MechWidgets: A Disscussion About 'Mech Production

[ANS Kamas P81]

BT really fails the realism test

Across the board, in all fairness.

[Alexander Knight]

I having trouble here, why doesn't the planet have anti-missile defenses to stop stuff like this?

Because I have ten planets building weapons to crush your one planet?

[Nightlord01]

Because I have ten planets building weapons to crush your one planet?

How are you going to transport them?

Every single response in this vein has always assumed military superiority or supremacy. If you can't generate that, you are screwed.

BT really fails the realism test here, for a projectile of the size your talking about, with the acceleration you want, the drive flare will be visible throughout the ENTIRE SOLAR SYSTEM, it's a giant SOLAR FLARE, it may well be visible from the planet without assistance IN BROAD DAYLIGHT!

Not to mention the weeks/months it will take to actually achieve impact...

[Alexander Knight]

How are you going to transport them?

Every single response in this vein has always assumed military superiority or supremacy. If you can't generate that, you are screwed.

Not to mention the weeks/months it will take to actually achieve impact...

How is he getting all these toys to defend his planet?  The fallacy here is you're acting like there is no limit to the defenses that can be built, but requiring one for the attackers.

[SCC]

How is he getting all these toys to defend his planet?  The fallacy here is you're acting like there is no limit to the defenses that can be built, but requiring one for the attackers.

The specific thought that started this vein of discussion was that there was a limit on the number of K-F Drives limits the size of attacking forces, which is why the attacking forces are so small. The problem with this is that it only limits the size of the attackers force, and not anything else.

[Nightlord01]

How is he getting all these toys to defend his planet?  The fallacy here is you're acting like there is no limit to the defenses that can be built, but requiring one for the attackers.

I don't speak for SCC, he doesn't speak for me. I've only talked about the difficulty and time required to put the plan into effect, not potential defenses. So my question remains, how are you going to transport these asteroid simulating weapons? The short answer is, you aren't. After that, your entire plan falls apart.

An asteroid attack is a wildly impractical attack, requiring a specific mindset and endgame of the attacking faction. You have to be willing to wipe out potentially trillions of people, when you take your own casualties from the inevitable reprisal into consideration. You then have to only care that the planet is gone, you can't want anything on the planet, or to use it yourself. The only faction I'm aware of in game that explicitly used this attack was WoB, and things didn't work out too well for them in the long run.

[Daemion]

An asteroid attack is a wildly impractical attack, requiring a specific mindset and endgame of the attacking faction. You have to be willing to wipe out potentially trillions of people, when you take your own casualties from the inevitable reprisal into consideration. You then have to only care that the planet is gone, you can't want anything on the planet, or to use it yourself. The only faction I'm aware of in game that explicitly used this attack was WoB, and things didn't work out too well for them in the long run.

And, yet, the WoB pulled it off against Taurus during the Jihad. Nobody knew it was them, either, until someone said something after the fact.

So, we have in-universe precedent.

[Alexander Knight]

I don't speak for SCC, he doesn't speak for me. I've only talked about the difficulty and time required to put the plan into effect, not potential defenses. So my question remains, how are you going to transport these asteroid simulating weapons? The short answer is, you aren't. After that, your entire plan falls apart.

Me?  I'm using nukes.

[SCC]

That's actually a workable method of getting the asteroid moving but the whole thing turns into an infiltration operation rather then a military assault.

[Daemion]

I think it didn't matter to the WoB, as they weren't coming in to pick up the pieces. Pretty easy to set up a long-term bomb like that and walk away, knowing that the enemy will be too preoccupied to come meddling in other, more important matters. And, it'll make framing someone else easier if they have a long-standing hatred of someone else, like an interstellar neighbor.

[SCC]

My point/thought was that in a system like Taurus that an active deep space industry there's likely civilian companies moving asteroids around all the time, so such an activity is unlikely to be looked at too closely, unless someone owns the rights to that asteroid. So what you do is set up a shell company which purchases the rights to the rock(s) in question, have it carry out the initial maneuvering detonations and then collapse. Later on a second set of charges go off, putting it on it's final, world killing, trajectory.

[Nightlord01]

And, yet, the WoB pulled it off against Taurus during the Jihad. Nobody knew it was them, either, until someone said something after the fact.

So, we have in-universe precedent.

Noting how WoB ended up, I don't think that's a ringing endorsement.

