and anything else a soldier can do.
@@Lunarice98 Ehh, kind of. Yes, they can climb and roll, or even handstand, but outside of the first one, the others aren't typically done in combat because they're more delicate operations that aren't easily done (or can't be done) in a stressful combat environment. They aren't mecha; their maneuvering is still more akin to walking tanks, if nothing else because movement is comparably slower than humans because they have a lot more mass.
So, the Battletech timeline is pretty fucking vast, despite only covering about 1200 years compared to 40k. One TH-camr who has some long history videos for the setting is Sven Van Der Plank. He's really good. But Tex and the BPL have the best iteration that tells of the most important even in the lore, their two-parter on the fall of Star League and the Amaris Civil War is all you need to know to get to the modern eras in which the game is most often played.
Sven has almost 30 hours of top level documentary video up now, and is only just in sight of the usual intro point to the world for a player. There is a shocking level of depth to the lore for the universe.
The clans are space barbarians only if space barbarians has better technology than everyone else. The iconic Clan 'mech, the Timber Wolf, literally carries more than twice the weaponry of an Inner Sphere 'mech of the same weight, and has MORE mobility. Comstar, the phone company, has power because they literally control all FTL communication in the Inner Sphere; the standard inter-state currency was the C-bill (short for Comstar-bill) which guaranteed a certain amount of transmission time on Comstar's communications network. Which was the only communications network. Could Comstar listen in? Who knows... Comstar had differently better mechs than everyone else (they centered around command and control networks that let mechs use each others' sensors for targeting data, among other things, making them very accurate and also greatly boosting unit cohesion).
Yes, cause why not showing what you got before you start d!cking around and unleash gigawatts of pure concentrated energy into anyone who stops and wonders. "huh... is that a..."
On a sidenote on House Steiners Military, their highest ranks are gifted on personal leisure, so the competence there is ..... variable, the lower and middle ranks are generally as professional as every other military.
Battletech is a franchise that got its start around the same time as the Warhammer Fantasy and later Warhammer 40,000 franchise came into being and the lore and world building of the Battletech setting is just as extensive as Warhammer. Where the two really diverge are in how they are presented to their audience. Warhammer is a work of gothic themed fiction meant to represent a bleak world where just getting to live to see the next sunrise and stay mostly sane is a blessing. Battletech on the other hand is presented as something more akin to Game of Thrones, a political drama set to a fictional setting albeit packaged more like a historical drama. Also most people aren’t actually aware of it, but if they have ever played or heard of the video game titles of Mechwarrior, Mech Assault, and Mech Commander are all set in the Battletech universe.
Yes! Welcome to the Inner Sphere. There _was_ one sentient alien species written about in the universe, but it was an unpopular direction that has since been mostly forgotten. And trust me, you won't want to skip the credits. They've got some great in-universe ads.
Some of the early books describe characters seeing from pre-neolithic era creatures around. But yeah, the Tetatae are the most intelligent non-human species described in any book, and the book it's from "Far Country" sits so far outside the IS that it's functionally a different universe. Generally, the Clans fit the "very alien" role in stories. They're still human, but their values and culture are so vastly different they are alien. The vast, vast majority of problems and issues in the setting are human. The history of the universe is human. This aspect of the setting really sets it apart from many other sci-fi settings.
Welcome. This is definitely a fun franchise to learn about, and Tex is the main gateway, though there are other good channels to acquaint yourself with the sphere and beyond depending on what kind of content you're looking for. Sven Der Plank has a much more dry look at the top view history, having done series on the first two succession wars, the Amaris/Star League Civil War, and even videos about the Age of War. Big Red 40 T4ech is a former 40k lore master who has predominately shifted to covering Battletech, with many many mechs having been covered along with discussing various weapon systems and even some vehicles. Mechanical Frog is another good one for variety, but he keeps things the most brief of the ones I've mentioned, and he's also the go to for covering Battle Armor.
Can second Big Red's channel as having a lot to recommend, though a *large* portion of the videos are going to be about particular BattleMechs (or OmniMechs, depending) and have sprinkles of lore ingrained into the videos - just enough to support them. He is also not quite as prone to leaning into "the memes", and is not presenting the videos from an "in universe perspective" as Tex does. So you get a bit more of a balanced view. :)
Battle tech plot in a nutshell "So let me tell you the tale about a chair" 23:04 so the history is around 500ish years in writing. Nothing really goes super wrong generally. The political and economic aspect runs deep in the setting. Like this was doing game of thrones before game of thrones. As for factional morality they're all generally gray. They have their ups and downs 23:15 the phone company is called ComStar. Big thing to remember pretty much every major event and bad thing to happen in setting is either directly or indirectly ComStar's fault.
So, about the "Phone Company". They are an organization called ComStar, which is the last remnant of the Star League (The space empire who once ruled the whole inner sphere, the great houses fight to see who get to reestablish it.), and the only group that knows how to maintain and operate the Faster than Light communication systems. They are also a crazy religious cult who venerate their founder as a saint and try to control and restrict advanced technology. In short they are a mix between the Brotherhood of steel, the Adeptus Mechanicus and Comcast.
Keep watching Tex, he's an amazing figurehead of the Battletech scene. As to the depth of the lore... Sven van der Plank made a video about the Star Leage civil war. The central and largest powder keg that starts off the universe and its consequences as far as the contemporary era(s) are concerned. Mind you this is a single conflict and some light overview of surrounding events. It's 8 damn hours long. And thats all from manuals, technical readouts, in-universe sources, and notes on the 'mechs themselves all compiled from 1982 til now. One conflict. Just one. Have fun.
11:03 That reminds me of a line from a novel in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (well... technically, it's a footnote but no need to bog down in the details) "After much experimentation, Ankh-Morpork had finally settled on that particular form of democracy known as "One Man, One Vote". The Patrician was The Man; he had The Vote". 15:10 Pay attention to the background music here. It was chosen _very carefully_ 15:37 That really depends on your definition of "not very good people". As noted, for the most part, the Davions _try_ to not be despots and are generally competent rulers (with one significant exception and another possible exception - if you know, you know) and as you'll see later in the video, the Mariks and Steiners also tend to rule with a fairly light hand... _usually_ 17:35 I'll just point out that the Fourth Succession War saw the Confederation losing _half_ of its territory in a span of _two years._ For comparison the previous three Succession Wars each lasted decades (fifteen decades for the Third Succession War - warfare on an interstellar scale is hard when you've nuked big chunks of your industrial and scientific base... helped along by the phone company carrying out a few miscellaneous assassinations along the way; who knew?) without significant territorial changes 17:53 More Austro-Hungarian/Balkan 21:38 It's not so much that as the fact that the Mariks tend to have a civil war whenever the succession rolls around to one degree or another 24:50 Not so much "better" but _definitely_ "more". The LC has the largest economical and industrial base of any of the Success States. See also, "Steiner Scout Lance" 26:10 BOOO! BOO THIS LADY! She's the "significant exception" I mentioned earlier 27:30 Side note: Canopus is indeed a magical place, complete with cat-girls and Canopian Marching Powder. This is not even slightly an exaggeration. 31:50 They're called ComStar and the reason Tex calls them "the phone company" is that they have a monopoly on interstellar FTL communications (mostly; it's complicated). He also calls them "Space AT&T" for the same reason
Some quick Battletech to Warhammer translations. Comstar = The Mechcanicus but (slightly) less cyborg-y. The Clans = Basically equal-gendered Space Marine Legions with better tech than everyone else. There were 20, 17 by the time they invaded the inner sphere, currently, there are about 12, with only 8 interacting with the inner sphere directly.
@@IamHattman Technically, yes. However, Blake really hollowed out what was originally Comstar. So much so that Comstar basically collapsed, when the Dark Age (the HPG net going down) began.
@@raithnor6007 Dude, we are not talking about "that era"! Even Tex refuses to. It does not exist. Oh, and word of Blake would be like some heretic mechanicus-cult, hellbent on making sure Blake is the only true omnissiah and everyone agreeing - even if they need to be nuked to do so.
17:21 The Capellans frequently have the historical misfortune of getting "Eiffel Towered" by both the FWL and the Federated Suns, who both have much beefier opponents on their opposite borders.
To be fair, Liao deserves it. And those who disagree are good little capellan-citizens brainwashed and indoctrinated to the point they welcome being slaves owned by a house ruled far too often by madmen/women.
Tex mentioned it in this video, but his Amaris Civil War videos are fantastic. Tex is an excellent storyteller and they will give you a solid basis for learning how things shook out into their current state.
Just keep in mind he's a storyteller. Especially with the Capellan stuff, the memes seem to be starting to get taken as fact. Though to be fair, in the early 80's novels the Combine and Capellans were the designated bad guys of the books.
I bid you welcome, kind stranger. I hope you enjoy your little foray into this very fun fictional universe. Battletech is Game of Thrones, before Game of Thrones and it's in Space. The game itself is deep and complex yet simple to set up and play. The Lore... is even deeper and more complex and detailed. Something I have to mention is: Battletech is not solely a game of 'Mechs. Though they are the Kings of the Battlefield. It's a combined arms game. The game has rules for everything. Aerospace assets like Helicopters and Fighterjets, Land vehicles can be anything, from APCs to Hovercraft, from amphibian vehicles to the heaviest tanks everything is around. Ships and Submarines can come into play too, but those are rather constrained by nature itself. 'Mechs aren't really suited to the naval battlefield and vice versa. Even dropships can play a role, but if your name isn't Steiner those are irreplaceable assets that you can't afford to risk on a deployment in a battle zone. And of course there is infantry. Either the normal kind very much akin to the imperial guard, to Battle Armored troopers. Think Space Marines, but more the Starship Troopers mobile infantry kind, not Astartes or Spartans. Normal mortals, with special forces level training and equipment. Not much more. I mean, nobody asked the original authors back then to write 500 years of military history to explain why the tanks walk on two legs. Yet they did. All to make it believable. And it was worth the effort. This video introduces you to the major players in the Inner Sphere, not mentioning the minor states and Periphery much. The Sphere itself does not span the galaxy; far from it. It's not more than the head of a pin on a galactic map. The T'au "empire" in 40k is probably bigger. Don't expect alien species though, humanity has it's hands full with itself quite enough. One example of the depth of the lore is the fact that the inner sphere economically is just as diverse as it is politically. The most common and most stable currency used in the universe is the C-Bill. Controlled by ComStar, the phone company that tends to get mentioned. But they govern so much more than just FTL communication. Though that's what the value of their currency is tied to. They provide a service that they (in most Eras of the BT Universe) have a monopoly over. The hyperpulse-generator or HPG is means of interstellar communication, and is, for the most part, solely controlled by ComStar as they operate the stations and those stations are in essence neutral territory that is not a legitimate military target. But more than just communication, ComStar also provides financial services, transport via Jumpship and controls the MRBC the Mercenary Review Board which in essence, manages all mercenary work in the Inner Sphere, to a point that any non-MRBC work counts as shady and can cost a Merc-company their standing and license if they were to work outside the MRBCs purview. In addition to the C-Bill, every major house has their own house bills, which are used for internal trading while the C-Bill provides the basis for international trade by being the reserve currency and basically the gold standard. Some of the periphery states also have their own currency, if they have the infrastructure in place to actually provide stable finance and a secure economy. Some pirate states and one planet nations in the deeper periphery don't really have even that. And I have only touched the matter of currency. I sadly can't answer any questions about logistics. I have no idea how resources are acquired and distributed in the Battletech universe... yet. I'm still quite new myself. I can imagine though that the nature of industry and trade varies on a system by system basis though. I don't think there exist pure breadbasket worlds like the Agri-worlds in 40k. Or pure industrial worlds like the forge worlds or anything like that. Since interstellar travel still takes a lot of time, a long logistics train sounds like a recipe for disaster. So every settled world has, due to circumstance, to be self sufficient to some degree.
To those who do not yet get the "phone company" reference, Tex makes these as in-universe instructional videos and in universe ComStar controls ALL information flow outside of a planet's local info sphere, meaning if he mentions them in any negative way in universe they will simply make him not exist.😅😂😂
the meme of a steiner scout lance(4 mechs) being 4 Atlases, 100(metric) ton assault mechs, is because of their acces to resources and military equipment^^
Battletech is a tabletop game that has been out since 1984, it was actually originally called battle droids and then was sued by Lucas and had to change the name to battletech. there is a lot of lore about the game, mostly through novels written about it that are all considered canon. There are no alien races, it's all about humanity and how we reached for the stars, grew too big too fast and basically collapsed in ourselves. It's essentially game of thrones but 1000 years in the future from IRL. Originally governments and factions that were fighting with each other were using grand scale warships and combinations of nukes, biochemical weapons, and orbital bombardments to completely erase opposing planets and civilizations until one faction proposed a truce between all sides to have summit where it was pointed out that if they keep fighting like this humanity isnt going to last long, so they all signed a document banning the use of these previous types of weapons and saying if you want to defeat an enemy or take a planet from them you have to do it on the battlefield with "boots on the ground" so to speak. shortly after the various technologies used to create battlemechs were invented and people started to put the puzzle pieces together in an effort to find the new best weapon that could be used in war and the race was on between the great houses to create bigger and better versions of battlemechs to use on the battlefield. a lot of other things happened in the interim, some good, but mostly bad, the end result was basically another 500 years of in fighting with everyone trying to be the one to rule them all. the phone company also known as comstar, used to be SLComNet, the first network of FTL transmissions used to send messages and information around the galaxy near instantaneously through the use of hyper pulse generators, when the star league (basically the UN of the inner sphere) fell apart ComStar rose from the ashes of SLComNet, who are now also religious, think AT&T and Catholic church merging together, the control all of the communications arrays across the galaxy, they back the galactic currency the C-Bill, and they control the mercenary review board, they can also monitor and listen to any message sent. So, if you ever want to get offered contracts as mercenary, get paid for said contracts, and be able to get the news and send messages to your family back home or to one of your generals fighting in a system 100's of lightyears away, it's a good idea to not piss off the phone company. Essentially there is a lot of lore and back story to this universe, but it's all rooted in some truth, it's possible to see even though its fantasy, how humanity could get to this point after inventing FTL travel and spreading across the galaxy to colonize. Plus big stompy mechs with lasers and missiles and cannons duking it out is cool, and it was all thought up by one guy back in the 80's and has had a loyal die hard fan base ever since.
