BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Game Systems => General BattleTech Discussion => Topic started by: Colt Ward on 09 September 2019, 15:50:55
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Since the Arthur SD questions came up . . .
We have some that were resolved over the years- Wolverines, Minnesota Tribe, source of the Fidelis, where did Stone go, and of course the multitude of missing warships.
What are some that you thought were neat or enjoyed over the years?
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Given the game I running down in Roleplaying, I have to say the 3053 schism between ComStar and the WoB. There's plenty of storytelling that could happen around that...
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Since the Arthur SD questions came up . . .
We have some that were resolved over the years- Wolverines, Minnesota Tribe, source of the Fidelis, where did Stone go, and of course the multitude of missing warships.
What are some that you thought were neat or enjoyed over the years?
I guess I missed this one.
When did they resolve the Wolverines story?
Last I heard, the only thing we had on this where some journals that seemed suspicious, and no one truly believed were real.
Did this change in one of the sourcebooks?
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I guess I missed this one.
When did they resolve the Wolverines story?
Last I heard, the only thing we had on this where some journals that seemed suspicious, and no one truly believed were real.
Did this change in one of the sourcebooks?
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Betrayal_of_Ideals (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Betrayal_of_Ideals)
Pretty sure that's the final wrap up to the Not-Named-Clan. 8)
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Was who killed Morgan Hasek-Davion and why ever resolved?
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Was who killed Morgan Hasek-Davion and why ever resolved?
Katherine Steiner pulled that one via a Lyran Intelligence Loki agent placed with Task Force Serpent as a means of whittling away at Victors circle of support.
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https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Betrayal_of_Ideals (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Betrayal_of_Ideals)
Pretty sure that's the final wrap up to the Not-Named-Clan. 8)
My follow-up questions would be;
1. Are The Blood and the Minnesota Tribe the same group or did the two renaming task forces separate when they got to the Innersphere? It is not really touched on in the book.
2. If The Blood are the remains of one or all of the surviving Wolverines, why are the documents that were clearly written by someone familiar with the history off on there dates and times? Is this The Blood trying to throw-off the Clans or change the narrative of their history for some nefarious reasons?
3. Or are the writings authentic, and the dates were changed to hide the surviving Wolverines from ComStar as a whole?
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Some of my favorite hanging plot threads:
1. Who sent Jinjiro Kurita the doll dressed in a Star League uniform, why did they do it, how did they do it (as canon fluff has been pretty consistent that whoever did it somehow smuggled it into one of the most heavily guarded locales in the Combine) and what significance did Jinjiro see in it to cause him to fall violently into irretrievable madness?
2. Were Blanc's Coyotes another Clan probe, a'la Wolf's Dragoons? If not, why did they up and disappear and where did they go?
3. Who killed John Davion? 1SW does give a good lineup of suspects, but makes no definitive statements as to who was the actual guilty party.
4. Due to a possible throwaway reference in the latest House Marik sourcebook, was Snow Fire possibly a Marik operative who was part of a false-flag operation meant to implicate the Lyrans in Yoguchi Kurita's assassination? (the reference I'm talking about is one where the Captain General at the time placed a standing order that a bottle of expensive Lyran liquor be sent to the director of SAFE each year on the anniversary of the assassination for "services rendered")
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Some of my favorite hanging plot threads:
1. Who sent Jinjiro Kurita the doll dressed in a Star League uniform, why did they do it, how did they do it (as canon fluff has been pretty consistent that whoever did it somehow smuggled it into one of the most heavily guarded locales in the Combine) and what significance did Jinjiro see in it to cause him to fall violently into irretrievable madness?
2. Were Blanc's Coyotes another Clan probe, a'la Wolf's Dragoons? If not, why did they up and disappear and where did they go?
3. Who killed John Davion? 1SW does give a good lineup of suspects, but makes no definitive statements as to who was the actual guilty party.
4. Due to a possible throwaway reference in the latest House Marik sourcebook, was Snow Fire possibly a Marik operative who was part of a false-flag operation meant to implicate the Lyrans in Yoguchi Kurita's assassination? (the reference I'm talking about is one where the Captain General at the time placed a standing order that a bottle of expensive Lyran liquor be sent to the director of SAFE each year on the anniversary of the assassination for "services rendered")
1. Given the mysterious nature of how the doll arrived, miraculously getting through whatever ludicrous security was apparently in place, I'd be willing to put down real money that the nekekami were the ones that delivered the doll. Seriously, they can worm their way inside literally any place in the galaxy.
2. I'd never even heard of these guys, but reading their page on Sarna they don't sound like they were Clanners. Their whole "communing/living with nature in balance" bit makes them sound more like Druids or something. Which really makes it weird considering how utterly off balance the Word of Blake was, why would these mercs would sign on with them? Beyond that I'm scratching my head on these guys as much as you are. There simply isn't enough info to go off.
3. I'd love to know who these suspects are, cause there's literally nothing I can say on this one with how little there is on his Sarna page.
4. According to Sarna Snow Fire was a Lyran operative originally, but supposedly turned double agent for Marik's SAFE agency while on Luthien, which allowed them to use her as a patsy to implicate the Lyran's to get House Kurita to lash out at them for the next 14 years or so, leaving House Marik alone to do whatever it was they did over the next 14 years.
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2. Were Blanc's Coyotes another Clan probe, a'la Wolf's Dragoons? If not, why did they up and disappear and where did they go?
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Blanc%27s_Coyotes
given they joined the WoB my guess would be they weren't clan. given their penchant for getting impressive and classified intel, and their spiritualist bent, possibly a blakist splinter group from a hidden world?
alternately they did have ties to something else in the deep periphery, but when nearly their entire staff died out in the Samoyedic-Colonies after the misjump, no one remained who had any idea of that connection and they fell in with the WOB.
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My hanging plot hook is what happened to the Knights of St. Cameron? They were in a meeting with a reported member of the Cult of St. Cameron for three days and then left Galatea and vanished.
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Oh, I still believe Galen Cox was originally a member of the LIC assigned to the 12th Donegal Guards to become Victor's friend and bodyguard. (I just don't think Hanse would trust the Lyrans' with his son but for political reasons he had.)
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My follow-up questions would be;
1. Are The Blood and the Minnesota Tribe the same group or did the two renaming task forces separate when they got to the Innersphere? It is not really touched on in the book.
2. If The Blood are the remains of one or all of the surviving Wolverines, why are the documents that were clearly written by someone familiar with the history off on there dates and times? Is this The Blood trying to throw-off the Clans or change the narrative of their history for some nefarious reasons?
3. Or are the writings authentic, and the dates were changed to hide the surviving Wolverines from ComStar as a whole?
The Blood is canon rumor and even in the book the character giving the report expresses his doubts about it.
Where the information in the Blood documents came from is anybody's guess. They evidently had some info about the Wolverines, but not all, or felt it best to keep it vague to not get cough on details.
The biggest connection between Wolverines and WOB is the battleship Blake's Sword. It was probably found abandoned, but who knows.
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The biggest connection between Wolverines and WOB is the battleship Blake's Sword. It was probably found abandoned, but who knows.
That appears to be the case. During the Wolverine's attempt to escape Annihilation the McKenna class battleship SLS Zughoffer Weir was part of their little mini-exodus, and was involved in the naval battle in the Barbados, the only ship at the time capable of space naval warfare. The Zughoffer managed to destroy a Hell's Horses warship before it jumped out. ilKhan Kerensky ordered the rest of the fleet to destroy whatever Wolverine forces were still in the system.
What exactly happened after that no one is entirely sure. Did the Zughoffer meet up with whatever other tiny amount of surviving Wolverine forces led by Khan Trish Ebon when they returned to the Barbados system in an attempt to rescue any survivors?
Whatever did happen, a McKenna class battleship was apparently found in the more rimward portion of the Outworlds Alliance, which bordered the Draconis Combine and Federated Suns, it was found by WoB agents and somehow brought to the Sol system, ensconced at the Titan naval yards and overhauled over the next four years, from about 3061 to 3065, becoming the WBS Blake's Sword.
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Note: it is unconfirmed that SLS Me became Blake's Sword. It could still be out there somewhere... :)
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I've always addressed that as being "Don't let this fall into the Ghost Bear's hands! (winkwinknudgenudge)" full on fabrication, as a means of linking the WoB to the Wolverines, to goad the Bears into fighting them in earnest.
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Note: it is unconfirmed that SLS Me became Blake's Sword. It could still be out there somewhere... :)
Ahhh. So it is. More questions who's answers are obscured by misinformation. It is as if there is a cabal of people running this universe to their own ends. ;D
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Ahhh. So it is. More questions who's answers are obscured by misinformation. It is as if there is a cabal of people running this universe to their own ends. ;D
So in the long run we have proof that some of the Wolverines survived, but little else.
1. WoB "may" have found the ship.
2. The Blood "may" have been them.
3. The Minnesota Tribe "may" have been them.
4. ComStar "may" have been tipped off about the Clans by them.
5. The scouting task force "may have" landed in the Nueva Castile region.
6. The SLS Zughoffer Weir "may" have been a ComStar/WoB vassal.
7. The Jihad documents "may" have been altered Wolverine records.
Overall there are way to many "maybe's" to say that this mystery is solved.
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Here a big hanging plot thread.
Why did warships become extinct in the battletech universe?
They where not some magical, mystical technology from the Star League.
They had been around since the before the founding of the Terran Hegemony.
