Anyone else sick of the blackout?

[Valkerie]

- Arguments about the state of the IP might be less heated if we all realize different people are here for very different reasons, and there is no "correct" way to interact with BattleTech.

This.  We are all here for Battletech, but why we are each here can be very different.  I personally read up on the fiction/sourcebooks and wargame, but next to no roleplaying.  I have my wishes and desires of where I want to see the IP go, but I'm not going to get bent out of shape because someone else wants something different.

[SCC]

Roleplaying: Require player agency and centricity. The players must be the heroes of the story. So any RPG based on literature (not only BTU, but any game based on Lord of the Rings or Dune or Game of Thrones or whatever) immediately runs into the problem of either sidelining the characters into minor roles, or allowing players to impact major events and thus have any future fiction in the series be useless as a source of game ideas. Players want to know "What can my character do next?"

The number of novels and short stories that focus on minor merc units, starting with the GDL would indicate otherwise.

Miniature Tabletop Wargaming: Require things like (re)playability, scalability, fairness and fun. Both sides must have a chance of winning, whatever that means in each scenario, which precludes against having one side represented by PCs the other by NPCs. This seems to be the crowd that wants more 'stuff.' More designs, more minis, more stuff to collect. "What can I buy next?"

Without new 'stuff' the game will get old and people will stop playing it, at least as much.

[Mendrugo]

I use the fiction and setting as a jumping off point for my own campaigns/scenarios/RPG sessions, etc. 

I'm fine with the fact that whatever happens on my table doesn't affect the canon, or the setting as experienced by others.  By looking at it as a resource for adding context to what would otherwise be a simple brawl, I can provide players with motivation - a reason to care about whether the mission succeeds beyond immediate XP or Warchest Point rewards.

The Dark Age blackout period gives plenty of material for providing context, but I'm not stuck there.  I could just as well, today, launch a Third Succession War game, or an Age of War game.  If/when post-ilClan 3250 material comes out, that, too, could be fodder for interesting scenario backgrounds/settings. 

You're never "stuck" in one era, at least as far as mining the source material for elements to add spice to your game is concerned.

[Dubble_g]

The number of novels and short stories that focus on minor merc units, starting with the GDL would indicate otherwise.

I'm a little confused. Those are novels, not RPGs.

Player agency is generally regarded to be central to RPGs, otherwise the players are simply railroaded into following the GM's plot.

For this reason, most RPG groups I've ever seen or heard about tend to avoid major setting events and focus on minor units or campaigns. For RPG groups, the lack of adventure hooks or RPG material may be an issue, but not the timeline itself, as situations and events are limited only by their imaginations.

On the contrary, too much lore tends to restrict RPGs, which is why most RPG settings will leave many things vague.

Without new 'stuff' the game will get old and people will stop playing it, at least as much.

This is written like a rebuttal, but that's exactly what I'm saying.

The tabletop wargamer may want new units, new minis, new maps, expanded or revised rules or new published scenarios, but as with the RPG example above, the timeline may simply be a means to an end, not the objective for such players.

As we saw in this thread, some people are quite happy to play in 3025 or Clan Invasion, yet those players can still be profitably serviced with new or refreshed products such as a $2 million Kickstarter. They don't need the timeline to be satisfied.

My conclusion (which everyone keeps ignoring) is that how you interact with BT will determine whether or not you find the lack of timeline progression frustrating or not. And I don't think we can demand that RPGers or Wargamers be frustrated with it, when the timeline may have little or nothing to do with how they play.

See my second post, above.

[Colt Ward]

Hm, I've been quote-replied twice but I gotta be honest here guys, I'm having trouble seeing how the replies relate to my post. Maybe my point wasn't clear enough. Viz,

- BattleTech spans a number of genres: Fiction, RPG, Wargame

- Each genre attracts different people, and consumers/players in each genre want different things

e.g. The blackout is an issue that affects strategic, interstellar communications, which are not modeled in the tactical tabletop game, and therefore a bigger issue for people who want a story than it is for people who want a tabletop game. For wargamers, that lack of new products is more an issue than the timeline not advancing--which is a slightly different issue that can be addressed in many ways, not just through the timeline.