[Nightlord01]

My point/thought was that in a system like Taurus that an active deep space industry there's likely civilian companies moving asteroids around all the time, so such an activity is unlikely to be looked at too closely, unless someone owns the rights to that asteroid. So what you do is set up a shell company which purchases the rights to the rock(s) in question, have it carry out the initial maneuvering detonations and then collapse. Later on a second set of charges go off, putting it on it's final, world killing, trajectory.

Allegedly, the Taurians found fragments from dropship engines manufactured in the FedSuns, to be honest, if you could possibly find fragments after something has gone through atmospheric entry, I'd be amazed. The impact and friction would be more than enough to blitz any evidence, it would vaporise and then slowly fall back to the planet.

[ANS Kamas P81]

So what about 'Mech production and the bottlenecks thereof...

[Kidd]

First you have to figure out the context of the question. Are you trying to project Battletech as it should be given the factors fluffed out? or are you trying to find the factors which create the Battletech of canon?

If the former, you should be taking known factors and creating your hypothetical Battletech regardless of what the outcome is - aka logical induction. If the latter, you should be observing the known Battletech universe and hypothesising what factors affected the universe in what ways to create the status quo - aka logical deduction.

Tank spam and rods-from-god superweapons is the former - the known factors seemingly point towards this scenario, but it is at odds with the Battletech universe as canonised.

Limited armies and fighting for a planet on the ground rather than raze it from space is the latter - this is what happened, and your task is to figure out what are the factors which led to it being this way.

In your fan-theory-crafting, know where you are headed and how you're getting there, and you won't get lost in logically dissonant what-ifs and non-sequiturs.

So what about 'Mech production and the bottlenecks thereof...

Approaching the question using the deductive approach - Yes, there are widgets bottlenecking Mech production, as well as significant environmental factors.

Widgets probably include - neurohelmet interfaces, myomer, gyros, environmental sealing - all equipment that conventional vehicles don't need.

Environmental factors probably include - expense of Mech production, technical or manufacturing issues, relative lack of Mechwarriors versus vehicle crews, systemic inefficiencies due to colonisation and FTL limitations.

That last factor is underlooked generally in fan-theorising, but IMHO is very relevant to the system - possibly, a vast amount of resources and manpower goes towards supporting human existence, and also is lost in the inefficiencies of data and resource movement throughout vast interstellar empires.

[Maingunnery]

The specific thought that started this vein of discussion was that there was a limit on the number of K-F Drives limits the size of attacking forces, which is why the attacking forces are so small. The problem with this is that it only limits the size of the attackers force, and not anything else.

In an interstellar setting such as BT the attacker might have a far larger and developed industrial/technological base. Thus can be invade with far more effective forces, allowing them to make any defense non-effective. The defenders also have the issue of having to defend a lot of space & surface area, this severely reduced the number of forces that can be at each site. 

[Tai Dai Cultist]

OK, we all know that 'Mech production is limited by some unknown factor......

......So what do people think is the situation?

I've got my own headcanon to explain why the effectively infinite raw resources of the 1000+ inhabited star systems of the Inner Sphere result in the extraordinarily finite numbers of mechs in the five Great House Armies, and here it is: House Armies are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to numbers.

So before delving into headcanon, here's some foundational thoughts that I'd like to lay out that I feel are, despite the vagueness of FASAnomics, fairly indisputable.  In order to manufacture X amount of 'Mechs, Y amount of time is required as well as Z amounts of capital, raw resources, and components (can even call them MechWidgets, if you prefer). 

Ok, so now into headcanon/interpretation.  To me, the mineral resources of the Inner Sphere is in practical terms infinite.  The availability of Z won't be a bottleneck, although additional factors like transportation and component/MechWidget manufacturing certainly could be.  And their lack of availability in the SW era DOES largely satisfy a bottleneck of mech production all by themselves, imo.  Of course I vocally complain about BattleTech 'jumping the shark' post 4th SW, and this is one example of what I mean when I complain about that.  TRO after TRO gets published of new mechs, and suddenly this alone is no longer satisfactory in explaining manufacturing bottlenecks.

To futher explain "low" mech production numbers, especially in the TRO treadmill eras, a bit more is necessary.  I choose an explanation that is backwards compatible with the SW era, so that I don't have to rely on something undescribed going on to satisfy my explanation(s).  That extra thing is seeing industry through a lens that mates the BTU to the Age of Sail rather than the 20th century. 

