Portraying the tech decline of the Succession Wars?

[cypher226]

I've recently started a new mechwarrior campaign following an SLDF unit starting just before the fall of the star league. I'm planning to have this run through the periphery revolt, the liberation of terra, and ultimately the decision to stay or go on the Exodus.

If the party decide to stay (or even if they go), the campaign will continue into 1SW (there will be other NPC characters who will elect to stay who will become the new PC's in this case). This means they will be in for further warfare and even deeper despair as they try to navigate the rapidly collapsing uneasy peace  :D >:D

So, how would you portray the loss of technology over time? Obviously it's going to be most obvious when they can't get replacement high tech weapons or armour etc - I'm just canvassing for ideas here, anything welcome!  :)

[Mendrugo]

News stories of delays and shortages as key pieces of tech infrastructure fail and can’t be replaced.  Descriptions of people jury rigging work arounds to keep things moving, albeit at a lesser quality level, like fusion engines being stripped from civilian vehicles for military use, and the vehicles being retrofitted for internal combustion.  Heck, you could even see city buses with the engines stripped out being hitched to horses/raxxen and pulled through the streets with the driver steering with reins.

For your characters, when gear breaks in combat, depots no longer have replacement components. Their favorite foods are no longer in stores or restaurants due to the collapse of trade or destruction of the supply world.  More wounded soldiers on the streets with Type III or worse prosthetics, as type IV - VI models run out.  Disease outbreaks make entire cities no-go quarantine zones when treatable ailments become epidemics without Star League tech treatments and medicines.

[Sartris]

have a session or two where the party has to escape a planet where the environment is actively failing after the weather control devices break down

[Takiro]

Depends on the region your game occurs in. The Periphery is easy as it is the first link in the chain. The late Star League got its resources and raw materials from this rebellious outer ring of humanity which they handicapped during rebuilding. Key infrastructure requires parts from Terra in order to run. At the start of their rebellion prices would jump and shortly after Periphery infrastructure would breakdown.

Even before the Amaris Coup the unified economy was breaking down and then the Usurper throws a monkey wrench into everything. I could see him and lackeys trying to extort things for sensitive medicines which had before extended life spans into the stratosphere. The elderly would be affected as would massive engineering projects which could have transformed regions for years to come.

So you have stories thanks to an HPG network cobbled together by the SLDF of varying degrees of calamity. The lionshare of news would still be on Operate Liberation at this time and events your looking for would be background noise. This follows into the Succession Wars as attention is focused on claimants to Star Throne.

[cypher226]

Fantastic. That's exactly what I was looking for. The horse drawn buses idea is a great touch. Now to look up what size fusion engine a bus would need, and what kind of military vehicle it could power  :D

[Mendrugo]

Fantastic. That's exactly what I was looking for. The horse drawn buses idea is a great touch. Now to look up what size fusion engine a bus would need, and what kind of military vehicle it could power  :D

Gotta fess up - cribbed that one from Chris Claremont in X-Men 141.

[Lamont-Cranston]

They wouldn't experience anything major initially, but in the multi-decade 1st Succession War as factory complexes are nuked and industrial worlds decimated logistics would begin struggle, i.e. "We're not going to be getting anymore Arrow IVs for some time now..."

[glitterboy2098]

tech decline wasn't really in effect for the 1st succession war.. you'd just get logistics issues as the fighting destroyed infrastructure.
you start to see tech decline in the 2nd succession war.. most of the advanced tech (especially the stolenacquired star league stuff) would have been lost in the attrition of the 1st war, and the loss of factories and infrastructure limits new production, so advanced tech becomes more the provenance of elite units and the upper nobility. but even in the 2nd war advanced tech still exists, it is just rarer. and the fighting causing most of it to be lost to attrition. setting the stage for the 3rd war where the techloss is pretty much complete.

[Mendrugo]

Frankly, I'd always seen the First Succession War as what should have been a very high-tech conflict, as every faction wheels out the Uber-Weapons their R&D teams have been working on for decades and squirreling away - things intended to shock and awe the enemy and change the future of warfare.  Once all those get ground up and spat out by the far more numerous 'Mech and conventional forces, not to mention nukes, nukes, and more nukes, then the technological decline begins to set in.

We (sort of) saw this in the old comic book series, when a Lyran WarShip is dispatched to drop off a 'Mech lance to check out a Kurita research station, and they get attacked by a "BioMech" - which appears to either be a 'Mech-sized Kaiju with massive cybernetic upgrades, or a 'Mech-sized animalistic (taser in the tail) exosuit (like a big ProtoMech) with a trained animal wired in to control it from inside. 

[Phantom000]

Not all technology fails at the same time. Some will fail more quickly because its more delicate, or maybe because its just getting used. As bits and pieces fail armies would use more primitive means to try and fill the gaps. I imagined this is why most IS units have this broad mix of different machines but some places could take this even further.

Imagine a couple of medium mechs being supported by guys on horse back, half of them with lances instead of rifles. The mechs still work but every thing else stopped working, maybe stripped for parts for the mechs. So if you aren't a mechwarrior your down to hand guns and horses.

This is probably more post Succession Wars, but I had an idea of a planet that was out of contact for so long they actually forgot there were other planets out there.

[Dmon]

Not all technology fails at the same time. Some will fail more quickly because its more delicate, or maybe because its just getting used. As bits and pieces fail armies would use more primitive means to try and fill the gaps. I imagined this is why most IS units have this broad mix of different machines but some places could take this even further.

Imagine a couple of medium mechs being supported by guys on horse back, half of them with lances instead of rifles. The mechs still work but every thing else stopped working, maybe stripped for parts for the mechs. So if you aren't a mechwarrior your down to hand guns and horses.

This is probably more post Succession Wars, but I had an idea of a planet that was out of contact for so long they actually forgot there were other planets out there.

There are planets in the BTU that have regressed to hunter gatherer societies. Annapolis and Farhome are good examples.

[Fallen_Raven]

You also need to remember that Operation Holy Shroud didn't start day one. They time to set up, and made sure they stayed out of sight for the most part. So the average person doesn't realize how much information is lost until a decade later when the news is talking about shortages of people qualified to operate certain equipment ordo specialized jobs.