- For that reason, I feel each person's attitude towards the lack of advancement in the timeline probably depends a lot on how you interact with the game: for fiction, for the RPG or for the wargame.

- Arguments about the state of the IP might be less heated if we all realize different people are here for very different reasons, and there is no "correct" way to interact with BattleTech.

Hm, guess I left it off but . . . we also have folks replying who conflate the HPG blackout with the lack of ilClan, which was due to how the OP posted his question- he wants HPGs back functioning I guess.  Its not . . . and sorry, the HPG network is not coming back like it was pre-3132 for decades.  Not having HPG communication does not break the setting.

Kidd is complaining about a setting constant . . . its like complaining that Katherine took over the Lyran half of the FedCom.  You can argue it should not have happened, internal failsafes should have prevented her, etc . . . but it happened and it took nearly 10 in-universe years to resolve.  The Capellans who hated the St Ives forming had to wait over 30 universe years for them to be pulled back in. 

We have had plot advancement about the Blackout . . . in fact, it was a major portion of one novel with regards to Tucker Harwell, hidden Blakists, and a Republic Knight named Alexi Holt.  Bits were in books about people trying to solve it, Bonfire opened with a group trying to penetrate the Fortress.  We get chunks inside the Fortress of Harwell trying to solve the mystery and pointing to Stone knowing.  Which is why we get the opening fiction of FM3145, it builds on that where he confronts Stone after reviving him.  But the characters in the universe have moved on, its a factor in their operational planning . . . and with it breaking ComStar, I will be honest in that it seems to me the characters have accepted its out.  They are no longer primarily searching for a way to fix it, but rather have to deal with the more immediate problems.

[abou]

Hm, guess I left it off but . . . we also have folks replying who conflate the HPG blackout with the lack of ilClan, which was due to how the OP posted his question- he wants HPGs back functioning I guess.  Its not . . . and sorry, the HPG network is not coming back like it was pre-3132 for decades.  Not having HPG communication does not break the setting.

You might be right, but it seems everything is approaching the same end point: ilClan and resolution of the Blackout. Even more so if you look at Ben Rome's apocryphal blog postings on the subject.

[Ogra_Chief]

Hm, I've been quote-replied twice but I gotta be honest here guys, I'm having trouble seeing how the replies relate to my post. Maybe my point wasn't clear enough. Viz,

- BattleTech spans a number of genres: Fiction, RPG, Wargame

- Each genre attracts different people, and consumers/players in each genre want different things

e.g. The blackout is an issue that affects strategic, interstellar communications, which are not modeled in the tactical tabletop game, and therefore a bigger issue for people who want a story than it is for people who want a tabletop game. For wargamers, that lack of new products is more an issue than the timeline not advancing--which is a slightly different issue that can be addressed in many ways, not just through the timeline.

- For that reason, I feel each person's attitude towards the lack of advancement in the timeline probably depends a lot on how you interact with the game: for fiction, for the RPG or for the wargame.

- Arguments about the state of the IP might be less heated if we all realize different people are here for very different reasons, and there is no "correct" way to interact with BattleTech.

I was just piggy-backing off some of your comments, but did want to point out fans wanting the setting to resolve some of its' "loose ends" was not unreasonable and completely valid given the length of the timeline stagnation. There is a point were the status quo has spent its' mojo. The 'Blackout' is such an event (see below).

Hm, guess I left it off but . . . we also have folks replying who conflate the HPG blackout with the lack of ilClan, which was due to how the OP posted his question- he wants HPGs back functioning I guess.  Its not . . . and sorry, the HPG network is not coming back like it was pre-3132 for decades.  Not having HPG communication does not break the setting.

...