The TAS Dreadnought , launched in 2300 and was the first full fledged Warship.
which would mean even if they could not duplicate the more advanced equipment of the newer ship the could easily reproduce the 2300s models.
So why did they become extinct?
Was it;
a. The house lords did not want to start a new arms race.
b. ComStar interference.
c. Wartime economy of the houses would not allow it.
d. They where an after thought of the writers and they realized they made them to powerful.
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Re: Wolverines, we have a canon story that a remnant survived the final naval battle by being elsewhere on picket duty, and headed for the Inner Sphere, while another subgroup fled the final battle and struck off on its own with Steel Vipers in pursuit.
Based on what's been hinted in various sources, the implications are as follows (your mileage may vary):
1) Picket Fleet #1 and #2 reunited with a late-arriving ship of sibcadets and became the Minnesota Tribe, raiding the Combine to replace their lost civilian caste members. This group circumnavigated the Inner Sphere and near Periphery going clockwise until it reached a spot rimward of the Magistracy of Canopus. Sometime around the 2010s, they opened limited relations with the Magistracy, trading technology (particularly medical tech) in exchange for intel on the Inner Sphere. At some point they abandoned their first base world for unknown reasons, and may have blended into the Magistracy. They have had a working relationship with the Ebon Magistrate, and may have had a role in its creation. (Trish EBON was the head of the Wolverine Watch.)
2) The Zughoffer Weir and two support ships appear, based on circumstantial evidence and elements of the mostly fraudulent "Wolverine Journal," to have been found by ComStar while still in the Periphery, and were brought into the fold. The Zughoffer Weir did end up in the Word of Blake fleet. And someone fed highly specific intel to the Primus about the Clans (attributed to prophetic nightmares) that resulted in the creation of the Explorer Corps.
3) Picket Fleet #3 appears to have founded a settlement within transit range of the massacre site where most of the Wolverines died, since someone keeps coming back centuries later to lay flowers on the empty grave of Sarah McEvedy.
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Victor_Shaw: I'm pretty sure the answer is "e. All of the above"... ^-^
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I think probably the biggest problem with them ending up with the Magistracy is that they never took action against the Clans during the invasion or later.
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Here a big hanging plot thread.
Why did warships become extinct in the battletech universe?
They where not some magical, mystical technology from the Star League.
They had been around since the before the founding of the Terran Hegemony.
The TAS Dreadnought , launched in 2300 and was the first full fledged Warship.
which would mean even if they could not duplicate the more advanced equipment of the newer ship the could easily reproduce the 2300s models.
So why did they become extinct?
Was it;
a. The house lords did not want to start a new arms race.
b. ComStar interference.
c. Wartime economy of the houses would not allow it.
d. They where an after thought of the writers and they realized they made them to powerful.
Victor_Shaw: I'm pretty sure the answer is "e. All of the above"... ^-^
victor_shaw, I think Daryk's got the right answer, but I'll add two more possibilities to your list:
f. Expertise was lost as engineers/techs retired and died*.
g. A WarShip is a massive investment in time, money, and equipment. For the same amount of money, time, and (non-capital scale) equipment House Lords could build up several regiments of 'Mechs with supporting aerospace and combat vehicles.
* possibly as a result of b.
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Warships have a jump drive. No one knew how to build those at some point. So every damaged WarShip was lost, because they couldn't repair it.
There really is no mystery about it. It's the same reason, the IS didn't attack Jump Ships during the Succession Wars. Once they were lost, interstellar travel was lost.
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Note: it is unconfirmed that SLS Me became Blake's Sword. It could still be out there somewhere... :)
Still get a kick outta this: but I’ve never seen you refer to it as the ‘SLS Me’ so now I’m more amused. :)
On topic a lot of Wolverine chatter around the boards: it’s something that has not been completely resolved but BoI and Blake’s Documents (?) gave us a lot of information previously not had.
Is the Wolverine Arc finished? I hope not but at least it’s got a sorta season finale ish vibe to it.
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Is the Wolverine Arc finished? I hope not but at least it’s got a sorta season finale ish vibe to it.
Just cause we know how a story inevitably and ultimately ends, doesn't mean there aren't other stories to tell.
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Who stole Apollyon's pants?
:)
Trying to be funny
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mbear: you should repurpose my "e" and move it below your two... 8)
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Warships have a jump drive. No one knew how to build those at some point. So every damaged WarShip was lost, because they couldn't repair it.
There really is no mystery about it. It's the same reason, the IS didn't attack Jump Ships during the Succession Wars. Once they were lost, interstellar travel was lost.
I don't think building Jump Drives ever became LosTech, and given that the Houses actually had trouble with building Transit Drives during the 50's, I'd peg that as the problem.
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I don't think building Jump Drives ever became LosTech, and given that the Houses actually had trouble with building Transit Drives during the 50's, I'd peg that as the problem.
Actually it did become LosTech.
From Sarna...
The science behind the KF drive was lost in the course of the succession wars (except by ComStar, who concealed their continued knowledge). While new drives can still be made, this is done by simply repeating the known design, without variation. This also means that new jumpship designs cannot be created except by trial and error, a process that would be so ludicrously expensive in the case of even one failure that the closest anyone has come is making modest changes to non-jump related systems, such as changing armament and external accoutrements. ComStar had secretly produced a few new designs, most notably the Magellan class explorer, equipped with an HPG for use in scouting new systems and searching for Kerensky's fleet. Following the discovery of the Helm Memory Core, this science has begun to recover, and new designs have begun to produced. The Clans retained more of this information, fielding several unique designs and even maintaining a WarShip fleet, though how much they know is a closely guarded secret.
So while the Great Houses were able to make more Jumpships like the Scout, Star Lord and Monolith, they were basically just carbon copies. They couldn't create entirely new classes, which was another factor in why they couldn't begin to create Warships until quite a bit later during the Invasion era.
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Right. If someone got lucky and crippled someplace like the Galax yards, it would have been extremely difficult to rebuild.
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Actually it did become LosTech.
From Sarna...
So while the Great Houses were able to make more Jumpships like the Scout, Star Lord and Monolith, they were basically just carbon copies. They couldn't create entirely new classes, which was another factor in why they couldn't begin to create Warships until quite a bit later during the Invasion era.
And IMHO this is another one of the accuses lores that FASA/FP/CGL is famous for.
Like why it took 90+ years for the Innersphere to catch-up to the clans in tech when they had a multiple Clan's worth of salvage to work with.
And at least two clans worth of techs for assistance.
I can believe that Jump Drives tech requires resources that during the successor wars were hard to come by and the factories being destroyed could limit their production, but you can't tell me that tech that predates the original exodus from earth was too advanced for the successor states. Plans, construction diagrams, and other information would be available in most library at that point.
If you want to tell me that the successor states did not hove the funds to devote to the construction of new factories and the Ares Conventions reduced the need for rapid Jumpship construction then that I could believe, but the idea that they forgot how to made them and could only copy them I don't. Like mbear said "A WarShip is a massive investment in time, money, and equipment. For the same amount of money, time, and (non-capital scale) equipment House Lords could build up several regiments of 'Mechs with supporting aerospace and combat vehicles." That I can believe, but the "they forgot how" argument is just plan ridiculous.
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Pretty believable to me. ComStar assassinating technicians and scientists, sabotaging development. And not just those who can build JumpShips and other tech, but the supporting industries as well. Computer backups? Scrambled, poisoned with viral loads, or falsified with bad data. I think the cyberwar aspect has been underserved in the story thus far (wasn't that big a deal in the real world at the time), and could use some work to get it into the continuity. Someone starts asking too many questions, like Hanse did, and you end up with a specops intelligence war to outright interdiction.
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Pretty believable to me. ComStar assassinating technicians and scientists, sabotaging development. And not just those who can build JumpShips and other tech, but the supporting industries as well. Computer backups? Scrambled, poisoned with viral loads, or falsified with bad data. I think the cyberwar aspect has been underserved in the story thus far (wasn't that big a deal in the real world at the time), and could use some work to get it into the continuity. Someone starts asking too many questions, like Hanse did, and you end up with a specops intelligence war to outright interdiction.
Or a rogue ComStar Precentor teaming up with the local nobility and conspiring to frame you for a civilian massacre equal to Kentares IV in order to plunder a Star League library system on the planet you've been put in charge of by the House Lord. >:D
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Pretty believable to me. ComStar assassinating technicians and scientists, sabotaging development. And not just those who can build JumpShips and other tech, but the supporting industries as well. Computer backups? Scrambled, poisoned with viral loads, or falsified with bad data. I think the cyberwar aspect has been underserved in the story thus far (wasn't that big a deal in the real world at the time), and could use some work to get it into the continuity. Someone starts asking too many questions, like Hanse did, and you end up with a specops intelligence war to outright interdiction.
Again even this is like saying "I destroyed all the files on building a cars so we have millions of them over there and can't figure out how they work or how to make them"
If you where talking about one planet say "earth" I could believe that, but we are talking about well over 2.5+ thousand planets and if we average out the populations to just 1 million a planet that's still 2.5+ billion people, Then you have to say that ComStar a faction that couldn't even manage to figure out who the Wolf's Dragoons where, managed to destroy all records on 2.6 thousand planets, kill everyone who knows anything about that level of engineer and everyone learning about it, make sure every factory was destroyed (which we know did happen), and to top it all off, prevent anyone from examining existing Jump Drives to figure them out. That a big stretch by any form of imagination Considering that even today there are 7.53 billion people just on this planet alone, then there are just the major planets in the BTU, Tharkad 7 billion, New Avalon 7.2 billion, Luthien 7.3 billion, Atreus 8.4 billion, and Sian 7.3 billion, all equaling 37.2 billion, and these are just the faction capitals.
