What is the weakest or most unbelievable aspect of the BT Universe?

[pokefan548]

And to counter that, there are many mechwarriors from noble families who are barely competent enough to know which end of the PPC to aim toward the enemy.  Protagonists from the novels tend to be individuals of exceptional skill regardless of what the circumstances of their parentage is.

Darn, now this makes me want a The Irresponsible Captain Tylor-esque novel about an absolute bumbling buffoon of a MechWarrior who manages to repeatedly Mr. Magoo his way through impossible odds.

[BrianDavion]

Darn, now this makes me want a The Irresponsible Captain Tylor-esque novel about an absolute bumbling buffoon of a MechWarrior who manages to repeatedly Mr. Magoo his way through impossible odds.

so Basicly Ciaphas Cain or the Flashman papers, in the Battletech universe?

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Darn, now this makes me want a The Irresponsible Captain Tylor-esque novel about an absolute bumbling buffoon of a MechWarrior who manages to repeatedly Mr. Magoo his way through impossible odds.

I'd love to see that story, especially if it were set in the Combine or Confederation.

[pokefan548]

so Basicly Ciaphas Cain or the Flashman papers, in the Battletech universe?

Now that you mention it, kind of, yeah!

I'd love to see that story, especially if it were set in the Combine or Confederation.

Set it in the Combine, so that he can naturally, eventually be promoted to captain of the DCS Soyokaze!

[BrianDavion]

Now that you mention it, kind of, yeah!Set it in the Combine, so that he can naturally, eventually be promoted to captain of the DCS Soyokaze!

don't be silly. we have the perfect subject for it among the Lyran Alliance/Commonwealth.

Thats right gentlemen...

"The Hogarth Memiors"

[pokefan548]

don't be silly. we have the perfect subject for it among the Lyran Alliance/Commonwealth.

Thats right gentlemen...

"The Hogarth Memiors"

Thought: a bumbling Lyran general who somehow always manages to be somehow bested, through a series of increasingly bizarre and unlikely contrivances, by an even more bumbling Combine junior officer and his band of misfits who spend more time infighting over petty squabbles than they do actually working as a team.

And every story ends with the Lyran general's much exaggerated, highly embellished report back to Tharkad.

Dang it. Guess I'm making this now. Check Fan Fiction in a few weeks I guess.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

don't be silly. we have the perfect subject for it among the Lyran Alliance/Commonwealth.

Thats right gentlemen...

"The Hogarth Memiors"

How about we actually show that the other factions are also capable of having incompetent officers?  Instead of going straight back to the herp-a-derp-we-can't-ever-show-any-kind-of-Lyran-but-a-stupid-social-general meme that wore itself out a decade ago?

[SCC]

A Juggernaut in XTRO Gladiators. There might be more, but that's the only one that comes immediately to mind.

In cases like this the best/easiest thing to do is look up the item in question on Sarna and then scroll down until you see the "What Links Here" link in the side bar on the left and click it, it will give you a list of all pages that link to the first one, which will give you a list of what mounts it, in this case we get:
    3060 ‎ (← links | edit)
    Tactical Handbook ‎ (← links | edit)
    Void ‎ (← links | edit)
    Thunder Fox ‎ (← links | edit)
    Juggernaut (BattleMech) ‎ (← links | edit)
    Battle Armor Mechanical Jump Booster ‎ (← links | edit)
    Fwltur ‎ (← links | edit)
    Spectre ‎ (← links | edit)
    Sea Fox (Battle Armor) ‎ (← links | edit)
Bolded entries are actually 'Mechs

[Caedis Animus]

How about we actually show that the other factions are also capable of having incompetent officers?  Instead of going straight back to the herp-a-derp-we-can't-ever-show-any-kind-of-Lyran-but-a-stupid-social-general meme that wore itself out a decade ago?

I can only express my loathing for that continued meme in the form of something paraphrased from I have no mouth and I must scream.

[Fat Guy]

Darn, now this makes me want a The Irresponsible Captain Tylor-esque novel about an absolute bumbling buffoon of a MechWarrior who manages to repeatedly Mr. Magoo his way through impossible odds.

Hogarth?

[Geg]

Thought: a bumbling Lyran general who somehow always manages to be somehow bested, through a series of increasingly bizarre and unlikely contrivances, by an even more bumbling Combine junior officer and his band of misfits who spend more time infighting over petty squabbles than they do actually working as a team.

And every story ends with the Lyran general's much exaggerated, highly embellished report back to Tharkad.

Dang it. Guess I'm making this now. Check Fan Fiction in a few weeks I guess.

This is my head cannon about most of the house military works.   Hereditary Nobility does not breed the most efficient systems.

[Dayton3]

Darn, now this makes me want a The Irresponsible Captain Tylor-esque novel about an absolute bumbling buffoon of a MechWarrior who manages to repeatedly Mr. Magoo his way through impossible odds.

Where you do have one of the greatest battles of Hesperus where the virtually untrained and inexperienced "Force of Last Resort" (albeit piloting assault mechs) briefly routed a regiment of Kuritas best "mechs using little but beginners luck.

[Fat Guy]

Most unbelievable: How all a 'Mech's ammo reloads fit inside it's internal volume (especially missile boats!).   