Tech stagnation, space magic engines and incompetent eugenic babies, to name a few, are things that come baked in the BT cake, and are acceptable to me, it's fiction. However, there are limits to hand-waveuism that I'll accept, and I personally could not accept an interstellar civilization without reliable communication. HPG communication is and was never dependent on Comstar they were just an organization that ended up with a monopoly, so they do not matter too its continue existence or use, but an interstellar civilization as large as BT requires a (FTL) HPG communication network to function. It is one thing if the HPG never existed, but it was established as an integral part of the setting early on, allowing said Comstar to amass its' power and wealth. Telling everyone now, "yeah, that FTL comm network... you don't need it going forward." Smacks of plot laziness and increasing hand-waveuism. Since it was needed before. Which the OP rightly alluded to. Because, if moving forward we're not even going to bother with realism, and we're going full on fantasy, then I would like to load gremlins into my LRM's simply for the shenanigans and giggles. Also, I'd like my MG's to shoot candy filled with love and hugs.

Not confusing reality with quasi-sci-fi, but no major civilization ever maintained itself without a reliable communication network. BT should be no different. Make HPG's great again! Just my observation.

Also, IlClan is likely a red herring at this point. There are people on this forum that could have written that book three times over. Really doesn't matter except for the promised plot resolutions, but I get the feeling everyone waiting for that promise will get the shaft.

[Colt Ward]

Not confusing reality with quasi-sci-fi, but no major civilization ever maintained itself without a reliable communication network. BT should be no different. Make HPG's great again! Just my observation.

The British Empire was ruled with Governors and dispatch ships carrying orders, and currently the Houses & Clans are doing the same thing- the communication still exists, its just got a lag previously not experienced.

You mistook my point, I said it is not coming back like it was pre-3132.  The Star League during its height was the one that placed HPGs on planets- and not every planet got a top of the line system.  Buhl said that even ComStar did not fully understand the technology and building two new HPGs from scratch was expensive.  The Blackout is like the Carrington Event x100-  telegraph wire set poles on fire taking portions of the network out, systems burned up and sparks were thrown.  It took them some time to repair the system . . . well, its been nearly 20 years and ComStar failed as a entity outside of the Fortress.  ComStar sold off assets (JS/DS, offices, land, etc) to keep afloat and cut back their operations even as some tried to shift to planetary com market.  I want to say one of the fiction sections about the Senate rebels deals with how run down a ComStar facility is when he visits to use one of the few working HPGs.  Fighting has gone on around/over some of the few remaining functional HPGs, so how many of them remain working after 20 years is also questionable- though the functioning ship-based HPGs would be in the best position IMO.

IF the HPG medium reverts to its pre-3132 state, then we could get HPGs back . . . but it would be decades before you got any sort of coverage outside of capitals, it might never go back to Star League/Republic levels of coverage (remember, they already had different types), and they would be HUGE targets in this modern time of war.  I certainly know if I was the Cappies or Dracs I would send a raid to hit any HPG that is nearing completion on a FedSuns controlled border world.

[dgorsman]

And I (and likely others) would have no problem with it taking time to bring back online.  I don't think anyone is arguing for a finger-snap "they're all working again" event.

[Ogra_Chief]

The British Empire was ruled with Governors and dispatch ships carrying orders, and currently the Houses & Clans are doing the same thing- the communication still exists, its just got a lag previously not experienced.

You mistook my point, I said it is not coming back like it was pre-3132.  The Star League during its height was the one that placed HPGs on planets- and not every planet got a top of the line system.  Buhl said that even ComStar did not fully understand the technology and building two new HPGs from scratch was expensive.  The Blackout is like the Carrington Event x100-  telegraph wire set poles on fire taking portions of the network out, systems burned up and sparks were thrown.  It took them some time to repair the system . . . well, its been nearly 20 years and ComStar failed as a entity outside of the Fortress.  ComStar sold off assets (JS/DS, offices, land, etc) to keep afloat and cut back their operations even as some tried to shift to planetary com market.  I want to say one of the fiction sections about the Senate rebels deals with how run down a ComStar facility is when he visits to use one of the few working HPGs.  Fighting has gone on around/over some of the few remaining functional HPGs, so how many of them remain working after 20 years is also questionable- though the functioning ship-based HPGs would be in the best position IMO.