Now lets say that just 1% of these people know how to build or design a Jump Drive and teach no one else how to do it. That's still 37 million people on just the faction capitals. IMHO you have way to much faith in ComStars abilities to accomplish this.
P.S. Rom was not even formed till 2811, and ComStar did not become the faction we know today until 2819 after the end of the First Successor War.
So all this would have had to be done during the Second Successor War.
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One of my handwavium explanations for the loss of tech on worlds that were far from any active fronts and never saw fighting is as follows:
The technological development of the BattleTech setting is an outgrowth of what was "cutting edge" at the time it was being written. (The old "future of the eighties" argument.) Thus, Mike Stackpole's "Warrior Trilogy" featured, on both backwater Pacifica and House capital Tharkad, a single planetary mainframe computer, with all other devices on the world being dumb input/output terminals. If this is the network structure on both Pacifica and Tharkad, we can extrapolate that such arrangements predominate throughout the Inner Sphere. The comparative rarity of removable storage media (data cores) indicates that the central hub model was standard even during the Star League era. (One explanation might be that initial colonies would set up a central computer at the landing site, and then keep expanding that mainframe's capacity as the colony grew.)
These mainframes are shown as being vulnerable to malware and hacking in the Warrior Trilogy. Thus, ComStar, with its LosTech equipment and training, could send operatives to each world and use viruses or malware to scrub technical documents, blueprints, etc. from the planetary mainframe. Then it's a matter of killing any scientist actively trying to recreate the data. It's easier on border worlds - planetary mainframes would be prime targets - take it out and the planetary e-commerce economy disappears.
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One of my handwavium explanations for the loss of tech on worlds that were far from any active fronts and never saw fighting is as follows:
The technological development of the BattleTech setting is an outgrowth of what was "cutting edge" at the time it was being written. (The old "future of the eighties" argument.) Thus, Mike Stackpole's "Warrior Trilogy" featured, on both backwater Pacifica and House capital Tharkad, a single planetary mainframe computer, with all other devices on the world being dumb input/output terminals. If this is the network structure on both Pacifica and Tharkad, we can extrapolate that such arrangements predominate throughout the Inner Sphere. The comparative rarity of removable storage media (data cores) indicates that the central hub model was standard even during the Star League era. (One explanation might be that initial colonies would set up a central computer at the landing site, and then keep expanding that mainframe's capacity as the colony grew.)
These mainframes are shown as being vulnerable to malware and hacking in the Warrior Trilogy. Thus, ComStar, with its LosTech equipment and training, could send operatives to each world and use viruses or malware to scrub technical documents, blueprints, etc. from the planetary mainframe. Then it's a matter of killing any scientist actively trying to recreate the data. It's easier on border worlds - planetary mainframes would be prime targets - take it out and the planetary e-commerce economy disappears.
A again this assumes that every one of those 2.5 thousand planets uses these system, there are no hard copies anywhere in the Innersphere, and that ComStar was able to kill the billions of people needed to make this a possibility without anyone noticing they where gone.
The main issues here is that everyone seems to have this overblown view of Roms capabilities. From the reading I have done their only true successes where in the periphery, and in information gathering due to their control of the HPG network. Outside of this they don't come across as an organization that could pull this off.
Now I have no problems with ComStar taking full control of the HPG network and none of the Houses being able to maintain and control them, because the HPG network was never in the houses control anyway. It was maintained and controlled by the Starleauge, and after the fall they gave control over to what would become ComStar. So they never had the infrastructure to build or control it and never bothered to try.
But they had always built jumpships and jump drives and had the infrastructure to build or maintain them. So the idea that after the 2nd Successor War they just lost this is another one of Jordan Weisman hand waves to keep the setting in the dark ages, just like when he did it again with wizkids.
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But they had always built jumpships and jump drives and had the infrastructure to build or maintain them. So the idea that after the 2nd Successor War they just lost this is another one of Jordan Weisman hand waves to keep the setting in the dark ages, just like when he did it again with wizkids.
Let me see if I can give you a more compelling answer to this conundrum.
According to Sarna the K-F Drive is A K-F drive is comprised of a meters-thick core made of a titanium-germanium alloy (wrapped in a liquid helium jacket), controller, initiator, tankage and other associated equipment.
So now let's take the Scout class jumpship, massing 90,000 tons and 273 meters long, it would be easy to reverse engineer how much material would go into the K-F Drive for that particular class.
Now let's jump ahead a little bit to a Warship class, the Avalon class lets say, at 770,000 tons, and 812 meters long, that thing is 8.5 times heavier than the Scout class.
How much of that weight is dedicated to the K-F Drive? After the Successor States lambasted themselves back almost to the bronze age, somewhere along the way, between a combination of factors, they ended up incapable of determining how big a jump drive was necessary for any potential new classes of ships.
Sure, they might be able to design new ships, but I'd bet dollars to pesos that a specific size of ship requires a specific size of K-F Drive, and the bigger the ship, the bigger the drive has to be, so along with not being able to get proper jumpship sized sub-light transit engines working properly, no new Warships, or even jumpships were able to be built until the Helm memory core started making its rounds across the Inner Sphere, and even then it took decades to categorize and sort through god only knows how much information to find technology that would lead to the eventual creation of new IS starships.
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A again this assumes that every one of those 2.5 thousand planets uses these system, there are no hard copies anywhere in the Innersphere, and that ComStar was able to kill the billions of people needed to make this a possibility without anyone noticing they where gone.
I don't agree with the apparent ease you're applying to reverse engineering. If someone dumped an F-35 in your back yard, how long would it take you to set up mass production?
Same about recovering lostech. To quote an often-used example, at this present day the US doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) have the infrastructure in place to manufacture Saturn V rockets. That's even when you assume all blueprints for all constituent components are readily accessible.
You'd be surprised to find out how much real-world, currently-in-use military gear is actually "lostech" - even consumables.
I've heard of one case where the manufacturer for radar-obscring chaff "ammo" on a certain aircraft type closed down 15 years ago, and the military in question supposedly only found out when they needed to replenish their stocks.
Another case is shrapnel armor/netting in a cargo airplane that has surpassed its sell-by date but cannot be replaced because it's not manufactured anymore. The military in question supposedly reacted by officially postponing the sell-by date.
Similarly, armor plating for real-world naval battleships isn't made anymore and as far as I gathered, the last people to know the ins and outs of its manufacture are retired long since, and dying off.
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I don't agree with the apparent ease you're applying to reverse engineering. If someone dumped an F-35 in your back yard, how long would it take you to set up mass production?
This has to be the worst analogy I have every seen. Of course I would not be able to setup mass production
1. I'm not an aerospace engineer. (I'm a network construction and administration specialist)
2. I don't have anywhere near the resources to do it I'm just one man.
Now let me reveres this on you if I was to slap down a new wiring and network diagram how long would it take you to set it up.
Now I could do the same thing to a newly graduated Network engineer and they could have it done fairly quickly.
If someone was to hand over the plans for an F-35 or even just the plane itself to china I would bet they would have one flying in under 2 years.
This type of argument is used all the time and it never is true. Yes you are right if I gave a F-35 to a farmer they would probably not be able to reverse engineer.
But if I gave it to a group of aerospace engineers and funded them, They more then likely could.
It truly depends on the level of tech we are talking about, and contrary to popular belief Clan tech was not that far beyond Star league tech. As the Innersphere was able to copy a bulkier less powerful version of the weapons fairly quickly. Now I would give 5-10 years for that but they did it in less then 4 years. With that out of the way I would at most say it would take 10-20 years for them to duplicate the tech seeing as they not only had the finished equipment in front of them but later on had Clan techs that could help (Nova cat,WIE)
Even on are own planet many nations have got a hold of foreign equipment and reverse engineered it fairly quickly. Russia did it quite a lot during the second wold war, and was able to reverse engineered new forms of aircraft titanium just by visiting a British factory and wearing sticky shoes to collect samples (see the mig- 17). Plus their version on multiple occasions were better they the vehicle they where copying.
Same about recovering lostech. To quote an often-used example, at this present day the US doesn't (to the best of my knowledge) have the infrastructure in place to manufacture Saturn V rockets. That's even when you assume all blueprints for all constituent components are readily accessible.
Another misquoted and misused statement. The issues is not can the US build infrastructure to manufacture Saturn V rockets. The issues is that it is not cost efficient to backwards engineer a single use item for a mission that has no real purpose, as it would not advance science or increase our knowledge of space and space travel.
You'd be surprised to find out how much real-world, currently-in-use military gear is actually "lostech" - even consumables.
I've heard of one case where the manufacturer for radar-obscring chaff "ammo" on a certain aircraft type closed down 15 years ago, and the military in question supposedly only found out when they needed to replenish their stocks.
Another case is shrapnel armor/netting in a cargo airplane that has surpassed its sell-by date but cannot be replaced because it's not manufactured anymore. The military in question supposedly reacted by officially postponing the sell-by date.
Similarly, armor plating for real-world naval battleships isn't made anymore and as far as I gathered, the last people to know the ins and outs of its manufacture are retired long since, and dying off.
No actually I wouldn't, As these are truly not example of in service weapons in that sense. These items you are talking about are export surplus or phased out items.