A key facet of this is mech factories, in my mind, aren't constantly cranking out mechs in the way modern car manufacturers do.  They build them in production runs of pre-planned number, and once the run is up, no more mechs are ever made of that run.  (Of course, there could always be subsequent runs produced.)  The capital required for variable Z would never be fronted by the manufacturer, but would instead be supplied by investors. These investors naturally include the logistical arms of the various House Armies, but critically to my POV it's not limited to them.  Corporations, powerful nobles, arms dealers, hell even pirates themselves through sufficiently complicated shell companies "buy" their mechs from a manufacturer prior to the mech ever even being manufactured.  They shell out the cash, and then wait for ultimate delivery.  (As a matter of fact, piracy being what it is in the BTU, I can't see any major manufacturing enterprise being ultimately sustainable unless it's all on a "pay up front" arrangement.  If the shipment gets hijacked and the buyer never gets delivery, the buyer is holding the bag rather than the manufacturer... and the manufacturer stays in business to "sell" a replacement item...)

So with that view, mech factories conceivably sit idle some of the time waiting for enough backers to fund the next production run of X mechs.  And then a fraction of X never goes into the House Armies, even once the run is underway.  Another thing I like about this view is it's very handy in explaining the bewildering array of mech variants.  If a mech published in TRO 3058 has been available for almost 100 years, it ought to have staggering numbers if it's been in constant production.  On the other hand, if there's only been a half dozen to a dozen production runs of that particular mech over the near-century, it is easier to reconcile why there's not more of that mech represented on the RATs/in the artwork/mentioned in the era lore.  With House Mech armies being small in the Dark Age, you logically can't be dominated numerous mech chassis from ages past, not to mention being thematically wrong since there's TRO3145 to cover that era's "prominent" mechs....

[2ndAcr]

 I have always, in my mind, after the 1st and 2nd SW, mech manufacturers had to almost hand build the mechs. Maybe the rapid automated assembly lines of the Star League era broke down, where a factory used to crank out a thousand mechs a year per line, by the 3rd SW they were down to 100 mechs a year, per line if they were lucky.

 Then the Helm core, in the mid late 3040, allowed the manufacturers to repair/replace those broken lines and hello dolly they are cranking out almost SL quantities per year. That helped me rationalize the sudden increase in mech production around 3050.

[The_Livewire]

A key facet of this is mech factories, in my mind, aren't constantly cranking out mechs in the way modern car manufacturers do.  They build them in production runs of pre-planned number, and once the run is up, no more mechs are ever made of that run.  (Of course, there could always be subsequent runs produced.)  The capital required for variable Z would never be fronted by the manufacturer, but would instead be supplied by investors. These investors naturally include the logistical arms of the various House Armies, but critically to my POV it's not limited to them.  Corporations, powerful nobles, arms dealers, hell even pirates themselves through sufficiently complicated shell companies "buy" their mechs from a manufacturer prior to the mech ever even being manufactured.  They shell out the cash, and then wait for ultimate delivery.  (As a matter of fact, piracy being what it is in the BTU, I can't see any major manufacturing enterprise being ultimately sustainable unless it's all on a "pay up front" arrangement.  If the shipment gets hijacked and the buyer never gets delivery, the buyer is holding the bag rather than the manufacturer... and the manufacturer stays in business to "sell" a replacement item...)

So Mech runs by Kickstarter. :-)

[Iceweb]

So with that view, mech factories conceivably sit idle some of the time waiting for enough backers to fund the next production run of X mechs.

The problem I see with this explanation is that each faction wants every and any mech they can get for the house armies. 
I can't see that house operating in standard economic conditions wouldn't have a deal with any factory that they would fund any production run to try to get more mechs than their foes. 
But then again FASAnomics is what it is. 

My headcanon includes that some of the issue is that just about every mech requires some hand tooling to make it some much more effective than a combat vehicle. 
I think this slows down lines significantly to explain the rarity of mechs but it is not the only answer as to why mechs are so rare. 

[Tai Dai Cultist]

The problem I see with this explanation is that each faction wants every and any mech they can get for the house armies. 
I can't see that house operating in standard economic conditions wouldn't have a deal with any factory that they would fund any production run to try to get more mechs than their foes. 
But then again FASAnomics is what it is. 

My headcanon includes that some of the issue is that just about every mech requires some hand tooling to make it some much more effective than a combat vehicle. 
I think this slows down lines significantly to explain the rarity of mechs but it is not the only answer as to why mechs are so rare.

That works with what I was laying out, not against it.