IF the HPG medium reverts to its pre-3132 state, then we could get HPGs back . . . but it would be decades before you got any sort of coverage outside of capitals, it might never go back to Star League/Republic levels of coverage (remember, they already had different types), and they would be HUGE targets in this modern time of war.  I certainly know if I was the Cappies or Dracs I would send a raid to hit any HPG that is nearing completion on a FedSuns controlled border world.

All valid points. It's a plot device.

I have no issue with the Blackout as a plot device, though the explanation better be damn good given the robustness if the HPG network prior to the event, it's the on-going feasibility and plausibility in the setting. If it is going to be used moving forward, then shenanigans, no longer believable. HPG's were always strategic assets, working or not, so their operation will have little bearing on a tactical game level; as strategic assets they're a McGuffin for the GM or plotline. Thus, the issue with their continued brokenness.

• Comstar/WoB are irrelevant to their continue use.
  
• On TT they are irrelevant to gameplay.
  
• But, the plotline requires their continued use, because they were required before.
  

Let's turn the lights back on and move on to something resembling plausibility, and call it good.

[Colt Ward]

Robust?  The HPG net was a patched together mess, see Harwell's explanations and talk to any network admin about a 20-30 year old system.

Agree with the first, the Clans administered their own HPGs
agree second
How does the plotline require their continued use?

[Kidd]

No big deal then. We can wait another 20 years to see where the universe goes.

Meanwhile, we play with the minis. Maybe they'll have enough Kickstarter boxes to get us up to TRO 3067 by, eh, 2030.

And that gives us plenty of time revisit the previous eras. Say about a novel or even two a year, we could do Star League stuff perhaps. Can't wait to learn more about the Kerensky-Amaris beatdown.

[Ogra_Chief]

Robust?  The HPG net was a patched together mess, see Harwell's explanations and talk to any network admin about a 20-30 year old system.

Agree with the first, the Clans administered their own HPGs
agree second
How does the plotline require their continued use?

As you mentioned, the British example, it was slow by modern standards, but reliable. Which I took as agreement, that no expansive civilization can persist for any length of time without reliable communication. I have many examples, but your aforementioned example makes the point. My assertion is BT should be no different, without breaking previously established lore.

We were specifically told, ComStar rose to prominence due to their control of the HPG network. That without  that network things go dark and things in the dark die in BT or are forgotten. Which was the lore explanation for why so many worlds died, no one to hear their pleas. The HPG network is the second scale, the other being JS travel, by which the ENTIRE setting was balanced. It was repeatedly stated and insinuated that the HPG network allowed the Star League to govern effectively, and barring the loss of an HPG that world was essentially cut-off from the rest of civilization. The network was demonstrated to be robust because short of physical destruction or interdiction, prior to the Blackout, there were no interruptions to its' operation. To include the fall of the SL, numerous SW's, evil House Lords, eugenic babies, and the Tetatae (j/k).

Put simply, you cannot maintain a BT civilization without a HPG (FTL) network, because we were told so.

Aside, every sci-fi opera has two ingredients for plausibility, FTL travel and comms; it's how they overcome the ungodly vast distances of space... because they ARE required.

[SCC]

I'm a little confused. Those are novels, not RPGs.

Player agency is generally regarded to be central to RPGs, otherwise the players are simply railroaded into following the GM's plot.

For this reason, most RPG groups I've ever seen or heard about tend to avoid major setting events and focus on minor units or campaigns. For RPG groups, the lack of adventure hooks or RPG material may be an issue, but not the timeline itself, as situations and events are limited only by their imaginations.

On the contrary, too much lore tends to restrict RPGs, which is why most RPG settings will leave many things vague.

Yes those are novels, not RPG's, but they show that adventures can happen on a large scale without affecting major events.

This is written like a rebuttal, but that's exactly what I'm saying.