The only sentient species aside from humans in Battletech is a Stone Age race of bird creatures that were found on a single planet. They where only mentioned in a single novel. There’s plenty of non sentient species though. They range from microbes to dinosaur analogs that can be ridden into battle in game with lasers attached to their heads.
Well I can now happily say Welcome to the Battletech community and Universe. To go over some stuff for you (just some general knowledge that may help): 1. Battletech like Warhammer as you saw started off as a Tabletop Wargame. However, unlike Warhammer that focuses on larger army vs army type wars, BT more focuses on the smaller side going more simulation with it - I.e. you track both damage, heat, ammunition, critical damage to internal systems and weapons, pilot condition, etc. As such BT for most people is designed to be player with smaller forces of maybe 4 mechs on each side tho expanding out to more as player becomes more accustomed to the game and setting. Tho you can also go to Alpha Strike which simplifies the systems and makes it much easier to run larger games of multiple lances or even company’s facing off against one another. 2. Like Warhammer, BT as you saw is quite the extensive universe with 100 of books (best recommendation on where to start with that is the Warrior Trilogy as it cover alot of the IS houses work, the politics, the cultures, the military’s and a lot of the main characters and just that’ll be important going forward in the mainline book series/universe. But ontop of that you also have games like HBS Battletech (which seems to be the one you picked up) which is a more strategy based game and focuses more on a periphery story outside of the mainline one, but gives a good look at the universe for new people. And you also have the Mechwarrior series which focuses more on the 1st/3rd person perspective of the mech. I.e. you ain’t acting as an overhead commander planning each move, nope you are the man in the mech getting stuck into the enemy with AC, SRM, LRM and Lasers. And as you saw, it even had an old 90s cartoon you can actually watch on TH-cam… it’s not very good but to the BT community it’s an outright good laugh and something to watch just to enjoy it. And unlike most studios like GW who’d essentially just make it non canon (or just act like it never happened) Catalyst Games Lab who are the current IP holders actually made it canon… as a propaganda cartoon shown in the Federated Commonwealth to kids as a show about how the IS united to fight the Invading Clans. The main character of the show Adam Steiner is also a canon character and absolutely hates the show for essentially exaggerating his actions during the clan invasion and worse, his students at the Mechwarrior academy’s and the units he commands constantly quote the show around him. And Nikolai Mathus who is the shows main antagonist is also a canon character and absolutely despises his portrayal in the show that he actually sewed the FedCom Broadcasting Studio in court. He lost after it was noted by the judge “a batchall is not a proper form of legal action”. 3. As you noted as well Battletech is a hard sci-fi universe. It heavily focuses on the tech and human condition for war. So no aliens or magic powers, etc. There are some notable things in some of the early books when the universe wasn’t fully fleshed out and they were still thinking/making up as they went but these have since been made into fun “weird phenomena” where many in universe historians and scientists and techs and so on have tried to put theories as to how such things work or have shown tech which could do what they did or just make logical suggestions as to what people may have saw and exaggerated. So you can kind of make your own mind up of if this was actually something “supernatural” or was just maybe some lostech nobody knew about and these guys used and since they are dead… well ain’t no getting any answers out of em now is there. 4. Another thing that’s quite different from 40k which you’re learning about. Unlike the Warhammer universe which mostly focuses on the current setting with stuff like the HH, War of the Beast, Vandire, etc mainly being used to essentially give perspective and justification to why stuff is what it is in the current timeline; the Battletech timeline is a fully coherent one which is always expanding (the current era we are in is the IlClan era). So unlike 40k where if you say wanted to have a game set in M35 you’d kind of struggle to know what was available what wasn’t, who was around, etc. In BT if you want to play a game set in the Star League era there is full details as to what was happening there, what tech was available, unit structure, events happening set at that time, etc. If you wanted to play in the FedCom Civil War, again there are details on the events, tech, availability of equipment and mechs, etc. And if you really wanted to be crazy. You could create a SLDF unit, take it through the periphery uprising, Amaris Civil War, Exodus, turn merc and fight in the 4 succession wars, Clan Invasion, FedCom Civil War, Jihad, Republic Era, Dark Age and all the way into the IlClan era, and it would be completely possible and even lore accurate - there are actual units in the BT universe which have this background of service to them. The people inside may change due to retirement, old age and combat losses, but the unit and its history is still there with fresh faces of outside recruits or family descendants carrying on the tradition.
Cause YTuber find this too long for one post lol. 5. As you may have saw tho it’s not always obvious, BT while its main focus is the big stompy mechs we all love, isn’t just about them. If you want to have infantry, there are rules for them, there are rules for tanks, aerospace and conventional fighters, naval ships, dropships, warships, jump ships, etc. If you wanted to literally play a game where your guys started off on a warship, fought there way to the planet through space, decoupled, fought their way all the way down to the surface, deployed their land based forces onto the planet and slowly conquered it city by city with mech, vehicle and infantryman. You can literally do this. 6. And unlike most modern wargames these days, getting into BT isn’t that hard either. For one your record sheets and Rulebook, you can literally use ones from the 90s and still be in full cohesion with someone who bought a 2024 edition, all that’ll be different is maybe some art and updated lore on current events. Rules, record sheets and everything are still the same. Good example, myself I mainly use alot of the record sheet for my units using the older 3039 unabridged book. And practically most of them are in the newer succession wars book; tho some aren’t as they hadn’t panned models for them at the time. As such I usually suggest getting the 3039 one as it has mechs, aerospace fighter and vehicle for pretty much every succession wars era unit you’d need for essentially getting started. From here you can easily expand out. Want to play Campaign where you managed your own forces and battle damne and pilot deaths and such carry over? Campaign Ops. Want extra species rules you might want to try to spice things up. Tactical Ops. Want to create your own mech from the ground up? MechTech Manual. Want a very easy RPG system for good one off like campaigns, BT Destiny. Want an even more advanced RPG system which can easily can be used to put your Mechwarrior right into the standard tabletop actions, Battletech A Time of War. And there are still some that even I have covered here. But in truth all you really need is a book of record sheets you can print off, either the Battlemech Manual if you just want to play mech on mech or Total Warfare if you want to incorporate everything someday, and whatever else you want to add on - you don’t even need models really; a chip marked with a front, side and rear can essentially be used in place of actual models, tho the models are so worth getting. 7. And funny enough for all the universe has its more adherent notes with set mech regiments and their colour schemes, the universe is quite open for you to make your own house unit which may not be super prominent (I.e. my own models I have are painted to reflect the Avalon Hussars of the Federated Suns, Benjamin Regulars of the Draconis Combine, Vau Galaxy of Clan Jade Falcon and Tamar Jagers of the Lyran Commonwealth/Tamar Pact; but I also have my own personal davion unit I like to run which is the 1st Avalon Raiders which is on conception was initially a small battalion sized unit who’d be deployed on company sized raids for resources and assets denial across enemy boarders and would later expand into a regiment and 2nd regiment tho during several large and destructive wars be reduced back to a battalion sized unit.) And this doesn’t even include mercs. Yes there are dozen of pre-created merc units with their own schemes and characters but as quickly noted too in universe there are also thousands of smaller unknown units too from single lance units just starting up, co-op unit who essentially list themselves under one larger name/prominent name while actually being made up of dozens of small independent units just looking for work, etc; there so much variation in everything. And even better, it’s even noted in universe that the main schemes you see all these in universe units wearing, they are essentially only really used during parade and rest, in truth many units actually go into battle with camouflage painting which reflects the planets environment. So you could paint your mechs to be in desert camo and they could one day be representing Crucis Lancers and the next day Marik Militia and again it would be fully in lore and keeping with the universe. 8. Last of all I’d say. The community is quite the open and supportive thing and even Catalyst are quite with that. Want a few good examples of that. Well for one, they are known to actually help supply many of the main BT creators with updates and lore knowledge and help so they can make their videos accurate; they are extremely well known to go out and about in discords chatting with fans and even playing some games with some, plus they do do regular conventions too. A major well known community game/project known as MegaMek which is essentially tabletop classic wargame fully replicated in Java for free online; not only does Catalyst not attack these guys, they have actually sent these guys full on notes for future mech releases, variants, planet information for MekHQ which fully replicated the entire universe and allows you to create and play your own units across the universe jumping between planets, literally watching them change allegiance and faction depending on the actual date in universe in which they did (yes you can literally just hit next day and watch as the universe and planets actually adeer to the BT lore; and more, the guys who create much of the new mechs and variants, yeah that actually use MekLab (allows you to fully build and customise mechs inside it) to do this in studio. And when it comes to the fans too, well… when a fan put the name forward to catalyst Randalf P. Checkers they actually included it in universe and game him a background as a part time merc and university lecturer. Why’s this such a prominent thing? Well cause Tex’s in universe character he likes to use for these TTBT is Randalf P. Checkers. Literally, due to how much Tex did for the community in introducing people into the universe catalyst made his character a real one in universe too. Hell the Urbanmech UM-IV has an amazing story behind it too from the FASA days (original IP owners who sadly went bust in the 90s). During the playing of an event, a guy brought in his customs urbanmech that had been customised to be firing a nuclear missile from an Arrow IV missile artillery system. Well, the main mech designer and guy who approved variant builds for the official books, saw it and absolutely loved it. As such on day 1 they put the model just off the edge of their main hobby table and went about the day playing their set up scenario boards as usual, however every once in a while they’d have the guy who built it roll some dice now and then to see what happens. Well… the reason the guy was rolling dice was, was because his urban mech had launched a nuclear missile from off the side of one of the scenario boards and he’d been rolling to see how much scatter it was suffering during its travel time. Hitting the board the furthest away board it would pretty badly mulch the Kell’s Hounds that were fighting on the board against their enemies. And what’s more fun, on the last day, the team would always play against the fans in a nice brawl up, but “had” to use a legal variant mech… well the Urbanmech IV wasn’t a legal mech it was a custom one… well, the main mech writer loved it so much he literally took the guy to the side, sat down and created an official record sheet for the Urbanmech UM-IV. Until this day the Urbanmech UM-IV is a canonical mech in universe with one of its main events being in the Jihad, in which when Kell’s Hounds forces were invading Terra as part of a coalition force, their second regiment that was attacking across the deserts was ambushed by a Urbanmech UM-IV just meters infront of them… the entire unit was noted to have been wiped out in a suicidal nuclear attack from this Urbanmech. And if you’re looking for an easy “home” to get settled into. I’ll always recommend the Helm Memory Core Discord as it’s essentially the main BT discord where you’ll find all the main Tubers, community guys, guys who’ll happily take you through your first introduction fights and even 1st party and 3rd party models makers to help you find all your mech and so on needs. So yeah. Welcome to the BT Universe and community mate, can’t wait to have you on with us.
Tex has several Mech specific videos. That ones that stand out are the Marauder, the Charger, the most recent Urbanmech, and the Warhammer. Though any of them are good. I also see you have a large warhammer 40k vid collection. I would highly recommend Arch's videos, particularly the Primarch Videos (Perturabo, Conrad Kurze, and their if they were loyal theory vids), and the multi episode Siege of Vraks and the Badab War. Finally, he has some hilarious April Fools videos. I would very much like you to review those. In any case, enjoyed watching this, subbed.
A bit late to the party, but if you want deep lore on how the BT universe began, I highly recommend two things: 1) D.C. Bruins' MechWarrior: Origins video. It's probably the best elevator pitch for the setting one can find. 2) Sven van der Plank did a full series on the Age of War, which is the history of the late 20th through mid-25th century. Each episode is relatively short, or you can watch the full video that is a couple hours.
The Origin of the Battletech, at least the Battletech most of us know is the Star League (the government that united the Inner Sphere and Periphery, and is seen as a Golden Age) and it's downfall, the Succession Wars (the wars between the Great Houses over the right to claim the power once wielded by the Star League) and the Clan Invasion (fyi The Clans are actually the descendents of General Kerensky (a near mythic hero who led the SLDF in the final days of the Star League) and his Star League Defense Force who chose exile over serving the Great Houses when the Star League collapsed) also the God damn Phone Company is a quasi religion and is the last surviving remnant of the Star League in the Inner Sphere.