Or in the case of the battleships, decommissioned vehicles. As a former Air Force crew chief I can tell you that this happens on some of our older planes all the time, and the parts or equipment are not lostech, they are just not mass-produced anymore , an example being one of the bolts on the B-1B (the plane I worked on) having to be specially machined since it was a torque bolt and had special shear tolerances. Now the manufacture no longer made the part or any part for the plane because it was not part of the original contract after the aircraft's were made (got to love government foresight). The part is still able to be made by a machine shop but just cost more now.
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A again this assumes that every one of those 2.5 thousand planets uses these system, there are no hard copies anywhere in the Innersphere, and that ComStar was able to kill the billions of people needed to make this a possibility without anyone noticing they where gone.
Your argument is that it makes no sense for the tech to be lost. That's a supportable argument.
However, in the fictional setting, the underlying premise is that the tech was lost. So, how do we account for that? If it's good enough for both a backwater and the Lyran capital, that's a strong argument for the central planetary mainframe infrastructure to be standardized, and accounts for the vulnerability of such systems to malicious interference. So, yeah, to try to fit the sequence of events into what's been established, we have to assume that most of the 3,000 colonies extant in 2780 used that sort of setup.
People certainly noticed that scientists and technical experts were dropping like flies. But they attributed it to the activities of their enemies, who'd already killed billions more with nukes, gas, plagues, orbital bombardment, etc. Never a shortage of culprits during the Succession Wars. ROM was good at covering its tracks and shifting blame. As such expertise became increasingly rare, per the early fiction, technicians and their families were housed in underground bunkers for protection, and raids would be mounted to capture them as valuable commodities.
The main issues here is that everyone seems to have this overblown view of Roms capabilities. From the reading I have done their only true successes where in the periphery, and in information gathering due to their control of the HPG network. Outside of this they don't come across as an organization that could pull this off.
In some texts, the Maskirovka comes off as blisteringly incompetent, thuggish, and ineffective. In others, they're masters of the quintuple fakeout, capable of bringing down an entire planetary government with a well orchestrated terror campaign, and able to infiltrate super-commandos into the heart of enemy strongholds.
Similarly, ROM is as capable as the plotline demands. Sometimes they're making colossal messes that kill millions as "collateral damage" (usually blamed on "rogue agents"). Sometimes they're manipulating events behind the scenes to start new rounds of the Succession Wars. If the sources say they successfully executed Operations HOLY SHROUD and HOLY SHROUD TWO (Hyperpulse Boogaloo), then they were capable of doing so at that juncture.
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I want to throw in, that we have no clue how the hell the pyramids were built or how it could really have been possible with what they had available. Yes, we have theories, but nothing definitive.
We also have no clue how to rebuild Notre Dame. We have lost the knowledge of how things were done back then. The French are now throwing a lot of money at people to find out how the heck Notre Dame was constructed and how they could ever be able to rebuild it how it was. It's not absolutely certain they can. We are talking low tech here, very low tech. They cannot do it.
And that is without someone assassinating everyone who finds out how to do it. It gets a lot more difficult if someone starts doing that.
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Your argument is that it makes no sense for the tech to be lost. That's a supportable argument.
However, in the fictional setting, the underlying premise is that the tech was lost. So, how do we account for that? If it's good enough for both a backwater and the Lyran capital, that's a strong argument for the central planetary mainframe infrastructure to be standardized, and accounts for the vulnerability of such systems to malicious interference. So, yeah, to try to fit the sequence of events into what's been established, we have to assume that most of the 3,000 colonies extant in 2780 used that sort of setup.
People certainly noticed that scientists and technical experts were dropping like flies. But they attributed it to the activities of their enemies, who'd already killed billions more with nukes, gas, plagues, orbital bombardment, etc. Never a shortage of culprits during the Succession Wars. ROM was good at covering its tracks and shifting blame. As such expertise became increasingly rare, per the early fiction, technicians and their families were housed in underground bunkers for protection, and raids would be mounted to capture them as valuable commodities.
In some texts, the Maskirovka comes off as blisteringly incompetent, thuggish, and ineffective. In others, they're masters of the quintuple fakeout, capable of bringing down an entire planetary government with a well orchestrated terror campaign, and able to infiltrate super-commandos into the heart of enemy strongholds.
Similarly, ROM is as capable as the plotline demands. Sometimes they're making colossal messes that kill millions as "collateral damage" (usually blamed on "rogue agents"). Sometimes they're manipulating events behind the scenes to start new rounds of the Succession Wars. If the sources say they successfully executed Operations HOLY SHROUD and HOLY SHROUD TWO (Hyperpulse Boogaloo), then they were capable of doing so at that juncture.
I will and do except that this is a fictional universe and the writers wanted it this way.
The doesn't in any way keep it from being a plot hole or a Hanging Plot Hooks.
Just like how ROM, DEST, and Wolfnet can be super agents in book, and completely incapable of finding the light switch in their own house the next.
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This has to be the worst analogy I have every seen. Of course I would not be able to setup mass production
1. I'm not an aerospace engineer. (I'm a network construction and administration specialist)
2. I don't have anywhere near the resources to do it I'm just one man.
Now let me reveres this on you if I was to slap down a new wiring and network diagram how long would it take you to set it up.
Now I could do the same thing to a newly graduated Network engineer and they could have it done fairly quickly.
If someone was to hand over the plans for an F-35 or even just the plane itself to china I would bet they would have one flying in under 2 years.
This type of argument is used all the time and it never is true. Yes you are right if I gave a F-35 to a farmer they would probably not be able to reverse engineer.
But if I gave it to a group of aerospace engineers and funded them, They more then likely could.
It truly depends on the level of tech we are talking about, and contrary to popular belief Clan tech was not that far beyond Star league tech. As the Innersphere was able to copy a bulkier less powerful version of the weapons fairly quickly. Now I would give 5-10 years for that but they did it in less then 4 years. With that out of the way I would at most say it would take 10-20 years for them to duplicate the tech seeing as they not only had the finished equipment in front of them but later on had Clan techs that could help (Nova cat,WIE)
Even on are own planet many nations have got a hold of foreign equipment and reverse engineered it fairly quickly. Russia did it quite a lot during the second wold war, and was able to reverse engineered new forms of aircraft titanium just by visiting a British factory and wearing sticky shoes to collect samples (see the mig- 17). Plus their version on multiple occasions were better they the vehicle they where copying.
Another misquoted and misused statement. The issues is not can the US build infrastructure to manufacture Saturn V rockets. The issues is that it is not cost efficient to backwards engineer a single use item for a mission that has no real purpose, as it would not advance science or increase our knowledge of space and space travel.
No actually I wouldn't, As these are truly not example of in service weapons in that sense. These items you are talking about are export surplus or phased out items.
Or in the case of the battleships, decommissioned vehicles. As a former Air Force crew chief I can tell you that this happens on some of our older planes all the time, and the parts or equipment are not lostech, they are just not mass-produced anymore , an example being one of the bolts on the B-1B (the plane I worked on) having to be specially machined since it was a torque bolt and had special shear tolerances. Now the manufacture no longer made the part or any part for the plane because it was not part of the original contract after the aircraft's were made (got to love government foresight). The part is still able to be made by a machine shop but just cost more now.
Nah . . . this really gets pretty well addressed in Turtledove's World War books. A better example is go back and hand a modern car to Henry Ford right after the Model T line kicked off. He can duplicate some things . . . like maybe the tires, avoiding the whole tube/patching thing. Maybe able to set up better controls for ergonomics . . . and when he test drives the car, he is going to understand gas/break but will be looking for how to shift and unless someone shows him, he is not going to understand power windows or locks . . . To duplicate the modern car, even for a guy with the money and who is in the business of cars means he has to create all sorts of industries that feed into that production- microchips, computers, composite/plastics, more advanced distilling to create the proper fuel (without that its going NOWHERE fast), more precision in welding/machining parts- heck the AIR filter today has more advanced filter medium than existed at that time. Henry Ford could duplicate SOME of the structural and technological design aspects but he is not going to be able to duplicate the engine, composite body, or even most of the modern safety features . . . he look, the Inner Sphere managed to build their own XL engines, DHS, OmniMechs and BattleArmor but they are not clones so they are bulkier or if same size not as capable. IS BA with missile packs cannot jump until empty, the Mad Dog gained 10 tons to become the Avatar, etc.
But as has come up before, by the mid 50s NAIS could hand build Clan ER Lasers at great expense (b/c hand made parts) but to create a mass production program and overhaul the industrial infrastructure of a House is expensive, complicated and would be very time consuming.
Look at some of the studies on how long/hard it is to resume production let alone R&D. The number typically thrown out is that if you close down a research product but then decide to restart it even a short time later it takes roughly 10 years to get back to the point the R&D team was at when they were disbanded. IIRC its efficiency studies used in Congressional budget discussions.
But its not a Plot Hook . . . its a setting artifact. Plot Hook would be like the short story I was reading from Frontlines last night where a fleeing merc group on Galatea in '72 stumbles across a guy with a first name, last name, acting as a farmer has a Templar Prime in his barn, does not use contractions, and calls a merchant 'stravag' . . . who is this apparent Clan warrior with a IS Omni living as a farmer on Galatea?
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https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Betrayal_of_Ideals (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Betrayal_of_Ideals)
Pretty sure that's the final wrap up to the Not-Named-Clan. 8)
The fate of the Wolverines has not been determined and likely never will.
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I want to throw in, that we have no clue how the hell the pyramids were built or how it could really have been possible with what they had available.