The tabletop wargamer may want new units, new minis, new maps, expanded or revised rules or new published scenarios, but as with the RPG example above, the timeline may simply be a means to an end, not the objective for such players.

As we saw in this thread, some people are quite happy to play in 3025 or Clan Invasion, yet those players can still be profitably serviced with new or refreshed products such as a $2 million Kickstarter. They don't need the timeline to be satisfied.

My conclusion (which everyone keeps ignoring) is that how you interact with BT will determine whether or not you find the lack of timeline progression frustrating or not. And I don't think we can demand that RPGers or Wargamers be frustrated with it, when the timeline may have little or nothing to do with how they play.

See my second post, above.

The problem with people playing in old eras is that it's impossible to make something for them to buy.

[Daryk]

*snip*
The problem with people playing in old eras is that it's impossible to make something for them to buy.

What??  Then why did I just drop $300 on the Kickstarter?

[pixelgeek]

What??  Then why did I just drop $300 on the Kickstarter?

Peer pressure?

[Daryk]

I take it you didn't see my "Inner Sphere Kickstarter Insurgency" thread...

[Mendrugo]

Put simply, you cannot maintain a BT civilization without a HPG (FTL) network, because we were told so.

Aside, every sci-fi opera has two ingredients for plausibility, FTL travel and comms; it's how they overcome the ungodly vast distances of space... because they ARE required.

Several of the Age of War and Reunification War-Era stories, which predate HPG tech, show that the Great Houses and the Star League itself was able to function just fine without HPGs.  They invested in huge fleets of JumpShips and established extensive command circuits to be utilized by dedicated couriers and other ships needing rapid redeployment.

The issue in the Dark Age is that JumpShip fleet sizes aren’t sufficient to establish robust command circuits, and that a whole ecosystem of business models dependent on HPGs predominated.  The 3130s to the 3150s are a transitional period, with businesses unable to adapt going bankrupt, plunging the Spherewide economy into a deep recession.  Eventually, new business models based on post-HPG conditions will thrive and spread, and the Inner Sphere will return to the demonstrated success of the Age of War communications model.

[SCC]

What??  Then why did I just drop $300 on the Kickstarter?

BT is actually an aberration in this way because for a long time it hasn't been possible to buy it's model cheaply, how many of each 'Mech do you want?

[Natasha Kerensky]

We were specifically told, ComStar rose to prominence due to their control of the HPG network. That without  that network things go dark and things in the dark die in BT or are forgotten. Which was the lore explanation for why so many worlds died, no one to hear their pleas.

Not exactly.  Worlds died off because they were insufficiently self-sufficient.  Interstellar transport and communications were the second-order causes.

The classic example in one of the sourcebooks is a world with warehouses full of shoes whose inhabitants starved to death for lack of transport to sell/trade those shoes for food.  That wasn’t necessarily even an HPG issue; it was a jumpship issue.  But it was primarily a lack of agriculture issue.

But if that world had an agricultural sector, its population would have survived, as many other sufficiently self-sufficient worlds have.

Most of the barely/marginally habitable and unimportant worlds died off in the Succession Wars.  What’s left are the reasonably habitable and self-sufficient worlds and worlds that are too strategically or economically important to abandon even in the absence of large jumpship fleets or working HPGs.

One can make the argument that maybe a few more worlds should fall off the maps due to the Blackout.

But the reality is that self-sufficient worlds like El Dorado won’t depopulate because their HPGs don’t work.  And the population of critical worlds like Hesperus will get fed (or get water filters or medicine or whatever they need) regardless of whether their HPG works.

Put simply, you cannot maintain a BT civilization without a HPG (FTL) network, because we were told so.

The feudal system was revived in the BT universe precisely to maintain large, interstellar realms in the absence of FTL comms (before the advent of HPGs) and large FTL fleets (lotsa jumpships).

Again, one can argue that maybe there should be a few more rogue barons running around after the Blackout, but the bulk of the Great Houses’ power structures are not going to disintegrate because the HPG network went down.  Their feudal structures worked well without HPGs before.  There’s no reason to believe they won’t work in the Dark Age.