Can't wait to see reactions to the Star League, and the Battle of Tukayyid. It's pretty surprising how many things you did nail spot on just from a few phrases or the imagery shown. Lol. I guess that either Tex's delivery or just the way the BT lore is built, it makes it easier to connect dots and extrapolate!
5:50: It's a good joke... until you realise it really, really isn't. When people say Kurita put a whole planet to the sword once? That is *NOT* an analogy or figure of speech. 23:05: To answer that question: Battletech has a full timeline going all the way back to 1985, when it starts diverging from ours. (Also, Admiral Takeo Kurita, the IJNs commanding officer at the Battle of Samar, is acknowledged as a distant ancestor to House Kurita.)
@@TheLegitWeebs In terms of units, the IIRC oldest unit to have an official tech readout and game stats is a nuclear fission-powered heavy VTOL bomber originally introduced in the 2090s. (Highly) Upgraded variants of it *still* sit around in museums in the 31st century. And a few of these dinosaurs are still used mostly as firefighting planes, with a single small company still manufacturing spare parts.
28:45 For Reference, while the valu of the C-Bill fluctuates over time, the value commonly given for comparison is that one C-Bill is worth approximately 12 USD (for 3025) or 5 USD (for 3062).
31:45 Oh yes, Comstar (the "Phone Company" he keeps referring to) were for a long time one of the primary powers of the Inner Sphere and basically the one power nobody else could do without - as they had a Monopoly on FTL Communication - and a lot of other things going for them.
7:13 On the whole of it, no, this isn't really a deep dive, Tex is putting us in the kiddy pool right now. Cool to see another person reacting to Tex and his team's work! You were reccomended to me because I'm a BPL fan. Off to see your Tukayyid reaction!
Always happy to see more people reacting to this video. Fun Fact, Battletech predates 40k by a little bit. There are alien animals, some of which are EXTREMELY LETHAL, but the only intelligent alien life is stone age bird people retconned to be on the FAAAAR side of a hyperspace Bermuda Triangle after massive community backlash. Oh, and one species of alien animal eats electrical insulation, or if starving, meat. There's also the irradiated mutant squirrels addicted to insulation foam in houses, but they're a one world problem. If you want the stories of how these nations arose, that starts all the way back in the Fall of the Terran Alliance, and concludes at some point during the Age of War. Which is the stuff that's not really the most fleshed out since it's so far back in the timeline. The Draconis Combine has its many faults and foibles, but you can't ever deny that they have STYLE and stay on theme. Of all the Great Houses, they have the strongest commitment to a cultural aesthetic. The Coordinator's full title is "Coordinator of Worlds." The Akuma is a fun hodge podge of systems and an in universe attempt to try taking the spot of an icon, the Atlas. Beyond other anti-mercenary policies, the Combine had a "company store" debt trap to trick merc companies into being nationalized. And the most common player character role is as a mercenary. 11:56 That is a Centurion. One of the Sphere's ubiquitous trooper role medium weight mechs. And yes, that is exactly the vibe you're supposed to get off the head. If 40k is an 11 in destruction and despair, Battletech tops out at a 6 if that high. But only during a few eras. Usually it's much more around 3 or even a 2. The Battletech Servitors are basically serfs in space. While the Cappellan Confederation does have very little overall space taken up compared to the other houses, it's not as bad as it looks, with Cappellan Space having been the most densely colonized in terms of how much map they held at the fall of the Star League. Though it is certainly not a healthy border arrangement in 3067. Tex doesn't explicitly say they played with their collections, but we can imagine that part. 22:05 It's a good place to aim at vehicles. Also, that's a Mackie. The very first design of Battlemech. It was very much a first draft of the new weapons platforms. Keep in mind, some of the lore of the older eras is newer than the lore of more modern eras. Some came after the fact to fill in the gaps and explain why the setting turned out the way it did. The first era published was 3025. Economics is given a LOT of weight and much more consideration than most sci fi settings in Battletech. Logistics is a crucial RP component. 23:14 The extra German Atlas romp was animated by a youtuber known ad DC Bruins. They do good work, though it's gotten much goofier with the BPL sponsoring them. Fun Fact, Solaris used to be a Free World's League world, but The Lyrans took the world in the first Succession War, and the planet has never looked back since. "Space Barbarians." Yes, but no, but also yes. They're interesting, and notably not homogenous. TLDR, their founder though a caste system and warrior elite was the change required to end a cycle of violence. Said Warrior Elite have ritualized and regulated combat as the de facto conflict resolution tool. Also, they took the heights of Star League technology, and refined it further. To terrifying potential that their honor burdened society couldn't fully utilize in total warfare. In fact, total war was an alien concept to them when they came back to the Sphere. They have great tech, people literally bred to be warriors, and chose to tie their collective hand behind their back while having little grasp on wartime logistics. One neat things about Rasselhague is their language. An indescribable fusion of Swedish and Japanese. Given than the Clan Invasion started in 3049 and ended in 3052, that one year was a BIG deal. Comstar is a complex creature really only understood from the outside top down perspective of players. And one whose true pursuits and ambitions lived in shadow until they showed their true might to halt the Clans on a world called Tukayyid in 3052. They held a monopoly on Hyper Pulse Generators (HPG) and that was the base of their power. Because the only other way to carry a message faster than light is a courier ship. The universal currency of C-Bills is their store credit. They also had other assets including stockpiles of lostech and influence.
While economics and logistics are given more thought than many other settings, don't dive too deep into FASAnomics. Your head will explode. "Wait, how many jumpships would be required to keep things up and running? And how many are there?" > was the change required to end a cycle of violence. Well, not *end* violence, but to curb its more disastrous and destructive tendencies. Accept violence will happen, and give a structured system for it to play out, even in conflict and war. It did give them the advantage that they avoided four disastrously destructive Succession Wars.
@@Xeno426it helped them avoid the madness of the Succession Wars, but OH BOY, did they ever make up for lost time when the whole thing imploded in the Wars of Reaving.
Yes, Battletech is (among other things) a Tabletop-Game. Well two even, Classic Battletech CBT is played on a hex-based flied and Alpha Strike is similar to 40K, played based on Inches
Funny enough, there's rules for both to be played in either style (CBT on a table using inches, AS on a hex grid). They're just not the default, and you have to grab some (free) online resources for the conversion. It usually comes down to 1" = 1 hex.
Tex Talks is pretty commonly agreed upon as the closest thing to an authority on Battletech lore. He's got a bunch of deep dives on individual mechs, my favorite of which is his video on the Hunchback. It has a great line that goes something like "the corporations kept offering Hunchback pilots safer variants with less ammo capacity. The problem being Hunchback pilots would happily fill the legs of their mechs with more ammo, were it an option." Also as per your comment is less grimdark than WH40k, the theme of Battletech seems to be less total utilitarian nihilism and more "there's always one fucking guy that will ruin everything."
FYI they have written source books with history going back to the 1970s all the way up to 3150. Just depends how deep you want to run from 1 infantry soldier trying to survive all thw way up to 100 planets versus 100 planets. Where do YOU want to draw thw line. Fyi biggest tabletop fight I played was 40 versus 40 2 mech companies of 12 each with a command lance on both sides and I played both sides took 3 weeks plating about 2 hours a night during weekdays and at least 6 to 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday. Best fun I ever had. Once. Biggest on average fight to fit in a day or 2 of fight is 10 to 15 per side if Clan and 12 Inner Sphere side
Naturally, the theme tune chosen for the Cappellans is "Glory to Arstohtska" from Papers Please! seeing as the Cappellans have been the traditional incompetent bad-guy faction and punching bag of the setting, that will keep losing over and over, but the writers will never just completely do away with.
I would suggest watching Tex's videos in the order that they were made. They build on each other somewhat so they'll make a bit more sense watched as a series then if you jump in somewhere in the middle.
i saw you recently watched a how to play on warhammer 40K. there is a great introduction video on battletech on the channel "4 Hands on Deck" where they briefly go over the basics of where battletech came from, what it represents when compared to warhammer and some basic in lore history before going through one game between 2 lances(mech teams) with explanations on the rules and the story they made up for the fight! they also have 2 other videos on adding vehicles and infantry into the mix. they don't have the same high energy as big warhammer channels, but the small roleplaying they do and the great animation and editing they do made those three videos some of my favorite table top content! would also recommend the Hired Steel animation series, the new episode should hopefully drop this year at some point.
If you want to know more about what mechs are and how they came to be in the setting, youll want to watch the video on the Mackie that tex made. It covers a lot of that.
Welcome to the rabbit hole of Battletech. With a TON of lore. I hope you enjoy your visit and I hope it interests you even further to know more about this great universe.
House Kurita: When we say put a planet to the sword we are not speaking figuratively. House Davion: Liberating the Inner Sphere one political marriage and smoldering crater at a time. House Liao: You do not have to be crazy to rule here, but it helps. House Marik: Do not bother attacking us, we have that covered. House Steiner: If it weighs under 80-tons we are not interested.
Is battletech a tabletop game? yes, it's also older than 40k. I have miniatures from the mid 80s that I got from older players when I started playing in the early nineties. There's also a TTRPG, the mechwarrior games which are arguably more famous but set in this universe, the battletech game from 2018 which was made by the studio run by one of the original creators from 1983, and a 90's saturday morning cartoon we all love to laugh at (said cartoon and children's toy line is what got me into the series actually). As to the universe I'd say that battletech is more realistically grim as opposed to 40k's 'grimdark' where 40k tries to add every trope it can and turn them all up to eleven battletech is a bit more focused in what it takes inspiration from which tends to be much more grounded in actual history and human nature, since there are no intelligent aliens in the setting everything comes down to how humans behave so everything has to be something that humans might actually do and while most of the tech is just as impossible as 40k it has to be something that 'feels' realistic so it's a much more 'realistic' scale. Battletech is a DEEP universe with almost as many novels as 40k has though and if you go look at Sven Van Der Plank's channel you can see his multiple seasons of deep dives into the timeline which is approaching 30 hours of content.
Honestly, I felt the tech regression was the one part that made less sense to me than in 40k. Like I get it in the Succession Wars and all but the progression of battlemech technology over the last 500 years is really lacking even in the clans. That and how comically evil some rulers are. Some of it I get how it can come into power but always felt some of those decisions ppl make is 90s cartoon logic. Which to be fair I guess that's what the TV show was. Although I guess most of that was Comstar's fault but still, at least they should have been doing something in the engineering side.
@@dagonofthedepths The tech loss in battletech is actually really nuanced if you look into it. For one thing the tech isn't truly 'lost' most of the core technologies are still well understood with only niche specialist technologies that were already hard to produce before the fall of the star league disappearing and even then it's more due to loss of infrastructure than knowledge. There's a good real world example that's VERY relevant right fucking now too. If you've been paying attention to world events you might have noticed a lot of talk about microchip manufacturing and political wrangling about it. What's notable is that literally 90% of most of the most advanced chip manufacture is done on the island of Taiwan, they have basically cornered the market. Your iPhone, your GPU, the AI everyone is terrified of, even stuff like electric vehicles are dependent on that one island that china has spent the last 70 years planning to invade. What most people don't realize is that if china decides to kick off on that, most of the most important technology of the last 20 years strait up fucking disappears within a couple months, and it will take minimum 7 years to rebuild the factories to make those chips somewhere else, and it's probably more like 15-20 years. We can do it, but we're gonna be partying like it's 1999 until about 2040. Battletech's tech regression is that applied on an interstellar scale. They still do actually have the knowledge, what they don't have is the infrastructure which took centuries to build which they blew up and then spent the last two centuries making sure they never get the chance to try to rebuild because none of them can let their neighbors get any kind of edge.
@@hakonsgaming535 Sure but not over 300 years, that's my issue with it. Like the Clan double heat sink is a good example. 2784-3049 all hey can manage was to make double heatsinks slightly smaller? Clans don't even have any of the problems the IS has, they should have shown up in Gundams with how much time they had to advance. I get the game play reasons, you can't have a unit that's 10x more powerful, that just throws everything off but it makes about as much sense when a HBK-4P alpha's it's hump lasers and they all hit different locations
Tex is legend. Sven van Der Plank, however, is the rising star of Battletech Lore on TH-cam, with currently around 30 hours of Battletech history in chronological order, given as a military history documentary. Tex is more entertaining, because his "lectures" are delivered as an in-universe character that has since been made Canon, along with Van Zandt, the character's homework. Both are well worth your time.
You should have watched though the credits they had alot of info and also fun stories in those credits. Including an sale's pitch for mechs and animation.
Oh trust me, that isn't even the weirdest planet name. One fun example is the planet Bob (aka: Dunklewälderdunklerflüssenschattenwelt). The story behind that one's pretty funny (both in and out of universe) The story (from one of the devs:) "I was bantering with Herb over Instant Message, and we were discussing something, and I make an offhand comment that X should visit the planet "Bob". To which Herb replies "We have a planet named Bob?!". Which of course, at the time, we did not. So I made up one of my usual yarns about "It is a dead planet that was named something horrible, but decided to change its name. But unfortunately in the chaos of the First Succession War, the name change got misfiled and all necessary goods they ordered to be sent to the planet "Bob" went nowhere, because records didn't show such a planet existing. It was not until the end of the First Succession War the error was discovered, but then the vital terraforming equipment had failed and the planet was uninhabited. Such a sad sad fate." To which Herb about fell over with laughter and decided to make it canon, and he came up with the original name."