Know - we know how they could have done it. We just don't know specifically how they did it.
We also have no clue how to rebuild Notre Dame. We have lost the knowledge of how things were done back then. The French are now throwing a lot of money at people to find out how the heck Notre Dame was constructed and how they could ever be able to rebuild it how it was.
The debate there is more or less should they rebuild it it as it was, or build something new. The destroyed spire was only added around 1850.
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The Wolverine Clan is dead Jim. Survivors may have gone on to do something else, but Nic's last cultural genocide worked. Even for the Jihad or even Dark Ages- they are dead, since it would only be descendants who assumed other identities.
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Another misquoted and misused statement. The issues is not can the US build infrastructure to manufacture Saturn V rockets. The issues is that it is not cost efficient to backwards engineer a single use item for a mission that has no real purpose, as it would not advance science or increase our knowledge of space and space travel.
I work in this field, and that’s a misleading statement.
Even if we wanted to restart Saturn V production, we could not because many of the alloys and materials, welding and cutting methods, and lubricants involved are no longer used. (The asbestos in the first stage is an example.) Not to mention the half-century old flight computers and programming techniques.
Even a society that is advancing technologically like ours forgets how to do things out of disuse or replacement. It is entirely reasonable that a society in technological decline like the Successor States will have forgotten how to build new jump cores or design, develop, and prototype new jump core models. Blueprints and reverse-engineering don’t give you the subsystem suppliers, materials, processes, and programming necessary to build or develop a complex system.
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I would like to add my two cents to ROM`s efficiency.
As soon as some badly needed scientists drop dead / shipyards / mechfactories are blown skyhigh the noble ruler wants to protect the remaining scientists who can build and operate them and puts them in a special unit.
And normaly thats on the capitol planet. And as ROM has a presence on the capitol they find out.
Considering that the most rulers want to brag: "No lousy Davion / Kurita etc Special Forces guys are going to kill MY scientists!" or "Thank God, we protect our knowledge!" and Bingo, ROM knows where to strike.
And even if they are not on the capitol planet they must be kept close to either a shipyard / mechfactory and / or University. Bingo again.
And if some Baron / Duke decides to start a Research base on his own, as soon as the main ruler finds out, the Baron / Duke is either "invited" to turn his precious scientists over to the ruler or he is killed as a traitor and an example to other Barons / Dukes.
And as the ruler wants to encourage les autres (Don`t do this if you want to live!) he will make it very public. And ROM has knowledge to visit another planet.
And I would like to add two plot hooks:
1) What did Siriwan Kurity hide under a City? (I think it was the main citiy on the former capitol planet of the DC, but I am not sure.)
2) the Head-Hunter-Missile.
3) Why does nobody think of rewriting the operating system of the HPGs? (According to what I read the Star League put some Basic programmes into every HPG and added over time new programms. Why dont they now that they know how a HPG works erase the old OS and put in a new one. Just like in Real World where we have thrown out Windows 98 and replaced it with Win10.)
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The Wolverine Clan is dead Jim. Survivors may have gone on to do something else, but Nic's last cultural genocide worked. Even for the Jihad or even Dark Ages- they are dead, since it would only be descendants who assumed other identities.
Still would be nice to know how they died. Personal theory? Two groups. One ended up in the OWA area and just blended in, the second kind of faded away or met up with Com* under TOyama. But as small as both groups were, yeah, any Wolverine heritage just kind of got lost in the muddle.
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1) What did Siriwan Kurity hide under a City? (I think it was the main citiy on the former capitol planet of the DC, but I am not sure.)
I can't find anything on Siriwan Kurita's page or New Samarkand's page on Sarna to do with this. Where did you get this from?
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Probably some stash of valuables moved by a secret society from the old world to the new to hide it from ambitious men.
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Its from Jihad Secrets in the Through the Looking Glass section.
"...Alice Phuong never did find what Siriwan had buried under Imperial City..."
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Its from Jihad Secrets in the Through the Looking Glass section.
"...Alice Phuong never did find what Siriwan had buried under Imperial City..."
Through the Looking Glass? Alice? You know I thought they had tried to kill off any pop culture references & easter eggs in products.
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I work in this field, and that’s a misleading statement.
Even if we wanted to restart Saturn V production, we could not because many of the alloys and materials, welding and cutting methods, and lubricants involved are no longer used. (The asbestos in the first stage is an example.) Not to mention the half-century old flight computers and programming techniques.
Even a society that is advancing technologically like ours forgets how to do things out of disuse or replacement. It is entirely reasonable that a society in technological decline like the Successor States will have forgotten how to build new jump cores or design, develop, and prototype new jump core models. Blueprints and reverse-engineering don’t give you the subsystem suppliers, materials, processes, and programming necessary to build or develop a complex system.
There is a big difference between no longer used and in some cases deadly materials (asbestos) not being made anymore and forgetting how to make current for the time anyway production level materiel and equipment. If the tech is no longer needed for any practical reason why keep up with it. The difference here is jump engines where still being used and had a continual uses. The Saturn V was not and had no farther uses so there was no reason to keep current with the construction methods.
The big question there is need. Is there a reason to even try to make these older techs.
Why do we need to know how and by what techniques the pyramids where made outside of historical curiosity? There are no practical uses for the knowledge. If we truly needed to replicate the building process for some unknown reason and put enough resources behind it I'm sure it could be done.
Why do we need to build The Saturn V? Again there are no there are no practical uses for the knowledge.
Outside of historical recreation why do we need to know the construction methods use to create man of war sailing ships, they are not needed and dangerous to use, but again if all fuel sources and modern materials where gone and we had to rely on wind power, I have no doubt we could figure it out in short order with the proper resources and drive to do it. Look up the Hudson River Sloop "Clearwater" out of New York.
The point is all these "see we forgot how to do this" references always come down to things that we forgot how to make because we didn't need them. They fell out of use because why they where made is no longer needed.
And the idea that before the Helm core was discovered the Innersphere was in a "dark age" needs to be address.
First, most tech (Mechs, Dropships, Jumpships) of the era could be reproduced if at a limited rate. A lot of Jordan Weisman more extreme takes on the era like mechs not being built at all have been retconed by this point.
Second, the term dark age was a metaphor for the drop from Starleague tech levels not a true representation of tech during the era.
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Why do we need to build The Saturn V? Again there are no there are no practical uses for the knowledge.
The point is all these "see we forgot how to do this" references always come down to things that we forgot how to make because we didn't need them. They fell out of use because why they where made is no longer needed.
Actually, Space X (BFR), Bezos, and Boeing are trying to re-invent that Saturn V wheel . . . its what the cancelled Orion program was about, and that was done by NASA.
The problem with trying to make 'new' size jump cores- 7 or 8 collar JS for example- is they do not quite know the how. Outside of ComStar shipyards, no one has the modeling programs, before the 50s no one had built a core that did not go in a current model JS.
When I was in the Army I had TMs for my vehicles, and with that guide book I could repair most problems. I could even tell you how a lot of it worked. But I could not take that book and go design a whole new armored vehicle.
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Actually, Space X (BFR), Bezos, and Boeing are trying to re-invent that Saturn V wheel . . . its what the cancelled Orion program was about, and that was done by NASA.
And was is cancelled because it couldn't be done, or more likely because the funding was dropped.
The problem with trying to make 'new' size jump cores- 7 or 8 collar JS for example- is they do not quite know the how. Outside of ComStar shipyards, no one has the modeling programs, before the 50s no one had built a core that did not go in a current model JS.
Again, this seems to be for lack of trying more then it not being possible.
If you want to tell me that the House lords were find with the current model and did not see any reason to invest the large sums on money and resources to make new Jumpship then find, I can believe that. But to tell me that its was not possible.
When I was in the Army I had TMs for my vehicles, and with that guide book I could repair most problems. I could even tell you how a lot of it worked. But I could not take that book and go design a whole new armored vehicle.
I don't know so I'm asking are you an mechanical engineer or just a vehicle mechanic?
First, a Technical manual is a repair guild not a blueprint. As I said before I was a crew chief in bomber phase while in the Air Force, so I've been through my share of TOs and TMs. :thumbsup:
Second, my guess is like me you were not and aerospace/mechanical engineer, so I would not expect either of us to be able to go design a whole new armored vehicle/ aircraft.
My point from the start was, I doubt any group even ROM at their best from the novels/sourcebooks could take out ever jumpship engineer, student, professor in the Innersphere along with destroying every record of KF theory, and every design for every working jump drive ever made dating back to Terra.
Add to this that even if we take the global computer idea, you can't tell me that there are no hard copies anywhere in the Innersphere.
Now if you want to say that this is just lore for the sake of plot, I will except that.
It is sci-fi after all, but don't try to justify it as anything else.
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Again, this seems to be for lack of trying more then it not being possible.
If you want to tell me that the House lords were find with the current model and did not see any reason to invest the large sums on money and resources to make new Jumpship then find, I can believe that. But to tell me that its was not possible.
That's not to say they didn't try. But there are multiple factors that go into creating a new Jumpship design or KF Core design. All it would take is ROM interferring in one phase of that process, and the House is out a great deal of time and money, and a young engineer/scientist is discredited due to the failure of their project.
My point from the start was, I doubt any group even ROM at their best from the novels/sourcebooks could take out ever jumpship engineer, student, professor in the Innersphere along with destroying every record of KF theory, and every design for every working jump drive ever made dating back to Terra.