Aside, every sci-fi opera has two ingredients for plausibility, FTL travel and comms; it's how they overcome the ungodly vast distances of space... because they ARE required.

Someone may correct me, but I don’t think there was any technological FTL communications in Dune (maybe some limited telepathy but no network or system).  Instead, like BT, that universe fell back on a feudal system.

[Ogra_Chief]

Several of the Age of War and Reunification War-Era stories, which predate HPG tech, show that the Great Houses and the Star League itself was able to function just fine without HPGs.  They invested in huge fleets of JumpShips and established extensive command circuits to be utilized by dedicated couriers and other ships needing rapid redeployment.

The issue in the Dark Age is that JumpShip fleet sizes aren’t sufficient to establish robust command circuits, and that a whole ecosystem of business models dependent on HPGs predominated.  The 3130s to the 3150s are a transitional period, with businesses unable to adapt going bankrupt, plunging the Spherewide economy into a deep recession.  Eventually, new business models based on post-HPG conditions will thrive and spread, and the Inner Sphere will return to the demonstrated success of the Age of War communications model.

There were three central pillars established in early BT:

-Battlemechs are, rare, expensive and king.
-FTL space travel was possible, but limited (thus static borders).
-FTL comms kept everything glued together because space travel was limited (not enough JS)

Thus, you can not expect a HPG dependent IS to adapt when a pillar of the civilization is pulled out from under it, self-sufficient or not. There are not enough JS to take up the slack, regardless of era, to govern the volume of space in a meaningful manner. Feudalism is a result, not an answer, to isolation. So, either whole sections of the IS will be going dark (dying alone), leaving huge holes in the map (and plot), or there needs to be something else added in-place of the HPG network and the JS pony-express ain't it. As we, barring hand-waveuism, do not have enough JS (though there are as many as there needs to be) to make an Age of Warfare 'model' work.

I'm not sure if you are agreeing or contradicting my point?

[Mendrugo]

There were three central pillars established in early BT:

-Battlemechs are, rare, expensive and king.
-FTL space travel was possible, but limited (thus static borders).
-FTL comms kept everything glued together because space travel was limited (not enough JS)

Thus, you can not expect a HPG dependent IS to adapt when a pillar of the civilization is pulled out from under it, self-sufficient or not. There are not enough JS to take up the slack, regardless of era, to govern the volume of space in a meaningful manner. Feudalism is a result, not an answer, to isolation. So, either whole sections of the IS will be going dark (dying alone), leaving huge holes in the map (and plot), or there needs to be something else added in-place of the HPG network and the JS pony-express ain't it. As we, barring hand-waveuism, do not have enough JS (though there are as many as there needs to be) to make an Age of Warfare 'model' work.

I'm not sure if you are agreeing or contradicting my point?

The earliest treatment of the BattleTech universe didn't envision any HPGs at all.  Communications from Terra to the Periphery took up to a year to arrive by courier.  (Per Jordan Weisman's "History of the Universe" article in StarDate magazine)  JumpShips were super rare during the late Succession Wars because so many shipyards had been slagged, and the tech to build new ones was lost.  Automated processes kept JumpShip production at a level just barely sufficient to keep up with losses from wear and tear and accidents. 

However, the recovery of LosTech and the decades of Pax Republica peace would certainly have seen a huge boom in shipbuilding, swelling the merchant fleets to deal with the flood of peacetime trade.  I didn't read anything about attacks on shipyards or widespread destruction of shipping during the Dark Age, so perhaps people learned the lessons of the early Succession Wars and didn't attack the JumpShips or shipyards, leaving the infrastructure in place to facilitate a return to the Age of War-era communications and shipping protocols. 

[Ogra_Chief]

Not exactly.  Worlds died off because they were insufficiently self-sufficient.  Interstellar transport and communications were the second-order causes.

The classic example in one of the sourcebooks is a world with warehouses full of shoes whose inhabitants starved to death for lack of transport to sell/trade those shoes for food.  That wasn’t necessarily even an HPG issue; it was a jumpship issue.  But it was primarily a lack of agriculture issue.