I will say that Battletech does a better job than 40K at politics. You feel like you understand how the governments of the nations got where they are, while in 40K, the government is utterly backseated, save when the inquisition is either fixing something or making EVERYTHING worse, like The Siege of Vraks and the Badab War, and the First Tyrannic War...and so on. Battletech has so much better mechs though.
Certainly feels like the political moves here are more a forefront of the story than in 40k. I imagine that it's something similar to seeing Karl Franz at work, but on a galactic scale and not just glossed over.
@@TheLegitWeebs well in a way, you can see in the comparison a further lesson: Humanity is REALLY good at uniting against a common, external enemy, an "other." If we can't find an alien other, humanity will fragment by nationality or culture or ideology and otherize a different group of humans, much like how the different Great Houses are all culturally different. It not necessarily that politics of this complexity and more aren't around in 40K or Old World, it's that they take a backseat to the threat of annihilation by genuinely alien foes. As I've said before (though possibly not specifically in comments to your videos) 400K does a FANTASTIC job of depicting alien mindsets. The eldar, the orks, the necrons, even different human factions like the admech and the rest of the imperium? They're alle SO different in the way they think. Orks literally don't understand romance because violence is so fundamental to their species on a genetic level that their idea of true love is their favorite enemy to fight. Comissar Yarrick was described as this by Ghazkul once IIRC. The eldar and the necrons? They live obscenely long lives and prior to slaanesh were both functionally immortal, though in different ways. The eldar process emotion in a way that underlies their entire morality, as to them beauty and sensuality are depicted in bloodshed as easily as poetry. Necrons are LITERALLY immortal, as even if defeated and shattered physically their bodies can be repaired with enough energy. They don't process time in a way a mortal can comprehend. Trazyn makes dramatic pauses for TWO HOURS and runs a library on a human world as what to him is a momentary pasttime, only to realize at the end that his assistant is actually the grandson of his first one and that in what to him was a pleasant diversion like a game of poker stretched the length of three human generations and that entire family line has been raised to happiness and prosperity because he gave one of them a job. Each is magnificent in their own way.
22:40 very. My piled high and deep is Political Economics. You can blame Battletech for starting me down that road. "Came for the big stompy robots. Stayed for the politics".
4:50 those two mechs were the 80 ton Hatamoto Chi followed by the 70 ton No-Dachi. You also saw a 60 ton Dragon giving a boot to the head of its enemies 12:10 You are correct in that mech was a 50 ton Centurion, a trooper mech that engages foes at all distances. 15:43 Show me a govenrment in the current time that qualifies as 'good' by your definition, and I bet I can destroy your perception of that government with an hour of research. Just like the real world, the governments have a lot of AHs and only a handful of good people, sometimes the good get to a high enough power to help more. 22:08 Actually, that is exactly where they should have expected it. That mech was a Mackie (or one of the knockoffs produced early in mech production) the first true BattleMech of the universe 33:49 ComStar was the 'phone company' in this, a quasi-religious order that controlled all FTL communications in the Inner Sphere. The reason why only they did it and no one else tried to take it over was that they had the only way to repair and maintain the HPGs, and also they would turn off the communications for a nation if the nation tried to take their stuff. Most nations would rather their enemies have equal footing in interstellar communications rather than them having a distinct advantage over them. No one wants to find out their being invaded by refugee ships over their capitol. They also have a tendency to 'lose' important messages if they feel it fits their agenda.
"Is Battletech a tabletop game? I dunno, maybe they bonded by playing Warhammer" - Battletech game out as a tabletop game 1 year after Warhammer, but 3 years before 40k. (based on what their Wiki's tell me)
For PC games, yeah Battletech is one but I think the longest and most influence game for Battletech was the Mechwarrior series. Which is how I got into it. Guess case in point, Duncan Fisher was a character in Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries and was so popular he keeps showing up years after 4 came out. Also, yes that is the guy that actually voices Duncan Fisher. So those C-Bills cost has a bit of truth to it. No there are not aliens in Battletech. At least sentient ones. It kind of makes sense because it's not like 40k where humanity is spread across the galaxy. The Inner Sphere is only around 500 light years big. The Galaxy is 100,000 so it's easy to make a case that humans just didn't discover any yet. Finally, the setting kind of has bad factions be dependent on the ruler at the time. Like a part of the reason the Capellan Confederation is so small is, yes, they are between a lot of superpowers but it's also they have a lot of, well, power ranger villains in charge. Like in one battle, they thought it was a good idea to leak their own plans to the enemy because the troops that lived through the ambushes would be true warriors. Idk man they have so many instances where they kneecap themselves doing dumb stuff it's hard to feel bad for them. Make good mechs though.
@@TheLegitWeebs That's House Liao for you. Madness runs in the family - just about every one of them that takes the throne goes insane, often in a full-blown murder-cult sort of way.
comstar.... piss them off and you wont have insterstellar datacommunications or jumptpoint acces for you ships to go in and out of systems(unless you want to risk jumping form and to pirate jumppoints[less save for a number of reasons]).. or be the clanners and piss them of so much that they just CURBSTOMP you into submission in just ONE battle
"...Kurita tends to bury its enemies deep, headless, and by the million." That is NOT an exaggeration, btw, Kurita done some truly messed up things in a universe of governments doing messed up things.
Ah, another person checking out Battletech! Good, good 😁! Battletech is a very interesting setting (imo), and I personally prefer it to Warhammer. The company that owns/takes care of it/writes it’s stories, Catalyst Games (and Topps) suck! But, what else is new 🤷🏼♂️! The setting also has a fair number of issues, but overall, I think it’s a cool setting! 😁!
You have great insight. The Battletech universe really is trying to be an extension of believable cause and effect. Many story threads that run through it involve how a particular event, like the rediscovery of technology, ripples through the major powers. It is intended to be an extension of our real-workd timeline with a few differences (Like General Motors inventing a portable fusion power plant in 2020) and how things extrapolate from there. The feudal system is a reaction to a lack of faster than light communication early on. The warring superpowers is the result of a power vacuum. ComStar (i.e. the phone company) having as much pull as they do, is a result of them ensuring that only they know how the darn FTL communication system works. Battletech is nowhere near as grimdark as 40k, but every cruelty that is visited on humans in this universe is inflicted on them by other people. Slavery, genocide, etc. There are no sapient aliens we can blame it on. It's all US. And it's believable, because humans have been doing it for millennia. Battletech is the epitome of that phrase, "No matter where you go, there you are." It's just humans being humans, for all the good and bad that entails.
Big-red-40TECH is also a great source to learn about the setting. He does a great job at weaving the history of the mech and the universal history together.
No bullshit. Battletech has a 90s kid cartoon. And it’s canon. Well, it’s canon in the sense that it’s an in-universe propaganda cartoon. But it’s still canon.
There is a rather silly animated series about the clan invasion. Of course, it doesn't fit in with canon at all. What to do? "Oh, that? That's just a piece of propaganda the Inner sphere made." Retcon done right.
One phrase you'll be hearing a lot in this universe is "the god damn phone company."
You'll know why.
"Pay your phone bill fucko!"
Remember to pay your bills folks.
@@IamHattman Or you end like Clans on Tukayyid.
Battletech is a tabletop game which is older than Warhammer and has been very consistent in it's rules and gameplay since it was created. It's great 👍
In Warhammer terms, going up against House Steiner is like sending an army to attack one of your enemy's minor settlements and discovering that that their garrison is oops all Steam Tanks, and you're still on turn 9. Then you're overrun by an endless horde of doomstacks, each army lead by a generic lord decked out in the best magical items money can buy, but he's only got the upgrades that give him more income.
LMAO 🤣🤣 That gave me a perfect image xD
@@TheLegitWeebs It gets even better. The enemy in question constantly makes the most ridiculous tactical choices which actually gives you a chance to not get completely rolled over, and yet... they still win. Why? They just throw dozens on dozens of doomstacks at you. Some of which aren't even manned and you just... get free steam tanks for no reason. Steiner will bury you under the weight of the military industrial complex, either by giving you infinite handouts or by shooting in your general direction, often at the same time!
It is important to note: Tex of the BPL = TH-cam Creator.
Professor Tex = A character he created in the Battletech Universe for the purpose of teaching Battletech History.
Battletech's Lore is fucking *deep* to the point where I'd argue that it can and does challenge WH40k with one of the more intriguing parts being how the various factions have swung back and forth between being heroic or villainous.
It's also a sci-fi setting that places a great emphasis on politics and intelligence; you could run a whole role playing campaign with zero use of Mechs and still have something that is deep thoughtful and fulfilling to your players.
12:10 As a matter of fact, that particular 'mech is named the Centurion.
32:30 So, Tex's in-universe mercenary character was married to a Clan Ghost Bear woman known as an Elemental. They're very big and very strong. And in his character lore, she ripped his arm off when he asked for a divorce, and she still has it in a jar and they occasionally have fights over it. You can learn about the Clans in the BPL two-parter, From Exodus to Elementals, which basically tells you the entire history of the Clans, starting immediately from the end of the Amaris Civil War two-parter.
Ripped his arm off?? Lol Definitely need to learn more about this.
@@TheLegitWeebs Well, if you're gonna be a Black Pants Legion fan and watch all their Battletech stuff, you'll catch the snippets here and there. I didn't piece the whole thing together until maybe their Hunchback video, I think. He also has a character who has become canon in the Battletech universe, a historian by the name of Randolph P. Checkers, Esq.
@@TheLegitWeebs oh, also, you can watch their Battle of Tukkayid video, which was originally released on May 20th, several years ago. It details one of the most important events in the modern Battletech timeline, a world-spanning honor duel between the invading Clans and the phone company, ComStar.
@@TheLegitWeebs worth noting is that each Tex Talks intro and outro has a little bit of a self-contained story, which won't make sense if you're doing the episodes out of order. Nothing too big to stress about, but if you're wondering why he's gone from a warehouse to a drop ship, that's why.
Also, each episode has some pre-credits skits and some of the later episodes have stuff going on during the credits.
god the Centurion is such a solid little mech. I also love the Enforcer because it's kind of the perfect 4th lance mate.
"The 5 pillars" ah yes the bad dragons
lol
Fun fact, Dragons seed is a term they use. It means worlds freshly added to the combine. ✋️ 🍆 🌎
@@sanguiniusonvacation1803 you are kidding right??
@@captain-commander8138 I wish it were a joke, there was a long swath of conquered worlds they called "Dragon's Tongue"
@@Atlas3060 I......I......wow..........
.......
....
That is soooooooo fucking dumb
The "crouch cannon" mech is the "Mackie" the 1st prototype battlemech.
The feudal structure of the intersphere is due to FTL travel was invented before FTL communications
Nail on the head! That mech is called a centurion!
Alrighty. Tex will probably pop in here eventually, as he is want to do, but we of the BPL Aux Welcome you to our mechfight club!
Auxlandia togeather stronk
Tex is a legend. Now that you’ve stepped into the world I need reactions to more battle tech with the Black Pants legion! ❤
Aliciaxdeath has a few good reaction videos to Tex's gems.
Redtech40k has some good videos too
Glory to Checkers! The best xenomorph hybrid there is 🤣
Discount Dan I'm ether getting a refund or your head!
@@eoftar3192hail to cargonia the land of stolen things obey the quarter master even if there a ling sense that means you can steal more shit
@The Legit Weebs - I didn't see anyone mention this. ComStar (the Phone Company) is in 40k terms, kind of the Mechanicum. They are the sole faster-than-light communication system, as well as the keepers of otherwise lost knowledge. They also have colonies on Mars, and use cybernetics, so yeah...
The Clans are kind of Space Marines. Gene engineered, self-righteous, and often more advanced technically than other forces, but few in numbers, and kind of stunted socially.
One book had aliens, but everyone you ask will tell you no, and as far as anyone cares no, no aliens.
Oh there are aliens. Lots of them. Every planet that already has indigenous life by definition has aliens.
Just none besides the tetatae and *maybe* those pre-neolithic creatures described in the GDL books that could quality as "human-level intelligence".
In terms of the tabletop game:
BT follows a model of "Robot as Walking Tank/AFV" instead of Gundam, Crusher Joe, or Macross doing "Robot as Fighter" (fast, heavily armed, fragile) or other shows "Robot as Infantry" models. The last matters because a lot of the classic designs come from an 80s series called "Fang of the Sun Dougram" and that's how the robots felt: glorified infantry. This has caused issues over the decades with mismatched expectations by players who expected play to resemble source material- and it does not. (That said, the source material closest to BT is Dougram; if you can find it, watch it- that's a Free Worlds League civil war story in all but name.)
There are also playable conventional armor (tanks, AFVs), conventional and power-armored infantry, conventional helos and aircraft, artillery (rarely seen in play), and the space side is dominated by Aerospace Fighters and Dropship combats with the occasional Warship showing up depending on the era of time. Dont' worry about all of that for now if you want to learn the game; stompy robot action will keep you engaged for a while by itself.
BT also has a tabletop RPG plug-in (currently "A Time of War", formerly "Mechwarrior"), a fast-playing alternative game (Alpha Strike), and yes plenty of media tie-ins of varying quality. (The animated series it notoriously bad, such that it's been ret-conned into in-setting risible propaganda.) In addition to Harebrained's PC version (which is a variation of the tabletop game), MegaMek exists and is a straight up port of tabletop to a free PC game with multiplayer allowed out of the box, a unit database (so you can print out sheets for IRL use too), and user-generated content capacities.