House Steiner: We want more mechs!
Defiance Industries:   Ok, give us Z and we'll get right on it.
House Steiner: Will you take less than Z? We can give you less than Z right now.
Defiance Industries: It takes Z.  Let us know when you scrape it together.  Or you know, get some other backers to fund the run immediately.  If you provide most of Z, you'll get most of the output...

With regards to a House Army "wanting" all the mechs inside its borders... every Great House has always been fairly happy letting petty nobles and planetary indig forces have their own mechs.  Even corporations.  The only time we've ever seen "mechs belong in military hands only" in the Inner Sphere was inside the Republic.

[Iceweb]

Defiance Industries:   Ok, give us Z and we'll get right on it.
House Steiner: Will you take less than Z? We can give you less than Z right now.

With regards to a House Army "wanting" all the mechs inside its borders... every Great House has always been fairly happy letting petty nobles and planetary indig forces have their own mechs.  Even corporations.  The only time we've ever seen "mechs belong in military hands only" in the Inner Sphere was inside the Republic.

My issue is I can't see a time where Steiner can't come up with Z 
Even every factory trying to get its own Z for a run I don't see Steiner not finding a way to come up with all those Z's 
Sure they may say to the factory it only takes Z-N to make the run you want too much profit and negotiating. 
Sure when Factory CEO is ready to run out some Awesomes their age old deals means that Baron Shinypants gets first dibs at buying the first 10% of the run, and Evil Corp has a contract that they always have 5% of the run for their security forces, so the house can't get the whole end product because other people have dibs on some. 
But I don't ever see a house not saying you wanna do a run we will give you the cash for every mech you can sell us. 
That again is limited to trusted and bonded factories as I am sure there are always scams trying to get cash up front for fake mech runs and such but that isn't what is being talked about here. 
Of course the answer of because FASAnomics is always a valid counter and all I can do against that is shrug my shoulders.   

I just don't see any house not being willing to spend reasonable amounts on any mech they can get and/or build.

[SCC]

The problem then is why do you have so many different models, all the (IS) factions currently have designed in service then they actually need and I'm pretty sure a proper accounting will reveal that they are buying several designs that fill each tactical niche.

[Kovax]

The problem then is why do you have so many different models, all the (IS) factions currently have designed in service then they actually need and I'm pretty sure a proper accounting will reveal that they are buying several designs that fill each tactical niche.

Easily explained by the purchasers being from different military districts, or competing services within the military.  One wants one thing, and the other requires a slightly different set of specs.

It could also be due to buying what's available, rather than what's wanted or needed.  Your TO&E calls for 4 Warhammers, 4 Centurions, 2 Dervishes, 2 Shadow Haws, and a lance of assorted scouts.  The only factories within 2 jumps of you sell Trebuchets and Clints.  You order a Trebuchet and a Clint from them to plug any holes in the TO&E until/unless you can get what you need.  The military district next to yours ends up with a couple of Quickdraws and a Griffin by the same mechanism, because that's what they can get on short notice.  MOST of what you and they field will be according to the official guidelines, but between those "fill ins" and battlefield salvage, there are going to be a lot of exceptions to every rule.

The gradual wearing out of the ancient production lines means that more and more of the process has to be either done manually or "corrected" after manufacture, so the 'Mechs rolling off the lines are taking increasing amounts of time to actually complete.  A few lines have deteriorated beyond the point where they can be used.  Sure, you can still crank out 1000 'Mech left arms a month, but you won't have left legs to go with them; those have to be built mostly by hand.

Once the Helm Core is discovered, and the data that it contains means that some of the production lines can once again be repaired, the limitations become exotic raw materials and transporting those materials to the factories.  Suddenly, 'Mechs aren't rare anymore.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

My issue is I can't see a time where Steiner can't come up with Z.

I'm sure they can, some of the time.  Sometimes, even then, they'd prefer to split Z up across Defiance and Coventry.  If investors outside the LCAF pick up the slack on those runs, then the LCAF is getting mechs of 2 different capabilities for the investment of 1.

I just don't see any house not being willing to spend reasonable amounts on any mech they can get and/or build.

Depends on what's reasonable.  Again, that's FASAnomics, but Great Houses have lots of things to spend on outside the military budget (particularly during the Robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul days of the SW era).   Even in the case of the militaristic Houses like Davion and Kurita that throw good money after bad at the military... only a fraction of that money can go towards procurement when you've got an existing, bloated military machine to maintain.

[Garrand]

Personally I think there are a couple of logical explanations for the low numbers of mechs produced in the IS post SL.