But if that world had an agricultural sector, its population would have survived, as many other sufficiently self-sufficient worlds have.

Most of the barely/marginally habitable and unimportant worlds died off in the Succession Wars.  What’s left are the reasonably habitable and self-sufficient worlds and worlds that are too strategically or economically important to abandon even in the absence of large jumpship fleets or working HPGs.

One can make the argument that maybe a few more worlds should fall off the maps due to the Blackout.

But the reality is that self-sufficient worlds like El Dorado won’t depopulate because their HPGs don’t work.  And the population of critical worlds like Hesperus will get fed (or get water filters or medicine or whatever they need) regardless of whether their HPG works.

The feudal system was revived in the BT universe precisely to maintain large, interstellar realms in the absence of FTL comms (before the advent of HPGs) and large FTL fleets (lotsa jumpships).

Again, one can argue that maybe there should be a few more rogue barons running around after the Blackout, but the bulk of the Great Houses’ power structures are not going to disintegrate because the HPG network went down.  Their feudal structures worked well without HPGs before.  There’s no reason to believe they won’t work in the Dark Age.

Someone may correct me, but I don’t think there was any technological FTL communications in Dune (maybe some limited telepathy but no network or system).  Instead, like BT, that universe fell back on a feudal system.

If a world goes dark in BT, it's dead or lost, the Outworlds Outback is a prime example, because that  is what we are told. Those worlds may still exist functionally, but they are now irrelevant to the setting  because they no longer appear on the map. Why? Because they have no way of communicating. JS you say, sure but for how long, and why bother when no one answers the phone?

That is the premise of a functional HPG network, it takes up the slack when JS are not available, letting everyone know we're still here. Using the British Empire (Age of Sail) as an example, you cannot have an empire without ships... but, you can if you have a telegraph (or Satt.) to tell the far flung provinces, "this is what we're doing." Since we do not have enough JS assets, established by lore, we need a functional HPG network.

Or, one of the supporting lore pillars collapses, and the setting falls apart. Not because I think so, because we were told early on JS's and HPG's work together in support of one another. So, if a pillar is going to collapse, then there had better be something to replace it, or I want gremlins in my LRM's.

Again, if your world goes dark in BT, you're dead.

Aside, regardless of how FTL travel or communication is achieved in a setting is irrelevant, they are required because they are used to overcome  the vast distances inherent in a space opera/setting, or no space empire for you.

[Ogra_Chief]

The earliest treatment of the BattleTech universe didn't envision any HPGs at all.  Communications from Terra to the Periphery took up to a year to arrive by courier.  (Per Jordan Weisman's "History of the Universe" article in StarDate magazine)  JumpShips were super rare during the late Succession Wars because so many shipyards had been slagged, and the tech to build new ones was lost.  Automated processes kept JumpShip production at a level just barely sufficient to keep up with losses from wear and tear and accidents. 

However, the recovery of LosTech and the decades of Pax Republica peace would certainly have seen a huge boom in shipbuilding, swelling the merchant fleets to deal with the flood of peacetime trade.  I didn't read anything about attacks on shipyards or widespread destruction of shipping during the Dark Age, so perhaps people learned the lessons of the early Succession Wars and didn't attack the JumpShips or shipyards, leaving the infrastructure in place to facilitate a return to the Age of War-era communications and shipping protocols.

Mendrugo I'm going crossed eyed over here brother. You're telling me that there are not enough JS and that there are... But, it would still not be enough, because if your world goes dark in BT, you're dead. That is why worlds disappear from the map. You don't pick up the phone, you are at best forgotten or you die alone in the dark, cursing the plentiful JS out there refusing to visit your benighted world.

[SCC]

The IS could probably actually survive the collapse of the HPG network, but only by pressing JS into service to act as pony express couriers, which has two problems:
1. Sci-Fi's beloved trope of the free trader/tramp freighter dies.
2. You have to stop using small transports as the number of collars your force consumes is now so much more important.