For lore (etc.) there is also Big Red-40Tech, Mage Leader, Sven van der Plank, and Mechanical Frog out there doing lore and unit reviews. You need not wait on Tex and the BPL once you've run through their playlist.
Designs came from Dougram (Wolverine, Shadow Hawk, Griffin, Scorpion, Thunderbolt, Goliath, Battlemaster), Crusher Joe (Locust, Leopard CV, Corsair), and Macross (Wasp, Stinger, Valkyrie, Phoenix Hawk, Crusader, Rifleman, Archer, Warhammer, Longbow, Marauder; the Behemoth, Ostscout, Ostsol, and Ostroc were inspired by existing designed but deviated heavily). Most designs came from Macross, though Dougram is a very close second. What's kinda funny is that the Corsair ASF never changed its look even after the whole Unseen thing. Same with the Scorpion tank. Just odd things that were left in.
There's a fan PDF book called "Unseen: A History of FASA, Battledroids and BattleTech", which can be found on Sarna, which gives the best and most detailed account of the whole "unseen" ordeal that can be garnered based on publicly available information. It also provides a lot of info on how the original BattleDroids game differed from BattleTech.
Credit has to be given to Duane Loose, one of the early BT artists. While his designs look rather janky and dated today (kinda like old D&D artwork), he was instrumental in helping give BT an identity that was separate from the mecha style that it grew up from.
Mechs in lore don't work like in MechWarrior. A battlemech is more of a giant armored soldier in terms of mobility. They take cover, climb, roll, and anything else a soldier can do.
@@Lunarice98 Ehh, kind of. Yes, they can climb and roll, or even handstand, but outside of the first one, the others aren't typically done in combat because they're more delicate operations that aren't easily done (or can't be done) in a stressful combat environment.
They aren't mecha; their maneuvering is still more akin to walking tanks, if nothing else because movement is comparably slower than humans because they have a lot more mass.
And for the wirdos, the Lams.
God, that will be a glorious day when tex gives them a rundown
So, the Battletech timeline is pretty fucking vast, despite only covering about 1200 years compared to 40k. One TH-camr who has some long history videos for the setting is Sven Van Der Plank. He's really good. But Tex and the BPL have the best iteration that tells of the most important even in the lore, their two-parter on the fall of Star League and the Amaris Civil War is all you need to know to get to the modern eras in which the game is most often played.
Sven has almost 30 hours of top level documentary video up now, and is only just in sight of the usual intro point to the world for a player. There is a shocking level of depth to the lore for the universe.
The clans are space barbarians only if space barbarians has better technology than everyone else. The iconic Clan 'mech, the Timber Wolf, literally carries more than twice the weaponry of an Inner Sphere 'mech of the same weight, and has MORE mobility.
Comstar, the phone company, has power because they literally control all FTL communication in the Inner Sphere; the standard inter-state currency was the C-bill (short for Comstar-bill) which guaranteed a certain amount of transmission time on Comstar's communications network. Which was the only communications network. Could Comstar listen in? Who knows... Comstar had differently better mechs than everyone else (they centered around command and control networks that let mechs use each others' sensors for targeting data, among other things, making them very accurate and also greatly boosting unit cohesion).
22:00
that is the Mackie, The first ever mech designed, and yes, it is a crotch gun
Yes, cause why not showing what you got before you start d!cking around and unleash gigawatts of pure concentrated energy into anyone who stops and wonders. "huh... is that a..."
On a sidenote on House Steiners Military, their highest ranks are gifted on personal leisure, so the competence there is ..... variable, the lower and middle ranks are generally as professional as every other military.
That said, underestimate Steiner Generals and you may get... Fochk'ed
Battletech is a franchise that got its start around the same time as the Warhammer Fantasy and later Warhammer 40,000 franchise came into being and the lore and world building of the Battletech setting is just as extensive as Warhammer. Where the two really diverge are in how they are presented to their audience. Warhammer is a work of gothic themed fiction meant to represent a bleak world where just getting to live to see the next sunrise and stay mostly sane is a blessing. Battletech on the other hand is presented as something more akin to Game of Thrones, a political drama set to a fictional setting albeit packaged more like a historical drama. Also most people aren’t actually aware of it, but if they have ever played or heard of the video game titles of Mechwarrior, Mech Assault, and Mech Commander are all set in the Battletech universe.
Yes! Welcome to the Inner Sphere.
There _was_ one sentient alien species written about in the universe, but it was an unpopular direction that has since been mostly forgotten.
And trust me, you won't want to skip the credits. They've got some great in-universe ads.
Some of the early books describe characters seeing from pre-neolithic era creatures around.
But yeah, the Tetatae are the most intelligent non-human species described in any book, and the book it's from "Far Country" sits so far outside the IS that it's functionally a different universe.
Generally, the Clans fit the "very alien" role in stories. They're still human, but their values and culture are so vastly different they are alien. The vast, vast majority of problems and issues in the setting are human. The history of the universe is human. This aspect of the setting really sets it apart from many other sci-fi settings.
While long his videos on the Amaris Civil War showcases exactly *how* the setting ended up as it did.
Welcome. This is definitely a fun franchise to learn about, and Tex is the main gateway, though there are other good channels to acquaint yourself with the sphere and beyond depending on what kind of content you're looking for. Sven Der Plank has a much more dry look at the top view history, having done series on the first two succession wars, the Amaris/Star League Civil War, and even videos about the Age of War. Big Red 40 T4ech is a former 40k lore master who has predominately shifted to covering Battletech, with many many mechs having been covered along with discussing various weapon systems and even some vehicles. Mechanical Frog is another good one for variety, but he keeps things the most brief of the ones I've mentioned, and he's also the go to for covering Battle Armor.
Can second Big Red's channel as having a lot to recommend, though a *large* portion of the videos are going to be about particular BattleMechs (or OmniMechs, depending) and have sprinkles of lore ingrained into the videos - just enough to support them.
He is also not quite as prone to leaning into "the memes", and is not presenting the videos from an "in universe perspective" as Tex does. So you get a bit more of a balanced view. :)
Battle tech plot in a nutshell
"So let me tell you the tale about a chair"
23:04 so the history is around 500ish years in writing. Nothing really goes super wrong generally. The political and economic aspect runs deep in the setting. Like this was doing game of thrones before game of thrones.
As for factional morality they're all generally gray. They have their ups and downs
23:15 the phone company is called ComStar. Big thing to remember pretty much every major event and bad thing to happen in setting is either directly or indirectly ComStar's fault.
So, about the "Phone Company". They are an organization called ComStar, which is the last remnant of the Star League (The space empire who once ruled the whole inner sphere, the great houses fight to see who get to reestablish it.), and the only group that knows how to maintain and operate the Faster than Light communication systems. They are also a crazy religious cult who venerate their founder as a saint and try to control and restrict advanced technology. In short they are a mix between the Brotherhood of steel, the Adeptus Mechanicus and Comcast.
Keep watching Tex, he's an amazing figurehead of the Battletech scene.
As to the depth of the lore... Sven van der Plank made a video about the Star Leage civil war. The central and largest powder keg that starts off the universe and its consequences as far as the contemporary era(s) are concerned. Mind you this is a single conflict and some light overview of surrounding events.
It's 8 damn hours long.
And thats all from manuals, technical readouts, in-universe sources, and notes on the 'mechs themselves all compiled from 1982 til now.
One conflict. Just one.
Have fun.
11:03 That reminds me of a line from a novel in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (well... technically, it's a footnote but no need to bog down in the details) "After much experimentation, Ankh-Morpork had finally settled on that particular form of democracy known as "One Man, One Vote". The Patrician was The Man; he had The Vote".
15:10 Pay attention to the background music here. It was chosen _very carefully_
15:37 That really depends on your definition of "not very good people". As noted, for the most part, the Davions _try_ to not be despots and are generally competent rulers (with one significant exception and another possible exception - if you know, you know) and as you'll see later in the video, the Mariks and Steiners also tend to rule with a fairly light hand... _usually_
17:35 I'll just point out that the Fourth Succession War saw the Confederation losing _half_ of its territory in a span of _two years._ For comparison the previous three Succession Wars each lasted decades (fifteen decades for the Third Succession War - warfare on an interstellar scale is hard when you've nuked big chunks of your industrial and scientific base... helped along by the phone company carrying out a few miscellaneous assassinations along the way; who knew?) without significant territorial changes
17:53 More Austro-Hungarian/Balkan
21:38 It's not so much that as the fact that the Mariks tend to have a civil war whenever the succession rolls around to one degree or another
24:50 Not so much "better" but _definitely_ "more". The LC has the largest economical and industrial base of any of the Success States. See also, "Steiner Scout Lance"
26:10 BOOO! BOO THIS LADY! She's the "significant exception" I mentioned earlier
27:30 Side note: Canopus is indeed a magical place, complete with cat-girls and Canopian Marching Powder. This is not even slightly an exaggeration.
31:50 They're called ComStar and the reason Tex calls them "the phone company" is that they have a monopoly on interstellar FTL communications (mostly; it's complicated). He also calls them "Space AT&T" for the same reason
Some quick Battletech to Warhammer translations.
Comstar = The Mechcanicus but (slightly) less cyborg-y.
The Clans = Basically equal-gendered Space Marine Legions with better tech than everyone else. There were 20, 17 by the time they invaded the inner sphere, currently, there are about 12, with only 8 interacting with the inner sphere directly.
I'm not suuper up on 40K, but wouldn't the Mechanicus be more the Word of Blake?
@@IamHattman Technically, yes. However, Blake really hollowed out what was originally Comstar. So much so that Comstar basically collapsed, when the Dark Age (the HPG net going down) began.
@@raithnor6007 Dude, we are not talking about "that era"! Even Tex refuses to. It does not exist.
Oh, and word of Blake would be like some heretic mechanicus-cult, hellbent on making sure Blake is the only true omnissiah and everyone agreeing - even if they need to be nuked to do so.
17:21 The Capellans frequently have the historical misfortune of getting "Eiffel Towered" by both the FWL and the Federated Suns, who both have much beefier opponents on their opposite borders.
To be fair, Liao deserves it. And those who disagree are good little capellan-citizens brainwashed and indoctrinated to the point they welcome being slaves owned by a house ruled far too often by madmen/women.
Those samurai looking mechs you were oohing and awing at is the Hatamoto-Chi, and it’s every bit as formidable as it looks!
Tex mentioned it in this video, but his Amaris Civil War videos are fantastic. Tex is an excellent storyteller and they will give you a solid basis for learning how things shook out into their current state.
Just keep in mind he's a storyteller. Especially with the Capellan stuff, the memes seem to be starting to get taken as fact.
Though to be fair, in the early 80's novels the Combine and Capellans were the designated bad guys of the books.
Just so everyone knows House Steiner and the Lyran Commonwealth created light mechs
I bid you welcome, kind stranger. I hope you enjoy your little foray into this very fun fictional universe.
Battletech is Game of Thrones, before Game of Thrones and it's in Space.
The game itself is deep and complex yet simple to set up and play. The Lore... is even deeper and more complex and detailed.
Something I have to mention is: Battletech is not solely a game of 'Mechs. Though they are the Kings of the Battlefield. It's a combined arms game. The game has rules for everything. Aerospace assets like Helicopters and Fighterjets, Land vehicles can be anything, from APCs to Hovercraft, from amphibian vehicles to the heaviest tanks everything is around. Ships and Submarines can come into play too, but those are rather constrained by nature itself. 'Mechs aren't really suited to the naval battlefield and vice versa. Even dropships can play a role, but if your name isn't Steiner those are irreplaceable assets that you can't afford to risk on a deployment in a battle zone. And of course there is infantry. Either the normal kind very much akin to the imperial guard, to Battle Armored troopers. Think Space Marines, but more the Starship Troopers mobile infantry kind, not Astartes or Spartans. Normal mortals, with special forces level training and equipment. Not much more.
I mean, nobody asked the original authors back then to write 500 years of military history to explain why the tanks walk on two legs. Yet they did. All to make it believable. And it was worth the effort.
This video introduces you to the major players in the Inner Sphere, not mentioning the minor states and Periphery much.
The Sphere itself does not span the galaxy; far from it. It's not more than the head of a pin on a galactic map. The T'au "empire" in 40k is probably bigger.
Don't expect alien species though, humanity has it's hands full with itself quite enough.
One example of the depth of the lore is the fact that the inner sphere economically is just as diverse as it is politically. The most common and most stable currency used in the universe is the C-Bill. Controlled by ComStar, the phone company that tends to get mentioned. But they govern so much more than just FTL communication. Though that's what the value of their currency is tied to. They provide a service that they (in most Eras of the BT Universe) have a monopoly over. The hyperpulse-generator or HPG is means of interstellar communication, and is, for the most part, solely controlled by ComStar as they operate the stations and those stations are in essence neutral territory that is not a legitimate military target. But more than just communication, ComStar also provides financial services, transport via Jumpship and controls the MRBC the Mercenary Review Board which in essence, manages all mercenary work in the Inner Sphere, to a point that any non-MRBC work counts as shady and can cost a Merc-company their standing and license if they were to work outside the MRBCs purview.