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Most unbelievable: How all a 'Mech's ammo reloads fit inside it's internal volume (especially missile boats!).   

Battletech missiles are tiny.  They're the size of modern shoulder-fired rockets.

[Weirdo]

Darn, now this makes me want a The Irresponsible Captain Tylor-esque novel about an absolute bumbling buffoon of a MechWarrior who manages to repeatedly Mr. Magoo his way through impossible odds.

Not exactly what you speak of, but this makes me want to go back and read Trace's Darius Davion stories...

[Fat Guy]

Battletech missiles are tiny.  They're the size of modern shoulder-fired rockets.

Most art tends to disagree.   

[Daryk]

Photons fit just fine! 

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Most art tends to disagree.   

"Consistency" and "Battletech art" haven't always gone together all that closely.

[Daryk]

Too true, too true... 

[BrianDavion]

This is my head cannon about most of the house military works.   Hereditary Nobility does not breed the most efficient systems.

except that neither the combine nor the LCAF have hereditary military command. they're ABSOLUTELY an "old boys club"  but that's entirely differant from a hereidtary situation.

[Daryk]

Not entirely... you forget the actual influence of those "old boys" in the network... 

[Charistoph]

Eugenics itself is a discredited philosophy from the late 19th to early 20th centuries.  Once you've got the ability to build and control fire, make reliable tools, and communicate with language, (IOW once your brain's big enough in the right areas) nature's pretty much done all that can be done without physically rewriting the DNA strands.  iow beyond that point, you don't get improvements, you get inbreeding.  for a specifically ugly example, look at Central European Royalty-the Hapsburgs.  They bred in a very characteristic lower jaw line, along with Haemophilia.

It's not my theory, but the one that Kerensky had the scientists basing their work off of.

And they accelerated the rate at which generations are born, as well, too, which can do some... odd things in advancement.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that their life-long training and equipment were what gave them the best drive, but it was also the gaps in their culture which worked against them.  But that is a form of evolution as well, more esoteric than genetic.?

[Daryk]

Phenotypes exist, yes.  But "nurture" still wins.  The sibko system still trumps all the genetic infuences if introduced early enough... 

[Cannonshop]

It's not my theory, but the one that Kerensky had the scientists basing their work off of.

And they accelerated the rate at which generations are born, as well, too, which can do some... odd things in advancement.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that their life-long training and equipment were what gave them the best drive, but it was also the gaps in their culture which worked against them.  But that is a form of evolution as well, more esoteric than genetic.?

Social evolution is far more likely a cause for the Clan Warrior's superb gunnery and piloting than some result of breeding is-while certainly 'altering' for size explains the Elemental, they're pushing hard on the square/cubed law at the size and bulk they've got, the caloric intake must be astronomical.  (Humans in real life with gigantism, which gets your eight foot tall bodies? suffer from frequent broken bones and tend to die young because the human heart isn't built to pump blood that fast or that hard for that far,  it's not a 'build it bigger' problem, it's got to do with materials.)

[Charistoph]

Yeah, I think they did more than just basic eugenics with the Elemental and Pilot lines...

Speaking of Pilot lines.  Those worked out well, didn't they, and couldn't even dismiss it due to their superior machines.

Kind of makes you wonder what is deficient with Spheroid Mechwarrior training.  Probably the feeding of the ego.  But Clanner Mechwarriors have that in spades.  If the Spheroid Mechwarriors were as effective as their pilots were, the Clans wouldn't have made it to Tukayyid, and would have been slowed down much faster.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Kind of makes you wonder what is deficient with Spheroid Mechwarrior training.  Probably the feeding of the ego.  But Clanner Mechwarriors have that in spades.  If the Spheroid Mechwarriors were as effective as their pilots were, the Clans wouldn't have made it to Tukayyid, and would have been slowed down much faster.

Might not be a deficiency on the Inner Sphere's part.  The Clans are hyperfocused on training warriors to fight and not much else.  In the Inner Sphere, a mechwarrior is also expected to know the basics of how to maintain their mech, plus know a variety of things that aren't directly combat related, like understanding history, economics, science, literature, all the things we think of as being part of making a well-balanced person.

[Charistoph]

Might not be a deficiency on the Inner Sphere's part.  The Clans are hyperfocused on training warriors to fight and not much else.  In the Inner Sphere, a mechwarrior is also expected to know the basics of how to maintain their mech, plus know a variety of things that aren't directly combat related, like understanding history, economics, science, literature, all the things we think of as being part of making a well-balanced person.

That doesn't explain why Spheroid ASF pilots were keeping up with Clan ASF pilots when Clan ASF pilots had the same level of training as their Mechwarriors, and their ASF are equally as technically superior.

Or maybe that is just demonstrating how poor ASF training is among the Clans.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I'm guessing the latter.

[Daryk]

I think it's more a reflection of "space is HARD" than anything else.  The incremental improvements mean less in space.

[Orwell84]

I'm guessing the latter.

Probably. Apparently Nikky K extolled MechWarriors uber alles, wouldn’t be surprising if that attitude led to deficient ASF training outside the Snow Ravens and Cloud Cobras. Which leads to a tangential question - have Raven pilots fared better than other Clanners against Spheroid opponents?