[Kidd]

@Natasha - Dune seems to have strongly influenced BT, in the sense that interstellar FTL travel is monopolised by the Spacing Guild (Comstar) who use Heighliners (Jumpships) to carry everyone else's spaceships (Dropships) around, and FTL neutrality is enforced by Guild Interdiction. It seems to be all pony express however. The original books don't mention a separate FTL communications method, only travel, and I'm not familiar with the new stuff.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I don't care too much about whether or not the blackout ends, but I desperately want the universe to actually start moving forward again.

[glitterboy2098]

the blackout hasn't really lasted any longer as a product release period than most other eras. less than many (remember how long the FCCW took to get resolved? or the jihad? and we got a lot less material for those)

it just seems longer because;
a) many of us remember the Wizkids game, so the period feels older than it is, though Catalyst actually skipped Wizkid's timeline period for the most part to pick things up right as theirs ended.
b.) we've had a lot of retrograde activity during this time which has left the end point of the BT timeline in limbo. Catalyst has gone back to explore the post jihad era, the star league era, the golden century, has reexamined the succession wars, both early (via sourcebook) and late (via the new starter boxes), and is now doing the same to the Clan invasion era.

both of these factors are unique as far as the game goes.. we've never really had the retrograde period attention before, instead it has always been forward moving timelines.  which has usually been detrimental to the development of new players. nor has the BT setting ever had to deal with catching up to a time covered in another product.

and i think that part of the reason they've been doing the retrograde attention, including the new starters, is to address that "at detriment to new players" aspect.. creating a solid intropoint and progression to get new players started, and then logical transition points for the major eras of the game so they then move to whatever timeframe they are interested in without having to track down dozens of out of production FASA sourcebooks that are of questionable utility given the changes in the game over the last three decades.
also you may have noticed that a lot of the material that is appearing in these older era works increasingly seems to tie into various things hinted at in the dark ages works? it certainly feels like they have been using these works to lay the foundation for whatever material is going to move the timeline forward.

[Mendrugo]

Mendrugo I'm going crossed eyed over here brother. You're telling me that there are not enough JS and that there are... But, it would still not be enough, because if your world goes dark in BT, you're dead. That is why worlds disappear from the map. You don't pick up the phone, you are at best forgotten or you die alone in the dark, cursing the plentiful JS out there refusing to visit your benighted world.

The time period in question is key.  There weren't enough JumpShips to have an Age-of-War-style courier network during the late Succession Wars, and no need for it, due to the ubiquity of HPGs.  There would be enough JumpShips to have an Age-of-War-style courier network during the Dark Age, assuming that pirates and/or Mongol Clans weren't obliterating merchant JumpShips wholesale.

Most worlds that depended on offworld trade and communications died out during the Succession Wars, as the HPG network was smashed and non-functional in the wake of the Star League Civil War (taking out worlds that needed communications), and JumpShip fleets and shipyards were shattered in the First and Second Succession Wars, taking out most worlds that depended on imports to meet food needs.  Thus, by 3025, most inhabited worlds can sustain current population levels with domestic agricultural output, and only rely on imports for non-staple food items.  (Some make do eating meat from local giant cockroach analogs, for example.  Imported beef would be a non-staple item.)  So the Dark Age wouldn't kill off worlds.  It would just mean more bugmeat, less beef, at least until trade systems adapted to the increased lag in communication times, using couriers rather than HPGs.

[Kidd]

the blackout hasn't really lasted any longer as a product release period than most other eras. less than many (remember how long the FCCW took to get resolved? or the jihad? and we got a lot less material for those)

The Jihad was introduced simultaneously with the Blackout, with Mechwarrior Dark Age, in 2003.

The Jihad could be said to have been resolved by 2011 with the publishing of Jihad Final Reckoning.

The Fedcom Civil War was introduced in 1999 or 2000, I'm not sure.

The Fedcom Civil War could be said to have been resolved by 2002 with the publishing of the FCCW Sourcebook and the novel Endgame.