In addition to the C-Bill, every major house has their own house bills, which are used for internal trading while the C-Bill provides the basis for international trade by being the reserve currency and basically the gold standard.
Some of the periphery states also have their own currency, if they have the infrastructure in place to actually provide stable finance and a secure economy. Some pirate states and one planet nations in the deeper periphery don't really have even that.
And I have only touched the matter of currency. I sadly can't answer any questions about logistics. I have no idea how resources are acquired and distributed in the Battletech universe... yet. I'm still quite new myself. I can imagine though that the nature of industry and trade varies on a system by system basis though. I don't think there exist pure breadbasket worlds like the Agri-worlds in 40k. Or pure industrial worlds like the forge worlds or anything like that. Since interstellar travel still takes a lot of time, a long logistics train sounds like a recipe for disaster. So every settled world has, due to circumstance, to be self sufficient to some degree.
Please do more of this! Battletech is such a fun and ridiculous universe!
Will do.
To those who do not yet get the "phone company" reference, Tex makes these as in-universe instructional videos and in universe ComStar controls ALL information flow outside of a planet's local info sphere, meaning if he mentions them in any negative way in universe they will simply make him not exist.😅😂😂
As evinced by everything he was about to say about ComStar getting redacted out by ComStar.
the meme of a steiner scout lance(4 mechs) being 4 Atlases, 100(metric) ton assault mechs, is because of their acces to resources and military equipment^^
And their history of poor commanders that might actually think such a lance is an idea worth considering.
@@Xeno426 and that as well, yes.
Star league tons
Battletech is a tabletop game that has been out since 1984, it was actually originally called battle droids and then was sued by Lucas and had to change the name to battletech.
there is a lot of lore about the game, mostly through novels written about it that are all considered canon.
There are no alien races, it's all about humanity and how we reached for the stars, grew too big too fast and basically collapsed in ourselves. It's essentially game of thrones but 1000 years in the future from IRL.
Originally governments and factions that were fighting with each other were using grand scale warships and combinations of nukes, biochemical weapons, and orbital bombardments to completely erase opposing planets and civilizations until one faction proposed a truce between all sides to have summit where it was pointed out that if they keep fighting like this humanity isnt going to last long, so they all signed a document banning the use of these previous types of weapons and saying if you want to defeat an enemy or take a planet from them you have to do it on the battlefield with "boots on the ground" so to speak. shortly after the various technologies used to create battlemechs were invented and people started to put the puzzle pieces together in an effort to find the new best weapon that could be used in war and the race was on between the great houses to create bigger and better versions of battlemechs to use on the battlefield.
a lot of other things happened in the interim, some good, but mostly bad, the end result was basically another 500 years of in fighting with everyone trying to be the one to rule them all.
the phone company also known as comstar, used to be SLComNet, the first network of FTL transmissions used to send messages and information around the galaxy near instantaneously through the use of hyper pulse generators, when the star league (basically the UN of the inner sphere) fell apart ComStar rose from the ashes of SLComNet, who are now also religious, think AT&T and Catholic church merging together, the control all of the communications arrays across the galaxy, they back the galactic currency the C-Bill, and they control the mercenary review board, they can also monitor and listen to any message sent. So, if you ever want to get offered contracts as mercenary, get paid for said contracts, and be able to get the news and send messages to your family back home or to one of your generals fighting in a system 100's of lightyears away, it's a good idea to not piss off the phone company.
Essentially there is a lot of lore and back story to this universe, but it's all rooted in some truth, it's possible to see even though its fantasy, how humanity could get to this point after inventing FTL travel and spreading across the galaxy to colonize. Plus big stompy mechs with lasers and missiles and cannons duking it out is cool, and it was all thought up by one guy back in the 80's and has had a loyal die hard fan base ever since.
"I didn't know how deep the Battletech lore went"
The best way I can describe it is try drinking the Atlantic Ocean with a Big Gulp Cup.
The only sentient species aside from humans in Battletech is a Stone Age race of bird creatures that were found on a single planet. They where only mentioned in a single novel. There’s plenty of non sentient species though. They range from microbes to dinosaur analogs that can be ridden into battle in game with lasers attached to their heads.
Dinosaurs with laser beams is what got me into Warhammer Fantasy. I guess the trend is going to continue with Battletech lol
Well I can now happily say Welcome to the Battletech community and Universe.
To go over some stuff for you (just some general knowledge that may help):
1. Battletech like Warhammer as you saw started off as a Tabletop Wargame. However, unlike Warhammer that focuses on larger army vs army type wars, BT more focuses on the smaller side going more simulation with it - I.e. you track both damage, heat, ammunition, critical damage to internal systems and weapons, pilot condition, etc. As such BT for most people is designed to be player with smaller forces of maybe 4 mechs on each side tho expanding out to more as player becomes more accustomed to the game and setting. Tho you can also go to Alpha Strike which simplifies the systems and makes it much easier to run larger games of multiple lances or even company’s facing off against one another.
2. Like Warhammer, BT as you saw is quite the extensive universe with 100 of books (best recommendation on where to start with that is the Warrior Trilogy as it cover alot of the IS houses work, the politics, the cultures, the military’s and a lot of the main characters and just that’ll be important going forward in the mainline book series/universe.
But ontop of that you also have games like HBS Battletech (which seems to be the one you picked up) which is a more strategy based game and focuses more on a periphery story outside of the mainline one, but gives a good look at the universe for new people.
And you also have the Mechwarrior series which focuses more on the 1st/3rd person perspective of the mech. I.e. you ain’t acting as an overhead commander planning each move, nope you are the man in the mech getting stuck into the enemy with AC, SRM, LRM and Lasers.
And as you saw, it even had an old 90s cartoon you can actually watch on TH-cam… it’s not very good but to the BT community it’s an outright good laugh and something to watch just to enjoy it.
And unlike most studios like GW who’d essentially just make it non canon (or just act like it never happened) Catalyst Games Lab who are the current IP holders actually made it canon… as a propaganda cartoon shown in the Federated Commonwealth to kids as a show about how the IS united to fight the Invading Clans.
The main character of the show Adam Steiner is also a canon character and absolutely hates the show for essentially exaggerating his actions during the clan invasion and worse, his students at the Mechwarrior academy’s and the units he commands constantly quote the show around him.
And Nikolai Mathus who is the shows main antagonist is also a canon character and absolutely despises his portrayal in the show that he actually sewed the FedCom
Broadcasting Studio in court. He lost after it was noted by the judge “a batchall is not a proper form of legal action”.
3. As you noted as well Battletech is a hard sci-fi universe. It heavily focuses on the tech and human condition for war. So no aliens or magic powers, etc.
There are some notable things in some of the early books when the universe wasn’t fully fleshed out and they were still thinking/making up as they went but these have since been made into fun “weird phenomena” where many in universe historians and scientists and techs and so on have tried to put theories as to how such things work or have shown tech which could do what they did or just make logical suggestions as to what people may have saw and exaggerated. So you can kind of make your own mind up of if this was actually something “supernatural” or was just maybe some lostech nobody knew about and these guys used and since they are dead… well ain’t no getting any answers out of em now is there.
4. Another thing that’s quite different from 40k which you’re learning about. Unlike the Warhammer universe which mostly focuses on the current setting with stuff like the HH, War of the Beast, Vandire, etc mainly being used to essentially give perspective and justification to why stuff is what it is in the current timeline; the Battletech timeline is a fully coherent one which is always expanding (the current era we are in is the IlClan era).
So unlike 40k where if you say wanted to have a game set in M35 you’d kind of struggle to know what was available what wasn’t, who was around, etc. In BT if you want to play a game set in the Star League era there is full details as to what was happening there, what tech was available, unit structure, events happening set at that time, etc.
If you wanted to play in the FedCom Civil War, again there are details on the events, tech, availability of equipment and mechs, etc.
And if you really wanted to be crazy. You could create a SLDF unit, take it through the periphery uprising, Amaris Civil War, Exodus, turn merc and fight in the 4 succession wars, Clan Invasion, FedCom Civil War, Jihad, Republic Era, Dark Age and all the way into the IlClan era, and it would be completely possible and even lore accurate - there are actual units in the BT universe which have this background of service to them. The people inside may change due to retirement, old age and combat losses, but the unit and its history is still there with fresh faces of outside recruits or family descendants carrying on the tradition.
Cause YTuber find this too long for one post lol.
5. As you may have saw tho it’s not always obvious, BT while its main focus is the big stompy mechs we all love, isn’t just about them. If you want to have infantry, there are rules for them, there are rules for tanks, aerospace and conventional fighters, naval ships, dropships, warships, jump ships, etc.
If you wanted to literally play a game where your guys started off on a warship, fought there way to the planet through space, decoupled, fought their way all the way down to the surface, deployed their land based forces onto the planet and slowly conquered it city by city with mech, vehicle and infantryman. You can literally do this.
6. And unlike most modern wargames these days, getting into BT isn’t that hard either.
For one your record sheets and Rulebook, you can literally use ones from the 90s and still be in full cohesion with someone who bought a 2024 edition, all that’ll be different is maybe some art and updated lore on current events. Rules, record sheets and everything are still the same.
Good example, myself I mainly use alot of the record sheet for my units using the older 3039 unabridged book. And practically most of them are in the newer succession wars book; tho some aren’t as they hadn’t panned models for them at the time. As such I usually suggest getting the 3039 one as it has mechs, aerospace fighter and vehicle for pretty much every succession wars era unit you’d need for essentially getting started.
From here you can easily expand out.
Want to play Campaign where you managed your own forces and battle damne and pilot deaths and such carry over? Campaign Ops.
Want extra species rules you might want to try to spice things up. Tactical Ops.
Want to create your own mech from the ground up? MechTech Manual.
Want a very easy RPG system for good one off like campaigns, BT Destiny.
Want an even more advanced RPG system which can easily can be used to put your Mechwarrior right into the standard tabletop actions, Battletech A Time of War.
And there are still some that even I have covered here.
But in truth all you really need is a book of record sheets you can print off, either the Battlemech Manual if you just want to play mech on mech or Total Warfare if you want to incorporate everything someday, and whatever else you want to add on - you don’t even need models really; a chip marked with a front, side and rear can essentially be used in place of actual models, tho the models are so worth getting.
7. And funny enough for all the universe has its more adherent notes with set mech regiments and their colour schemes, the universe is quite open for you to make your own house unit which may not be super prominent (I.e. my own models I have are painted to reflect the Avalon Hussars of the Federated Suns, Benjamin Regulars of the Draconis Combine, Vau Galaxy of Clan Jade Falcon and Tamar Jagers of the Lyran Commonwealth/Tamar Pact; but I also have my own personal davion unit I like to run which is the 1st Avalon Raiders which is on conception was initially a small battalion sized unit who’d be deployed on company sized raids for resources and assets denial across enemy boarders and would later expand into a regiment and 2nd regiment tho during several large and destructive wars be reduced back to a battalion sized unit.)
And this doesn’t even include mercs. Yes there are dozen of pre-created merc units with their own schemes and characters but as quickly noted too in universe there are also thousands of smaller unknown units too from single lance units just starting up, co-op unit who essentially list themselves under one larger name/prominent name while actually being made up of dozens of small independent units just looking for work, etc; there so much variation in everything.
And even better, it’s even noted in universe that the main schemes you see all these in universe units wearing, they are essentially only really used during parade and rest, in truth many units actually go into battle with camouflage painting which reflects the planets environment. So you could paint your mechs to be in desert camo and they could one day be representing Crucis Lancers and the next day Marik Militia and again it would be fully in lore and keeping with the universe.
8. Last of all I’d say. The community is quite the open and supportive thing and even Catalyst are quite with that.
Want a few good examples of that. Well for one, they are known to actually help supply many of the main BT creators with updates and lore knowledge and help so they can make their videos accurate;
they are extremely well known to go out and about in discords chatting with fans and even playing some games with some, plus they do do regular conventions too.
A major well known community game/project known as MegaMek which is essentially tabletop classic wargame fully replicated in Java for free online; not only does Catalyst not attack these guys, they have actually sent these guys full on notes for future mech releases, variants, planet information for MekHQ which fully replicated the entire universe and allows you to create and play your own units across the universe jumping between planets, literally watching them change allegiance and faction depending on the actual date in universe in which they did (yes you can literally just hit next day and watch as the universe and planets actually adeer to the BT lore; and more, the guys who create much of the new mechs and variants, yeah that actually use MekLab (allows you to fully build and customise mechs inside it) to do this in studio.
And when it comes to the fans too, well… when a fan put the name forward to catalyst Randalf P. Checkers they actually included it in universe and game him a background as a part time merc and university lecturer. Why’s this such a prominent thing? Well cause Tex’s in universe character he likes to use for these TTBT is Randalf P. Checkers.
Literally, due to how much Tex did for the community in introducing people into the universe catalyst made his character a real one in universe too.
Hell the Urbanmech UM-IV has an amazing story behind it too from the FASA days (original IP owners who sadly went bust in the 90s). During the playing of an event, a guy brought in his customs urbanmech that had been customised to be firing a nuclear missile from an Arrow IV missile artillery system. Well, the main mech designer and guy who approved variant builds for the official books, saw it and absolutely loved it.