One is the idea of a sufficient population base to maintain & manufacture advanced technologies. FREX, to manufacture spears might only require the population of a village to produce, needing only the services of a sufficiently skilled blacksmith, a nearby source of iron & wood to produce. To make full plate armor might require a town to produce, while primitive gunpowder artillery might require a large town or group of towns, etc. So to produce battlemechs might require a group of well-populated worlds working together, not just to provide resources, but also provide the sufficient knowledge bases & technological support from other industries (from coffee makers to myomer manufacturers) to support the techs & engineers actually building mechs. This also explains the slow output of jumpships as well as other high tech items...

But keep in mind that the Battletech setting is still (even with the tech renaissance of the '50s on) a post-apocalyptic setting. The 1st & 2nd SW were disastrous on population levels, with entire planets becoming depopulated, key industries destroyed, a rapidly shrinking tax base for the Successor States to draw on (not just from dead populations but from rapidly shrinking economies). In my mind, the IS never really recovered from this destruction, and even with the tech renaissance of the '50s on, while the tech was recovered & the knowledge base gained more depth, there still wasn't the population levels sufficient to churn out the supporting industries & tech needed to ramp up production to SL era levels, though it was getting better...

Also I think transportation is a big bottleneck too. Just like mech production, the destruction of the 1st & 2nd SW was disastrous for jumpship construction. And while this too got better, it is IMHO no where near the same levels of SL production.

And then the Jihad happened & the resent button was hit...

As far as actual production runs are concerned, the Houses probably have an agreement that mechs produced by local manufacturers can be bought by: House militaries, landed nobility/militias, authorized corporate security interests, & currently active & contracted mercs within the house borders. There may be a few other approved channels (i.e. Diplan selling Jenners to the FWL, since the DC & the FWL are not direct enemies), but I think that covers the major customers for mech production...

EDIT: also agree that mech production is really, really complex, much moreso than tanks or "conventional" units. If you don't have a SL era production line (i.e. Valkyries), then you're building them by hand & that greatly reduces what you can churn out. The Helm memory core probably had more than ER LL specs on it, but also complex robotic manufacturing technology too...

Damon.

[Maingunnery]

Besides the design complexity, I also think that the materials and components of 'Mechs are also more refined.

Compare them to Primitive Mechs:
- Primitives can be made in more factories (thus likely use more common, lower grade components)
- Primitives can be produced at a faster rate (A more simple internal design, allowing for faster assembly)

[SCC]

Easily explained by the purchasers being from different military districts, or competing services within the military.  One wants one thing, and the other requires a slightly different set of specs.

It could also be due to buying what's available, rather than what's wanted or needed.  Your TO&E calls for 4 Warhammers, 4 Centurions, 2 Dervishes, 2 Shadow Haws, and a lance of assorted scouts.  The only factories within 2 jumps of you sell Trebuchets and Clints.  You order a Trebuchet and a Clint from them to plug any holes in the TO&E until/unless you can get what you need.  The military district next to yours ends up with a couple of Quickdraws and a Griffin by the same mechanism, because that's what they can get on short notice.  MOST of what you and they field will be according to the official guidelines, but between those "fill ins" and battlefield salvage, there are going to be a lot of exceptions to every rule.

The gradual wearing out of the ancient production lines means that more and more of the process has to be either done manually or "corrected" after manufacture, so the 'Mechs rolling off the lines are taking increasing amounts of time to actually complete.  A few lines have deteriorated beyond the point where they can be used.  Sure, you can still crank out 1000 'Mech left arms a month, but you won't have left legs to go with them; those have to be built mostly by hand.

Once the Helm Core is discovered, and the data that it contains means that some of the production lines can once again be repaired, the limitations become exotic raw materials and transporting those materials to the factories.  Suddenly, 'Mechs aren't rare anymore.

Not what I'm talking about, plus I doubt that military supplies are sourced like that, at least outside of the FWL.

I'm talking about how in TRO3025 along you have the Dervish and the Trebuchet, both jump-capable fire support 'Mechs, no faction is going to be buying both under the system you describe.

[Rainbow 6]

I'm talking about how in TRO3025 along you have the Dervish and the Trebuchet, both jump-capable fire support 'Mechs, no faction is going to be buying both under the system you describe.

With those two examples it wouldn't be an issue though as the only Dervish factory is inside the Federated Suns and the Trebuchet is only being built in the Free Worlds League so only those factions are getting the direct benefit of the production runs, although the Lyran Commonwealth were buying some from the Suns and the Draconis Combine from the Free Worlds League.