Add to this that even if we take the global computer idea, you can't tell me that there are no hard copies anywhere in the Innersphere.
Now if you want to say that this is just lore for the sake of plot, I will except that.
It is sci-fi after all, but don't try to justify it as anything else.
ROM doesn't have to kill anyone or destroy all copies of the knowledge. They can also prevent projects by succeeding by causing "system failures" that render the prototype inoperative or destroyed. Or by corrupting simulations of proposed designs to they appear flawed.
And just because you have knowledge and detailed blueprints for every Jumpship design going back to the first ones doesn't mean you can actually produce them, even if you have a yard. Industrial tooling is a huge part of the production process, and if the tooling isn't available for some components, you won't be able to build complete the final design. And if people don't know how to build that tooling, or the new tooling continuously suffers catastrophic failures... Do you see where I'm going here?
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That's not to say they didn't try. But there are multiple factors that go into creating a new Jumpship design or KF Core design. All it would take is ROM interferring in one phase of that process, and the House is out a great deal of time and money, and a young engineer/scientist is discredited due to the failure of their project.
ROM doesn't have to kill anyone or destroy all copies of the knowledge. They can also prevent projects by succeeding by causing "system failures" that render the prototype inoperative or destroyed. Or by corrupting simulations of proposed designs to they appear flawed.
And just because you have knowledge and detailed blueprints for every Jumpship design going back to the first ones doesn't mean you can actually produce them, even if you have a yard. Industrial tooling is a huge part of the production process, and if the tooling isn't available for some components, you won't be able to build complete the final design. And if people don't know how to build that tooling, or the new tooling continuously suffers catastrophic failures... Do you see where I'm going here?
In all this you are forgetting that Jump Drive construction did not stop.
New ships where made, and new drive where produced.
So for that to be the case the tools where there.
The argument for the loss always seem to come back to the idea that all Jumpship construction stopped after the 2nd successor war.
While this was hinted at in the old stories just like the idea that Mech could not be produced and had to be pieced together from old parts.
All this has been retconed to limited production not no production.
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As to the effectiveness of ROM, DEST, Etc.
This is one of the problems with a in-universe view of the organizations and the Innersphere in general.
Yes I know the point is to give the writers wiggle room for storytelling.
But it also leads to inconsistent storytelling and as I said earlier covert gods one minute and complete incompetence the next.
If you look at most representations of ROM, they are from a ComStar perceptive which is dubious to say the least.
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New JS cores were made through automated factories, but the factories that made the factories no longer existed. This has gone round and round before with folks who are actually involved in industrialized mass production of complicated systems- you just do not build a JS Core factory. You build smelters that create the right alloy in the right manner, you have a 3 or 4 level (or more) specific electronics production pyramid that builds the control units, refining/creation of the proper helium for cooling (heck, that also gets into different designs of the core in canon), solar sail production, solar sail linkage, KF booms for DS, and all the other parts that go into making up a core.
Look at any modern technological device, and while all you see is that device what you do not see is the supply pyramid that has to function to get to the point of producing that product. The larger, more complicated, and nearer the cutting edge a device is the fatter the base of that pyramid needed to get you that pinnacle.
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New JS cores were made through automated factories, but the factories that made the factories no longer existed. This has gone round and round before with folks who are actually involved in industrialized mass production of complicated systems- you just do not build a JS Core factory. You build smelters that create the right alloy in the right manner, you have a 3 or 4 level (or more) specific electronics production pyramid that builds the control units, refining/creation of the proper helium for cooling (heck, that also gets into different designs of the core in canon), solar sail production, solar sail linkage, KF booms for DS, and all the other parts that go into making up a core.
Look at any modern technological device, and while all you see is that device what you do not see is the supply pyramid that has to function to get to the point of producing that product. The larger, more complicated, and nearer the cutting edge a device is the fatter the base of that pyramid needed to get you that pinnacle.
Yes - but at the same time, it's a technological innovation that was developed and could be developed using twenty first century technology.
It's one thing to say this tech got lost because it was treated as an industrial secret and the vault with the recipe got nuked, or that that tech got lost because it was not used anymore but for the technology and knowledge of KF Drives to be lost, a technology that is not only critical but also in contant use and demand, implies that there was more going on.
A lot can be explained away by pointing out production and research facilities were nuked, that engineers, scientists and teachers were conscripted just as everyone else was, that industrial secrets were lost. But not everything.
If we were to be somewhat realistic about this, then I would have to say that the likelhood that the knowledge was lost was in fact...false. That the knowledge of KF tech was retained.
But that it did becoem rare.
Why? Because production and research facilities were destroyed.
Because the economic and academic priorities ensured advanced centres of production and learning were centralsied and therefore easy targets.
Because a lot of knowledge would NOT have been written down on books, but would have been uploaded into central databases which themselves would have been high priority targets.
Because Comstar would have unleashed a scrubbing virus to remove as many traces of KF technology from the Spheres databases as possible. Actually, probbaly not clean, but alter into non viability.
Because by sending teachers and engineers, researchers and technicians to the front lines, and by diverting funding from education into the military the Sphere deprived itself of the ability to teach and prepare the next generation.
Because the technology to build relies not only upon the knowledge of KF Tech, but also the knowhow to build, operate and maintain specialist refineries and production facilities to creates the parts and tools necessary to creates the parts and tools necessary to creates the parts and tools necessary to create the core and any breakdown anywhere in that chain would affect drive production.
So - as the wars dragged on, the databases that housed the knowledge were corruupted, the production facilities used to create the cores and shops were sabotaged, and the people who might have fixed this ended up either getting nuked, shot or sent to the front lines, also ensuring that their knowledge wasn't passed along, contributing to a general decolien in the level of knowledge and the eradication (or nearly so) of certain highly specialised fields. The knowledge would have become rarer - but not non existent. There were people who understood KF physics for instance. House Marik put them to work on a program to replicate HPGs IIRC...they didn't last long.
But if the Sphere tried hard enough, and dug deep enough and poured enough resourecs into the effort, they could probably regain KF tech very quickly. They'd need peace, a place of learning, the ability to interview enough technicians and scientists and get them to write down every scarp of info about KF tech they could recall, and a willingness to tear apart a KF drive or even factory to find out how the things were put together but I think, overall, odds are good that most of the knowledge supposedly lost was retained somewhere within the Great Houses reach.
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The problem with trying to make 'new' size jump cores- 7 or 8 collar JS for example- is they do not quite know the how. Outside of ComStar shipyards, no one has the modeling programs, before the 50s no one had built a core that did not go in a current model JS.
When I was in the Army I had TMs for my vehicles, and with that guide book I could repair most problems. I could even tell you how a lot of it worked. But I could not take that book and go design a whole new armored vehicle.
But those two things are immensely different in the structural side of things. No offense meant, but when / if you were repairing tech in the army, you probably weren't half as qualified for building those things you repaired or inventing improved or variant versions of those than a specialist engineer working for a specialist company trying to wrap his head around how to go from an Invader or a Star Lord to a 8-collar JumpShip.
Being a repair tech doesn't mean you can build anything, not even things you would be repairing every day. If I would hand my car to any repair technician and tell him "make me a copy", he would laugh at me. It's not a matter of handing him a second spare car either, he simply has neither the tools nor the knowledge.
But if I hand a 1990s Chinese car corporation a 1998 Chevrolet Spark or Daewoo Matiz and tell them "copy it", they will take less than 5 years to do so. It actually happened.
And it's not unreasonable to assume something similar for JumpShip technology. All JS technology must exist archived digitally. So you can send all the blueprints, simulations, data and figures to your research and development institutions (universities, corporate R&D) and tell them "wrap you heads around it" and then let them come up with something. In BattleTech, JumpShip technology is perfectly scalable. So going from an Invader or Star Lord to a Monolith is a matter of scaling up the energy output, the size of the core etc. Of course the devil will be in the details and you need the industry to actually deliver the parts, but that is something very different as not being able to come up with plans.
No, for me the solution to "LosTech" always was "there was no option to do produce this" and not "it could not be re-thought again". Why is that the case? Well, I can think of two answers.
First, you can give all data to your research and development institutions, but at some point you need actual parts to start building new JumpShip classes. And since it costs huge amounts of money and you're bleeding high tech gear left and right (constant warfare will do that to you), you need to prioritize. In 1945 the German armament industry had made significant advancements for 20 years, but they couldn't just flip a switch and build all the shiny stuff, because they were loosing production facilities and raw resources left and right. Building jet engines is a problem, when you're short on rare materialy, it's utterly pointless, if you lack jet fuel and run your trucks on wood gas generators.
Second, when your military capabilities are shrinking and you loose units monthly, raw economical power daily and bright minds every year, it might sound feasible to invest in optimized military logistics, including DropShips and JumpShips, but how could you accomplish that? We just have to take a look at the former USSR and its successor countries. Even Russia is still decades behind Western countries in most industrial and social sectors, including medical capabilites and quality of life. In some areas of this huge country, people are even worse off than they were during the 1980s and we're almost 30 years after the end of the Cold War and there were numerous initiatives to get all sorts of aid into the country. Except for a few paragon projects, the Russian military is only slowls climbing back to capabilities on par with its most likely opponents. And we're talking here of the biggest and most powerful Successor State, looking at Ukraine, Belarus, Kasachstan or the numerous smaller countries and we see no such abilities to offensively prevail in a war with their neighbours (including Russia).