As such on day 1 they put the model just off the edge of their main hobby table and went about the day playing their set up scenario boards as usual, however every once in a while they’d have the guy who built it roll some dice now and then to see what happens. Well… the reason the guy was rolling dice was, was because his urban mech had launched a nuclear missile from off the side of one of the scenario boards and he’d been rolling to see how much scatter it was suffering during its travel time. Hitting the board the furthest away board it would pretty badly mulch the Kell’s Hounds that were fighting on the board against their enemies.
And what’s more fun, on the last day, the team would always play against the fans in a nice brawl up, but “had” to use a legal variant mech… well the Urbanmech IV wasn’t a legal mech it was a custom one… well, the main mech writer loved it so much he literally took the guy to the side, sat down and created an official record sheet for the Urbanmech UM-IV. Until this day the Urbanmech UM-IV is a canonical mech in universe with one of its main events being in the Jihad, in which when Kell’s Hounds forces were invading Terra as part of a coalition force, their second regiment that was attacking across the deserts was ambushed by a Urbanmech UM-IV just meters infront of them… the entire unit was noted to have been wiped out in a suicidal nuclear attack from this Urbanmech.
And if you’re looking for an easy “home” to get settled into. I’ll always recommend the Helm Memory Core Discord as it’s essentially the main BT discord where you’ll find all the main Tubers, community guys, guys who’ll happily take you through your first introduction fights and even 1st party and 3rd party models makers to help you find all your mech and so on needs.
So yeah. Welcome to the BT Universe and community mate, can’t wait to have you on with us.
House Kurita has manually massacred an occupied planet. That by the millions statement isn't an exaggeration.
Tex has several Mech specific videos. That ones that stand out are the Marauder, the Charger, the most recent Urbanmech, and the Warhammer. Though any of them are good. I also see you have a large warhammer 40k vid collection. I would highly recommend Arch's videos, particularly the Primarch Videos (Perturabo, Conrad Kurze, and their if they were loyal theory vids), and the multi episode Siege of Vraks and the Badab War. Finally, he has some hilarious April Fools videos. I would very much like you to review those. In any case, enjoyed watching this, subbed.
A bit late to the party, but if you want deep lore on how the BT universe began, I highly recommend two things:
1) D.C. Bruins' MechWarrior: Origins video. It's probably the best elevator pitch for the setting one can find.
2) Sven van der Plank did a full series on the Age of War, which is the history of the late 20th through mid-25th century. Each episode is relatively short, or you can watch the full video that is a couple hours.
1) Well, the opening HBS BattleTech cinematic does an excellent job itself, all without a word spoken.
The Origin of the Battletech, at least the Battletech most of us know is the Star League (the government that united the Inner Sphere and Periphery, and is seen as a Golden Age) and it's downfall, the Succession Wars (the wars between the Great Houses over the right to claim the power once wielded by the Star League) and the Clan Invasion (fyi The Clans are actually the descendents of General Kerensky (a near mythic hero who led the SLDF in the final days of the Star League) and his Star League Defense Force who chose exile over serving the Great Houses when the Star League collapsed) also the God damn Phone Company is a quasi religion and is the last surviving remnant of the Star League in the Inner Sphere.
Can't wait to see reactions to the Star League, and the Battle of Tukayyid.
It's pretty surprising how many things you did nail spot on just from a few phrases or the imagery shown. Lol. I guess that either Tex's delivery or just the way the BT lore is built, it makes it easier to connect dots and extrapolate!
I'd say it's definitely a combination of both. The script from Tex emphasizes the right points about the topic, and the world building is done well.
PancreasNoWork have video on BattelTech univers
5:50: It's a good joke... until you realise it really, really isn't. When people say Kurita put a whole planet to the sword once? That is *NOT* an analogy or figure of speech.
23:05: To answer that question: Battletech has a full timeline going all the way back to 1985, when it starts diverging from ours. (Also, Admiral Takeo Kurita, the IJNs commanding officer at the Battle of Samar, is acknowledged as a distant ancestor to House Kurita.)
1985? Now I really need to check out how we got here. The current state of the universe is messed up xD.
@@TheLegitWeebs In terms of units, the IIRC oldest unit to have an official tech readout and game stats is a nuclear fission-powered heavy VTOL bomber originally introduced in the 2090s. (Highly) Upgraded variants of it *still* sit around in museums in the 31st century. And a few of these dinosaurs are still used mostly as firefighting planes, with a single small company still manufacturing spare parts.
you should see the MWO design for the Centurion, the head really accentuates on the hamlet design plus it has a shield on it's left arm.
28:45 For Reference, while the valu of the C-Bill fluctuates over time, the value commonly given for comparison is that one C-Bill is worth approximately 12 USD (for 3025) or 5 USD (for 3062).
I would certainly like to see you reacting to more Tex Talks Battletech :)
31:45 Oh yes, Comstar (the "Phone Company" he keeps referring to) were for a long time one of the primary powers of the Inner Sphere and basically the one power nobody else could do without - as they had a Monopoly on FTL Communication - and a lot of other things going for them.
"This doesn't seem as grimdark as Warhammer 40K"
The Word of Blake: "Challenge accepted!"
7:13 On the whole of it, no, this isn't really a deep dive, Tex is putting us in the kiddy pool right now.
Cool to see another person reacting to Tex and his team's work! You were reccomended to me because I'm a BPL fan.
Off to see your Tukayyid reaction!
Always happy to see more people reacting to this video.
Fun Fact, Battletech predates 40k by a little bit.
There are alien animals, some of which are EXTREMELY LETHAL, but the only intelligent alien life is stone age bird people retconned to be on the FAAAAR side of a hyperspace Bermuda Triangle after massive community backlash. Oh, and one species of alien animal eats electrical insulation, or if starving, meat. There's also the irradiated mutant squirrels addicted to insulation foam in houses, but they're a one world problem.
If you want the stories of how these nations arose, that starts all the way back in the Fall of the Terran Alliance, and concludes at some point during the Age of War. Which is the stuff that's not really the most fleshed out since it's so far back in the timeline.
The Draconis Combine has its many faults and foibles, but you can't ever deny that they have STYLE and stay on theme. Of all the Great Houses, they have the strongest commitment to a cultural aesthetic.
The Coordinator's full title is "Coordinator of Worlds."
The Akuma is a fun hodge podge of systems and an in universe attempt to try taking the spot of an icon, the Atlas.
Beyond other anti-mercenary policies, the Combine had a "company store" debt trap to trick merc companies into being nationalized. And the most common player character role is as a mercenary.
11:56 That is a Centurion. One of the Sphere's ubiquitous trooper role medium weight mechs. And yes, that is exactly the vibe you're supposed to get off the head.
If 40k is an 11 in destruction and despair, Battletech tops out at a 6 if that high. But only during a few eras. Usually it's much more around 3 or even a 2.
The Battletech Servitors are basically serfs in space.
While the Cappellan Confederation does have very little overall space taken up compared to the other houses, it's not as bad as it looks, with Cappellan Space having been the most densely colonized in terms of how much map they held at the fall of the Star League. Though it is certainly not a healthy border arrangement in 3067.
Tex doesn't explicitly say they played with their collections, but we can imagine that part.
22:05 It's a good place to aim at vehicles. Also, that's a Mackie. The very first design of Battlemech. It was very much a first draft of the new weapons platforms.
Keep in mind, some of the lore of the older eras is newer than the lore of more modern eras. Some came after the fact to fill in the gaps and explain why the setting turned out the way it did. The first era published was 3025.
Economics is given a LOT of weight and much more consideration than most sci fi settings in Battletech. Logistics is a crucial RP component.
23:14 The extra German Atlas romp was animated by a youtuber known ad DC Bruins. They do good work, though it's gotten much goofier with the BPL sponsoring them.
Fun Fact, Solaris used to be a Free World's League world, but The Lyrans took the world in the first Succession War, and the planet has never looked back since.
"Space Barbarians." Yes, but no, but also yes. They're interesting, and notably not homogenous. TLDR, their founder though a caste system and warrior elite was the change required to end a cycle of violence. Said Warrior Elite have ritualized and regulated combat as the de facto conflict resolution tool. Also, they took the heights of Star League technology, and refined it further. To terrifying potential that their honor burdened society couldn't fully utilize in total warfare. In fact, total war was an alien concept to them when they came back to the Sphere. They have great tech, people literally bred to be warriors, and chose to tie their collective hand behind their back while having little grasp on wartime logistics.
One neat things about Rasselhague is their language. An indescribable fusion of Swedish and Japanese.
Given than the Clan Invasion started in 3049 and ended in 3052, that one year was a BIG deal.
Comstar is a complex creature really only understood from the outside top down perspective of players. And one whose true pursuits and ambitions lived in shadow until they showed their true might to halt the Clans on a world called Tukayyid in 3052. They held a monopoly on Hyper Pulse Generators (HPG) and that was the base of their power. Because the only other way to carry a message faster than light is a courier ship. The universal currency of C-Bills is their store credit. They also had other assets including stockpiles of lostech and influence.
That was a fascinating read! I think I saw a video by Tex about the battle of Tukayyid, so I'll definitely check that out when I can.
@@TheLegitWeebs It's a pretty critical event, and compared to Tex's later videos, it's a much more easily digestible size.
While economics and logistics are given more thought than many other settings, don't dive too deep into FASAnomics. Your head will explode.
"Wait, how many jumpships would be required to keep things up and running? And how many are there?"
> was the change required to end a cycle of violence.
Well, not *end* violence, but to curb its more disastrous and destructive tendencies. Accept violence will happen, and give a structured system for it to play out, even in conflict and war. It did give them the advantage that they avoided four disastrously destructive Succession Wars.
@@Xeno426it helped them avoid the madness of the Succession Wars, but OH BOY, did they ever make up for lost time when the whole thing imploded in the Wars of Reaving.
@@EmperorPylades Just more evidence that Inner Sphere *TAINT* is to blame!
Yes, Battletech is (among other things) a Tabletop-Game. Well two even, Classic Battletech CBT is played on a hex-based flied and Alpha Strike is similar to 40K, played based on Inches
Funny enough, there's rules for both to be played in either style (CBT on a table using inches, AS on a hex grid). They're just not the default, and you have to grab some (free) online resources for the conversion. It usually comes down to 1" = 1 hex.
0:03 I’ve seen something like that on my MW3 Instruction booklet.
Tex Talks is pretty commonly agreed upon as the closest thing to an authority on Battletech lore. He's got a bunch of deep dives on individual mechs, my favorite of which is his video on the Hunchback. It has a great line that goes something like "the corporations kept offering Hunchback pilots safer variants with less ammo capacity. The problem being Hunchback pilots would happily fill the legs of their mechs with more ammo, were it an option."
Also as per your comment is less grimdark than WH40k, the theme of Battletech seems to be less total utilitarian nihilism and more "there's always one fucking guy that will ruin everything."
crotch cannon is the Mackie, the original wonky, clunky prototype. The first Battlemech.
FYI they have written source books with history going back to the 1970s all the way up to 3150. Just depends how deep you want to run from 1 infantry soldier trying to survive all thw way up to 100 planets versus 100 planets. Where do YOU want to draw thw line. Fyi biggest tabletop fight I played was 40 versus 40 2 mech companies of 12 each with a command lance on both sides and I played both sides took 3 weeks plating about 2 hours a night during weekdays and at least 6 to 8 hours on Saturday and Sunday. Best fun I ever had. Once. Biggest on average fight to fit in a day or 2 of fight is 10 to 15 per side if Clan and 12 Inner Sphere side
Naturally, the theme tune chosen for the Cappellans is "Glory to Arstohtska" from Papers Please! seeing as the Cappellans have been the traditional incompetent bad-guy faction and punching bag of the setting, that will keep losing over and over, but the writers will never just completely do away with.
Well battletech started in the 80's and they are basically the space-commies (Yeah, i know its not quite that simple)
BPL is the way to gooo woooo
BattelTech hell yeah
I would suggest watching Tex's videos in the order that they were made. They build on each other somewhat so they'll make a bit more sense watched as a series then if you jump in somewhere in the middle.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll dip my toes in and see what works for me.
Ah, someone else discovering Tex. Have a beer pull up a chair, you're in for a good time.
As someone who started playing Battletech and Warhammer in 1989 , Battletech is the superior setting .
Kurita: Mega fighters
Davion: Mega smug
Liao: Mega fascists
Marik: Mega whateverthefuck
Steiner: Mega millions
Pancreas got vids on battletechs blacjwatch and lyrans
Didn't realize Pancreas was also into this, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
More Battletech!
Tex's videos on the various mechs of the setting are some of the best pieces of in-setting media there is.
i saw you recently watched a how to play on warhammer 40K. there is a great introduction video on battletech on the channel "4 Hands on Deck" where they briefly go over the basics of where battletech came from, what it represents when compared to warhammer and some basic in lore history before going through one game between 2 lances(mech teams) with explanations on the rules and the story they made up for the fight! they also have 2 other videos on adding vehicles and infantry into the mix. they don't have the same high energy as big warhammer channels, but the small roleplaying they do and the great animation and editing they do made those three videos some of my favorite table top content!
would also recommend the Hired Steel animation series, the new episode should hopefully drop this year at some point.
I'll check it out!
That mech at 11:57 is indeed named the centurion so they did a good job on the design then.
If you want to know more about what mechs are and how they came to be in the setting, youll want to watch the video on the Mackie that tex made. It covers a lot of that.