Third, Russia suffered a devastating brain drain during the 1990s and 2000s and still is. If you're top educated and from Russia or Ukraine, you will take that offer from Harvard or Oxford or Sorbonne or Munich if and once it comes. Because it will only come once.
And this is ComStar at its finest. Operation HOLY SHROUD might have been about the destruction of Successor State knowledge and might have involved a lot of killings. But Scientists are not necessarily hardcore attached to their Successor State, not in a generation that still had known an interstellar community of research and scientific advancement. I would bet, ComStar made several advancements on top scientists telling them "do what you want, but do it on Terra, we need to rebuild mankinds ancestral home and save humanity from the bloodshed and destruction that is already here".
And then of course, ComStar has another ace up its sleeves. The moment Successor Lords start sending their precious data on soon-to-be LostTech around the ether to build data caches and restart their research programs, they will probably send this data via HPG. After all, HPGs are fast, highly capable and extremely reliable, since they're run by the one and only neutral actor: ComStar. And since ComStar dictates HPG usage rules and can basically decipher every message, it would have been easy for ROM to alter LosTech data. It doesn't take much to alter data on KF-technology to make it completely useless and probably hazardous. Just alter the last digit of some coefficients or constants and no jump core will work in this universe. Or add some picometers to core processor nodes and watch them burn...
tl;dr
It's the complexity of the task and the multitude of actors involved combined with the scarcity of ressources, not the impossibility to come up with plans and prototypes, which made technological progress or even recovery impossible during the darkest days of the Succession Wars era. Once your precious tech is gone, you need peace or at least outside help to recover. Cringy analogy: If all of your world is the USSR and its successors, there are no helping hands and Harvard keeps stealing your brightest minds, good luck recovering in time, before the Clans come.
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Ursus Maior, Talen5000 thank you my hand was getting tired ;D
So as this started as a complaint about Warships lets finish it on that and get back to other issues.
I don't disagree with the idea that they didn't have the funds or resources while fighting a galactic war as Ursus Maior and Talen5000 both said. :thumbsup:
I just don't buy the Jordan Weisman story that they all just forgot how to make them. :P
So in that sense the answer to my question was;
a. The house lords did not want to start a new arms race.
b. ComStar interference. maybe
c. Wartime economy of the houses would not allow it. most likely
d. They where an after thought of the writers and they realized they made them to powerful. almost definitely
As for the other questions
On Clan Wolverine, Even after a full novel on the subject we still don't know what happened to the survivors.
As for ComStar ROM
They tend to be as good as needed by the plot.
Which I still don't buy as they let a Draconis Combine agent;
1. Into their order. ???
2. On the ruling counsel. :stupid:
3. Manipulate them into assisting the DC. :crash:
4. And the kicker, take over as head of the order. :facepalm:
Lets face it, they stink at anything other then information gathering. :lol:
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OK, I should have included the reference to The Blake Documents.
But going through them and remembering something else:
1) Who killed the last real First Lord Simon Cameron (the mining robot accident)?
From the Blake Documents page 112+
2) What is the Tesla Project?
3) What is the truth of the TRIPITZ (OK, as a german I think the name should be TIRPITZ)? Did the ship carry the Cameron twins (the supposed children of the last Cameron) or took Kerensky them?
And all the other things (Jeanette Marik - genetic Projects etc) mentioned in this book.
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Okay, you keep leaping back and forth between WS and regular JS cores- pick one, because the reasons do differ slightly.
For JS- creating a larger jump core is not a 1+1 increase in difficulty, its a geometric curve. Additionally, for the comment they made 'JS with 21st century technology' while true, those JS were not the same as SL-era JS and WS cores. Talen touched a bit on the car example, but drastically shortened up the interval- though I do take your point and IMO makes that Aquarius find in one of the BC stories even more important . . . wonder where that ship ended up- which describes ComStar building their own warships a la the Suffren class. But in the 3SW/3025 does not describe the Houses with Jumpship factories- they have factories that produce JS and have some basic JS theory, but they do not even understand the automation and processes it accomplishes that give them the end result of a finished JS. In fact, the JS lines are slower b/c the automation has not been maintained to keep it at peak efficiency (3050s fluff about restoring lines to order to produce more JS) because of those problems. Which is the point of the Ford example- Henry Ford and his engineers, as bright and cutting edge as you want to make them at their time are not going to understand everything that goes into that future car you hand them. They will be able to improve their own designs with small things quickly- tires perhaps being a example- but they are not just going to be able to plug in revolutionary advances b/c they do not understand what went into them.
Tech has historically been lost all the time and successors were not able to duplicate much later if at all. Naptha comes to mind, the secret was lost when the Greeks were defeated . . . Roman engineering & construction, as a example what came to be called the London Bridge . . . the Saxons & friends inherited a functioning bridge, were not able to maintain it properly but did make temporary repairs like running planks across spans that were lost until too much was lost. Eventually too much was lost for their low-tech repairs to keep it functional. They lived in Roman stone buildings, but if they were damaged they had to repair them with wood. They had the Roman fountains and sewers but did not understand plumbing. The Saxons learned and improved their knowledge base but they did not have the same knowledge base to start with so even with examples they could not replicate what the Romans did- the very simple arch for construction/load bearing escaped them for a while.
So its quite apt that since Weisman modeled the Star League and its fall sort of on the Roman Empire, its not surprising it went with the same loss of technology even for every day life. By the end of the Second Succession War (2863) the ability to build HPGs & new jump cores had been lost by most of the Inner Sphere. With the discovery of the Helm Core to assist tech recovery efforts as well as the creation (and protection) of such places as the NAIS, its not unfeasible that by 3040s the IS was starting to build more JS cores. A 170 year recovery is still faster than a lot of those historic periods.
But again, your arguing about setting . . . not some single line in fiction or sourcebooks, even something recurring like who are the Green Ghosts which was semi-answered.
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Okay, you keep leaping back and forth between WS and regular JS cores- pick one, because the reasons do differ slightly.
For JS- creating a larger jump core is not a 1+1 increase in difficulty, its a geometric curve. Additionally, for the comment they made 'JS with 21st century technology' while true, those JS were not the same as SL-era JS and WS cores. Talen touched a bit on the car example, but drastically shortened up the interval- though I do take your point and IMO makes that Aquarius find in one of the BC stories even more important . . . wonder where that ship ended up- which describes ComStar building their own warships a la the Suffren class. But in the 3SW/3025 does not describe the Houses with Jumpship factories- they have factories that produce JS and have some basic JS theory, but they do not even understand the automation and processes it accomplishes that give them the end result of a finished JS. In fact, the JS lines are slower b/c the automation has not been maintained to keep it at peak efficiency (3050s fluff about restoring lines to order to produce more JS) because of those problems. Which is the point of the Ford example- Henry Ford and his engineers, as bright and cutting edge as you want to make them at their time are not going to understand everything that goes into that future car you hand them. They will be able to improve their own designs with small things quickly- tires perhaps being a example- but they are not just going to be able to plug in revolutionary advances b/c they do not understand what went into them.
Tech has historically been lost all the time and successors were not able to duplicate much later if at all. Naptha comes to mind, the secret was lost when the Greeks were defeated . . . Roman engineering & construction, as a example what came to be called the London Bridge . . . the Saxons & friends inherited a functioning bridge, were not able to maintain it properly but did make temporary repairs like running planks across spans that were lost until too much was lost. Eventually too much was lost for their low-tech repairs to keep it functional. They lived in Roman stone buildings, but if they were damaged they had to repair them with wood. They had the Roman fountains and sewers but did not understand plumbing. The Saxons learned and improved their knowledge base but they did not have the same knowledge base to start with so even with examples they could not replicate what the Romans did- the very simple arch for construction/load bearing escaped them for a while.
So its quite apt that since Weisman modeled the Star League and its fall sort of on the Roman Empire, its not surprising it went with the same loss of technology even for every day life. By the end of the Second Succession War (2863) the ability to build HPGs & new jump cores had been lost by most of the Inner Sphere. With the discovery of the Helm Core to assist tech recovery efforts as well as the creation (and protection) of such places as the NAIS, its not unfeasible that by 3040s the IS was starting to build more JS cores. A 170 year recovery is still faster than a lot of those historic periods.
But again, your arguing about setting . . . not some single line in fiction or sourcebooks, even something recurring like who are the Green Ghosts which was semi-answered.
Again you go to this loss of Jumpship and jump drive construction, yest this is no actually stated anywhere in the sourcebooks.
Per Jumpships and Dropships (yes I still have that book) Their are at least 17 fully functional Jumpship yards in the Innersphere.
The only issues is that these Yards where barely producing enough to cover the losses, not because they were running slow but because it took upwards of a year to produce a Jumpship. This book at the time the prime source for Jumpship information make no mention of Jump core construction being lost or restricted.
It also make mention of some of the other types of Jumpships (ex. Quetzalcoati) also being built in some houses.
So according to this book it was not lost tech but shortage of yards and inability to redirect funds for the war effort to build more that was the limited factor.
This is why after the end of the 3rd successor war their was a massive surge in yard and Jumpship construction, as now the funds where freed up.
And to the jumping back an forth question.
My original question was about Warships, Jumpships where broth into the discussion by another poster, I was just bringing it back to the original question.
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And to the jumping back an forth question.
My original question was about Warships, Jumpships where broth into the discussion by another poster, I was just bringing it back to the original question.
I think that was me, pointing to the problems producing jump ships to show why WarShips were nowhere near a possbility to produce. If you can't keep up with producing the far simpler Jump Ships, how will you build WarShips? They require the same base tech and then some.