Welcome to the rabbit hole of Battletech. With a TON of lore. I hope you enjoy your visit and I hope it interests you even further to know more about this great universe.
Welcome Mechwarrior, I hope your enjoying your time here
Most certainly am. Can't wait to learn more.
House Kurita: When we say put a planet to the sword we are not speaking figuratively.
House Davion: Liberating the Inner Sphere one political marriage and smoldering crater at a time.
House Liao: You do not have to be crazy to rule here, but it helps.
House Marik: Do not bother attacking us, we have that covered.
House Steiner: If it weighs under 80-tons we are not interested.
Is battletech a tabletop game? yes, it's also older than 40k. I have miniatures from the mid 80s that I got from older players when I started playing in the early nineties. There's also a TTRPG, the mechwarrior games which are arguably more famous but set in this universe, the battletech game from 2018 which was made by the studio run by one of the original creators from 1983, and a 90's saturday morning cartoon we all love to laugh at (said cartoon and children's toy line is what got me into the series actually).
As to the universe I'd say that battletech is more realistically grim as opposed to 40k's 'grimdark' where 40k tries to add every trope it can and turn them all up to eleven battletech is a bit more focused in what it takes inspiration from which tends to be much more grounded in actual history and human nature, since there are no intelligent aliens in the setting everything comes down to how humans behave so everything has to be something that humans might actually do and while most of the tech is just as impossible as 40k it has to be something that 'feels' realistic so it's a much more 'realistic' scale.
Battletech is a DEEP universe with almost as many novels as 40k has though and if you go look at Sven Van Der Plank's channel you can see his multiple seasons of deep dives into the timeline which is approaching 30 hours of content.
Honestly, I felt the tech regression was the one part that made less sense to me than in 40k. Like I get it in the Succession Wars and all but the progression of battlemech technology over the last 500 years is really lacking even in the clans. That and how comically evil some rulers are. Some of it I get how it can come into power but always felt some of those decisions ppl make is 90s cartoon logic. Which to be fair I guess that's what the TV show was.
Although I guess most of that was Comstar's fault but still, at least they should have been doing something in the engineering side.
@@dagonofthedepths The tech loss in battletech is actually really nuanced if you look into it. For one thing the tech isn't truly 'lost' most of the core technologies are still well understood with only niche specialist technologies that were already hard to produce before the fall of the star league disappearing and even then it's more due to loss of infrastructure than knowledge.
There's a good real world example that's VERY relevant right fucking now too. If you've been paying attention to world events you might have noticed a lot of talk about microchip manufacturing and political wrangling about it. What's notable is that literally 90% of most of the most advanced chip manufacture is done on the island of Taiwan, they have basically cornered the market. Your iPhone, your GPU, the AI everyone is terrified of, even stuff like electric vehicles are dependent on that one island that china has spent the last 70 years planning to invade. What most people don't realize is that if china decides to kick off on that, most of the most important technology of the last 20 years strait up fucking disappears within a couple months, and it will take minimum 7 years to rebuild the factories to make those chips somewhere else, and it's probably more like 15-20 years. We can do it, but we're gonna be partying like it's 1999 until about 2040.
Battletech's tech regression is that applied on an interstellar scale. They still do actually have the knowledge, what they don't have is the infrastructure which took centuries to build which they blew up and then spent the last two centuries making sure they never get the chance to try to rebuild because none of them can let their neighbors get any kind of edge.
@@hakonsgaming535 Sure but not over 300 years, that's my issue with it. Like the Clan double heat sink is a good example. 2784-3049 all hey can manage was to make double heatsinks slightly smaller? Clans don't even have any of the problems the IS has, they should have shown up in Gundams with how much time they had to advance. I get the game play reasons, you can't have a unit that's 10x more powerful, that just throws everything off but it makes about as much sense when a HBK-4P alpha's it's hump lasers and they all hit different locations
Liked and now leaving a comment. I'm gonna need more Tex and Battletech my good man.
That can be arranged good sir.
How in depth does Tex and his team go?
Yes.
Tex is legend. Sven van Der Plank, however, is the rising star of Battletech Lore on TH-cam, with currently around 30 hours of Battletech history in chronological order, given as a military history documentary.
Tex is more entertaining, because his "lectures" are delivered as an in-universe character that has since been made Canon, along with Van Zandt, the character's homework.
Both are well worth your time.
You should have watched though the credits they had alot of info and also fun stories in those credits. Including an sale's pitch for mechs and animation.
Glory to the Capellan Confederation and the Celestial Throne !
I just want to point out at 31:08 there is a world called Pomme De Terre. So you can in fact visit, or be from, Planet Potato.
I hope they have the best potato dishes in the inner circle
Oh trust me, that isn't even the weirdest planet name. One fun example is the planet Bob (aka: Dunklewälderdunklerflüssenschattenwelt). The story behind that one's pretty funny (both in and out of universe)
The story (from one of the devs:)
"I was bantering with Herb over Instant Message, and we were discussing something, and I make an offhand comment that X should visit the planet "Bob". To which Herb replies "We have a planet named Bob?!".
Which of course, at the time, we did not.
So I made up one of my usual yarns about "It is a dead planet that was named something horrible, but decided to change its name. But unfortunately in the chaos of the First Succession War, the name change got misfiled and all necessary goods they ordered to be sent to the planet "Bob" went nowhere, because records didn't show such a planet existing. It was not until the end of the First Succession War the error was discovered, but then the vital terraforming equipment had failed and the planet was uninhabited. Such a sad sad fate."
To which Herb about fell over with laughter and decided to make it canon, and he came up with the original name."
I will say that Battletech does a better job than 40K at politics. You feel like you understand how the governments of the nations got where they are, while in 40K, the government is utterly backseated, save when the inquisition is either fixing something or making EVERYTHING worse, like The Siege of Vraks and the Badab War, and the First Tyrannic War...and so on.
Battletech has so much better mechs though.
Certainly feels like the political moves here are more a forefront of the story than in 40k. I imagine that it's something similar to seeing Karl Franz at work, but on a galactic scale and not just glossed over.
@@TheLegitWeebs well in a way, you can see in the comparison a further lesson: Humanity is REALLY good at uniting against a common, external enemy, an "other." If we can't find an alien other, humanity will fragment by nationality or culture or ideology and otherize a different group of humans, much like how the different Great Houses are all culturally different.
It not necessarily that politics of this complexity and more aren't around in 40K or Old World, it's that they take a backseat to the threat of annihilation by genuinely alien foes.
As I've said before (though possibly not specifically in comments to your videos) 400K does a FANTASTIC job of depicting alien mindsets. The eldar, the orks, the necrons, even different human factions like the admech and the rest of the imperium? They're alle SO different in the way they think. Orks literally don't understand romance because violence is so fundamental to their species on a genetic level that their idea of true love is their favorite enemy to fight. Comissar Yarrick was described as this by Ghazkul once IIRC.
The eldar and the necrons? They live obscenely long lives and prior to slaanesh were both functionally immortal, though in different ways. The eldar process emotion in a way that underlies their entire morality, as to them beauty and sensuality are depicted in bloodshed as easily as poetry.
Necrons are LITERALLY immortal, as even if defeated and shattered physically their bodies can be repaired with enough energy. They don't process time in a way a mortal can comprehend. Trazyn makes dramatic pauses for TWO HOURS and runs a library on a human world as what to him is a momentary pasttime, only to realize at the end that his assistant is actually the grandson of his first one and that in what to him was a pleasant diversion like a game of poker stretched the length of three human generations and that entire family line has been raised to happiness and prosperity because he gave one of them a job.
Each is magnificent in their own way.
22:40 very. My piled high and deep is Political Economics. You can blame Battletech for starting me down that road. "Came for the big stompy robots. Stayed for the politics".
4:50 those two mechs were the 80 ton Hatamoto Chi followed by the 70 ton No-Dachi. You also saw a 60 ton Dragon giving a boot to the head of its enemies
12:10 You are correct in that mech was a 50 ton Centurion, a trooper mech that engages foes at all distances.
15:43 Show me a govenrment in the current time that qualifies as 'good' by your definition, and I bet I can destroy your perception of that government with an hour of research. Just like the real world, the governments have a lot of AHs and only a handful of good people, sometimes the good get to a high enough power to help more.
22:08 Actually, that is exactly where they should have expected it. That mech was a Mackie (or one of the knockoffs produced early in mech production) the first true BattleMech of the universe
33:49 ComStar was the 'phone company' in this, a quasi-religious order that controlled all FTL communications in the Inner Sphere. The reason why only they did it and no one else tried to take it over was that they had the only way to repair and maintain the HPGs, and also they would turn off the communications for a nation if the nation tried to take their stuff. Most nations would rather their enemies have equal footing in interstellar communications rather than them having a distinct advantage over them. No one wants to find out their being invaded by refugee ships over their capitol. They also have a tendency to 'lose' important messages if they feel it fits their agenda.
Comstart is Shift AF, just remembering that could save your life.
"Is Battletech a tabletop game? I dunno, maybe they bonded by playing Warhammer" - Battletech game out as a tabletop game 1 year after Warhammer, but 3 years before 40k. (based on what their Wiki's tell me)
If you want an in-depth look at battletech history, I recommend Sven van der Plank. He does very good but most of the time hours long video.
For PC games, yeah Battletech is one but I think the longest and most influence game for Battletech was the Mechwarrior series. Which is how I got into it. Guess case in point, Duncan Fisher was a character in Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries and was so popular he keeps showing up years after 4 came out. Also, yes that is the guy that actually voices Duncan Fisher. So those C-Bills cost has a bit of truth to it.
No there are not aliens in Battletech. At least sentient ones. It kind of makes sense because it's not like 40k where humanity is spread across the galaxy. The Inner Sphere is only around 500 light years big. The Galaxy is 100,000 so it's easy to make a case that humans just didn't discover any yet.
Finally, the setting kind of has bad factions be dependent on the ruler at the time. Like a part of the reason the Capellan Confederation is so small is, yes, they are between a lot of superpowers but it's also they have a lot of, well, power ranger villains in charge. Like in one battle, they thought it was a good idea to leak their own plans to the enemy because the troops that lived through the ambushes would be true warriors. Idk man they have so many instances where they kneecap themselves doing dumb stuff it's hard to feel bad for them. Make good mechs though.
WHAT?! In what universe is leaking your plans to the enemy a good idea??!
@@TheLegitWeebs That's House Liao for you. Madness runs in the family - just about every one of them that takes the throne goes insane, often in a full-blown murder-cult sort of way.
Battletech is in many ways quite similar to warhammer just replace space marines with giant robots and replace the emperor with massive corporations.
Sorta? Battletech has no xenos, just frackin' clanners.
Hey you should take a look at the beef’s work on this game. He makes videos on some fun mech builds.
comstar.... piss them off and you wont have insterstellar datacommunications or jumptpoint acces for you ships to go in and out of systems(unless you want to risk jumping form and to pirate jumppoints[less save for a number of reasons]).. or be the clanners and piss them of so much that they just CURBSTOMP you into submission in just ONE battle
The phone company is comstar....the thing at the beginning that said you had no choice
"...Kurita tends to bury its enemies deep, headless, and by the million."
That is NOT an exaggeration, btw, Kurita done some truly messed up things in a universe of governments doing messed up things.
Welcome to the inner sphere bud! I’m more of periphery guy self myself. Mess with the bull you get the warcrimes.
27:15 DUNCAN FISCHER! 8D
Ah, another person checking out Battletech! Good, good 😁! Battletech is a very interesting setting (imo), and I personally prefer it to Warhammer. The company that owns/takes care of it/writes it’s stories, Catalyst Games (and Topps) suck! But, what else is new 🤷🏼♂️! The setting also has a fair number of issues, but overall, I think it’s a cool setting! 😁!
You have great insight. The Battletech universe really is trying to be an extension of believable cause and effect. Many story threads that run through it involve how a particular event, like the rediscovery of technology, ripples through the major powers.
It is intended to be an extension of our real-workd timeline with a few differences (Like General Motors inventing a portable fusion power plant in 2020) and how things extrapolate from there.
The feudal system is a reaction to a lack of faster than light communication early on. The warring superpowers is the result of a power vacuum. ComStar (i.e. the phone company) having as much pull as they do, is a result of them ensuring that only they know how the darn FTL communication system works.
Battletech is nowhere near as grimdark as 40k, but every cruelty that is visited on humans in this universe is inflicted on them by other people. Slavery, genocide, etc. There are no sapient aliens we can blame it on. It's all US. And it's believable, because humans have been doing it for millennia.
Battletech is the epitome of that phrase, "No matter where you go, there you are." It's just humans being humans, for all the good and bad that entails.
Big-red-40TECH is also a great source to learn about the setting. He does a great job at weaving the history of the mech and the universal history together.
ONE OF US
ONE OF US
No bullshit. Battletech has a 90s kid cartoon. And it’s canon. Well, it’s canon in the sense that it’s an in-universe propaganda cartoon. But it’s still canon.
So battletech has no aliens its just humans fighting other humans for sadly all too human reasons
Humanity at its finest.
There is a rather silly animated series about the clan invasion. Of course, it doesn't fit in with canon at all. What to do?
"Oh, that? That's just a piece of propaganda the Inner sphere made."
Retcon done right.