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I think that was me, pointing to the problems producing jump ships to show why WarShips were nowhere near a possbility to produce. If you can't keep up with producing the far simpler Jump Ships, how will you build WarShips? They require the same base tech and then some.
Yeah, after I got a PM by a player pointing me to my copy of Dropships and Jumpships that point was made. :thumbsup:
Thus the answer "Wartime economy of the houses would not allow it." ;)
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This book at the time the prime source for Jumpship information make no mention of Jump core construction being lost or restricted.
original question.
Because that wasn't... Oh what's the word I'm looking for... Pertinent? information for what that book was trying to do, which was simply give technical and practical information about the ships, such as their intended role for use in whatever Faction Navy was using them.
I have this book too by the way, both a digital and physical copy, though my digital copy apparently has an error in it, the image for the Clan Potemkin transport is corrupted or something, and won't load.
Anyway, if the book was focusing more on fluff/lore rather than giving players the information to use these ships effectively in combat, then yes, the book may likely have gone deeper into how the Houses constantly clubbing themselves further and further into technological regression, it might have touched more on how production for parts of Dropships, Jumpships and perhaps even Warships was eventually lost, or at the very least severely restricted so as to make it unfeasible.
I forget who it was, but someone along the course of this thread mentioned the construction/material pyramid, or however they phrased it, and that's the key factor. If just one element of that pyramid is removed from the equation, then the whole project comes crashing down on its face.
So, going back to my example of the Scout Class jumpship vs the Avalon class warship, we can infer that the Great Houses were able to keep producing ships like the Scout, Merchant, Star Lord and Monolith, even if production were severely limited, as they were likely focusing their economies on keeping Battlemech/Combat Vehicle production as high as possible, which you touched on...
c. Wartime economy of the houses would not allow it. most likely
Which also goes back to what I was saying about the Scout vs Avalon, they could have potentially been designing new warships all during the Succession Wars, but a lot of small problems along the way, coupled with a massive shift in economies just made it a secondary, or even tertiary concern until A, the Helm Memory Core was discovered, and B, The Clans came a callin', which facilitated yet another shift of priorities. ComStar and The Great Houses figured they would have to engage the Clans in space at some point in the future, and started scrambling to build new Warships, although I don't think there would be any truly noteworthy naval engagements until sometime in the FedCom Civil War and the Jihad. I know there was that one naval battle that Task Force Serpent had to engage in, but that was a relatively small engagement as I recall.
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Because that wasn't... Oh what's the word I'm looking for... Pertinent? information for what that book was trying to do, which was simply give technical and practical information about the ships, such as their intended role for use in whatever Faction Navy was using them.
I have this book too by the way, both a digital and physical copy, though my digital copy apparently has an error in it, the image for the Clan Potemkin transport is corrupted or something, and won't load.
Wrong book.
I am not talking about "TRO 3057 Dropships, Jumpships, & Warships", The book I was talking about was a book called "FASA-1619: Dropships and Jumpships" From 1988.
And it was a full sourcebook with History and even the Operations section which where the first Aerospace rules for this size of ships. As we only had "Aerotech 1st edition" at the time witch only covered fighters and LAMs. It had no Clan ships since they had not been written yet.
Anyway, if the book was focusing more on fluff/lore rather than giving players the information to use these ships effectively in combat, then yes, the book may likely have gone deeper into how the Houses constantly clubbing themselves further and further into technological regression, it might have touched more on how production for parts of Dropships, Jumpships and perhaps even Warships was eventually lost, or at the very least severely restricted so as to make it unfeasible.
The whole first half of the book was fluff/lore. Warships where not in there because they would not be written about or even exist till "TRO 2750" a year later.
I forget who it was, but someone along the course of this thread mentioned the construction/material pyramid, or however they phrased it, and that's the key factor. If just one element of that pyramid is removed from the equation, then the whole project comes crashing down on its face.
Not relevant because nothing had been removed from the equation as construction of Jumpships continued.
So, going back to my example of the Scout Class jumpship vs the Avalon class warship, we can infer that the Great Houses were able to keep producing ships like the Scout, Merchant, Star Lord and Monolith, even if production were severely limited, as they were likely focusing their economies on keeping Battlemech/Combat Vehicle production as high as possible, which you touched on...
Which also goes back to what I was saying about the Scout vs Avalon, they could have potentially been designing new warships all during the Succession Wars, but a lot of small problems along the way, coupled with a massive shift in economies just made it a secondary, or even tertiary concern until A, the Helm Memory Core was discovered, and B, The Clans came a callin', which facilitated yet another shift of priorities. ComStar and The Great Houses figured they would have to engage the Clans in space at some point in the future, and started scrambling to build new Warships, although I don't think there would be any truly noteworthy naval engagements until sometime in the FedCom Civil War and the Jihad. I know there was that one naval battle that Task Force Serpent had to engage in, but that was a relatively small engagement as I recall.
They were able to produce these ship because that's what the yards where geared for and these ships fit their needs.
As I said before other ship where also build such as The Quetzalcoati by the Capellan Confederation, and even after the Helm Memory Core was discovered very few new designs were created (2 Innersphere), and even in 3040 it still took a year to build Jumpships.
The battle was called "Trafalgar"
Innersphere force: 1 Battlecruiser ,1 Frigate, 1 Corvette, 3 Destroyers
Vs.
Clan Force: 1 Frigate, 2 Destroyers
Not huge but it was the biggest Innersphere warship battle since the end of the second successor war.
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Take the aerospace debate to another thread, please. Preferably one in the Aerospace Combat section.
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Katherine Steiner pulled that one via a Lyran Intelligence Loki agent placed with Task Force Serpent as a means of whittling away at Victors circle of support.
Thank you.
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Thank you.
There is, however, circumstantial evidence that the Word of Blake was behind it. High level WoB precentors were shown joking about the specific brand of whiskey used to poison Morgan, implying to me that WoB ROM did the deed and had their agent claim Loki ties to shift the blame to Katherine.
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There is, however, circumstantial evidence that the Word of Blake was behind it. High level WoB precentors were shown joking about the specific brand of whiskey used to poison Morgan, implying to me that WoB ROM did the deed and had their agent claim Loki ties to shift the blame to Katherine.
You know there are times when I think that the writers for Battletech fiction need to take off their "Tinfoil Hats" before they start writing.
Why does everything have to be some Dark Conspiracy in the BTU?
The Jihad was a temper-tantrum by the WoB, nope it was a shadow conspiracy by the Mater.
Katherine Steiner had him killed to whittling away at Victors circle of support, nope is was some WoB conspiracy.
First Lord Simon Cameron was killed in a mining robot accident, nope it was some great periphery conspiracy.
Why can't more main characters die of natural causes like Hanse Davion, or just die in combat like Natasha Kerensky?
Everything has to be a nefarious plot, or dark conspiracy.
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There is, however, circumstantial evidence that the Word of Blake was behind it. High level WoB precentors were shown joking about the specific brand of whiskey used to poison Morgan, implying to me that WoB ROM did the deed and had their agent claim Loki ties to shift the blame to Katherine.
Exactly this. While Lucas Penrose was indeed at some point in time a Loki operative, there was never any confirmation, that Katrina was the moustache-swirling mastermind behind.
Simply remains unsolved. And maybe it should stay that way.
I found some of the resolutions of the plot hooks, they chose not to follow to feel too lackluster in their execution due to that fact that true novels were missing.
For example the vanishing of the LAS Arthur Steiner-Davion was brilliantly build up from a narrative standpoint. But the throwaway explanation years later, that WoB bombed it away with a Super-Jump because of the "misuse of the name of the one foretold" felt meh.
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You know there are times when I think that the writers for Battletech fiction need to take off their "Tinfoil Hats" before they start writing.
Why does everything have to be some Dark Conspiracy in the BTU?
The Jihad was a temper-tantrum by the WoB, nope it was a shadow conspiracy by the Mater.
Katherine Steiner had him killed to whittling away at Victors circle of support, nope is was some WoB conspiracy.
First Lord Simon Cameron was killed in a mining robot accident, nope it was some great periphery conspiracy.
Why can't more main characters die of natural causes like Hanse Davion, or just die in combat like Natasha Kerensky?
Everything has to be a nefarious plot, or dark conspiracy.
Well, i think as IRL; you will always have people who wonder; but yes; I agree.
I'm not saying that we need to have someone offed from blood poisoning derived from a stubbed toe. But all these dangling threads canbe a bit messy if taken too far.
I admit; I like the Jihad conspiracy; what were the WOB planning BEFORE the poo hit the fan? Because it's fascinating logistically and as a what-if. Because there exist some evidence for several theories and each one is interesting.
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Why does everything have to be some Dark Conspiracy in the BTU?
Everything has to be a nefarious plot, or dark conspiracy.
Cause if there weren't conspiracies everywhere the life of Grayson Death Carlyle would have been very different indeed.
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are you trying to tell me that people just fight wars? without being tricked by a decades-long conspiracy?
clearly a blakist lie meant to throw us off the trail
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Cause if there weren't conspiracies everywhere the life of Grayson Death Carlyle would have been very different indeed.
The IP should do What IF? products just for this very purpose.
What IF? Everything that happened to the Gray Death Legion was a spinoff of Carlyle's paranoid delusions??? Could be a cool RP campaign; the boss of your merc company is insane and thinks the bogeymen are after him and uses that as his excuse to drag you through one mess after another.