BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Game Systems => General BattleTech Discussion => Topic started by: Colt Ward on 27 April 2024, 22:25:05
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Early 3050s (pre-3055 but after Tukayyid) you are hired by a mech/weapon manufacturer to get samples of Clan technology for them to reverse engineer. They want to be able to improve their knowledge base to produce more advanced weapons than the standard/3025 models they are currently producing at their factories. The contract, of course, pays more the better sources of information you can provide along with a variety of samples- depth & breath of Clans' tech- which will be overseen by the company's liaison which has oversight.
The mission plan calls for bypassing the Clan frontlines, trying to get the raiders into the 'rear' of the Occupation Zones where garrison units are stationed and supplies could be getting shuttled forward from wherever the Clans are from. You might even be able to find a repair facility where the Clans are rebuilding/refitting their mechs away from the frontlines. The merc raiders and their supports have very little specific intelligence about what can be expected on each world, using some information gleaned from Twycross and Teniente along with other House raids for projections. They have a advisor paid for by the company that has experienced combat against the Clans.
Also to consider . . . whatever the mercs end up recovering, they are going to have on the same dropships/jumpship until they get back around the Clan/House frontlines. The mercs will go their own way while the company's jumpship & dropship will continue back to their HQ. So . . . a few weeks . . . maybe months . . . being able to look at what they won from the Clans.
I am asking this b/c I was a bit surprised by the answers in this- https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=84792.0 (https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=84792.0) poll.
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Fully Loaded dropships.
you said "the best" not "the most realistic" the absolute BEST thing would be to find a clan Overlord C, loaded with a full cluster of mechs, hardwear etc... and steal it.
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Fully Loaded dropships.
you said "the best" not "the most realistic" the absolute BEST thing would be to find a clan Overlord C, loaded with a full cluster of mechs, hardwear etc... and steal it.
Including crew and passengers.
Ruger
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Sneak people in to see if there are any senior Technicians or Scientist caste that want to leave, and try to get them on board the Dropship. If they can bring technical files with them that explain the weapons and other tech advancements that is a bonus.
Imagine if you got even part of the Clan equivalent of the Helm Memory Core (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Helm_Memory_Core), the Graus Core (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Graus_Memory_Core), the Luzerne core (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Luzerne_Memory_Core), or the Hegemoney Memory Core (https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Hegemony_Memory_Core).
Even if the weapon manufacturer has no use for advanced Clan farming technology, they can still sell the data to someone else that wants it.
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Best is anything you can get.
The Inner-Sphere should by 3055, have integrated some of Clan's technology in their mechs. War tends to accelerate scientific-growth.
Including crew and passengers.
Ruger
Preferably, through espionage, or a massive lie in which the Clans were duped into believing. The Inner-Sphere should be good at that; they've been dealing with Periphery-states for centuries.
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Players were hired to do this for the Lyran side of StarCorps. They had a previous working relationship with them from the Feddie side.
They hit Steelton - StarCorps had hired a survivor of the 12th Star Guards to serve as a liaison. I recall it was Jade Falcon but not which unit exactly anymore, but the mission was a success.
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The biggest problem is that if you're doing this from the the FedCom side, they're going to demand you turn over all the shinies to them.
They're kind of jerks that way for a while.
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Very true. Players had one more raid for StarCorps, then FedCom picked them up to do the same for them. Some slim pickings during those years...
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I'd say crated equipment would be the best to grab specifically in this context, as ideally that would somehow enclose any necessary technical documentation. Grabbing a Clan firebase's 'Techs would be great in other contexts, but the people who perform maintenance on the equipment aren't guaranteed to know how to build you a new one; might as well ask the kids at a Mechit-Lube in downtown Solaris City if they know the engineering principles behind the Banshee they're doing a coolant overhaul on. Salvaged gear is good but there's no guarantee of quality once something is exposed to a firefight. And as other people have said, an intact memory core would really be the ideal way to get every possible bit of relevant information. Especially in 3055 or so, now that I think about it, because Spheroid scientists were well aware of the extent of the technological gap and should hopefully have realized that understanding Clan materials engineering was the key to achieving mass-production (see the introductory page from Maximum Tech).
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Intact weaponry/equipment is good, but fully intact omnimechs were worth major C-Bills to all the Great Houses for their own omnimech research programs.
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Human resources might be a good bet, especially if they can be turned to the dark side by the Sphere's better standard of living. Even if captured techs can't immediately help replicate Clan weaponry they should still be able to help with R&D.
One of the stories in Slack Tide deals with this kind of scenario, if anybody's looking for some fictional inspiration. "Horn and Fang" covers a Capellan-sponsored raid on a Steel Viper garrison in 3053, the overt objective being an OmniMech pod.
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Going after technical documentation. Descriptions are a lot of use to reverse engineer, and the industrial tooling was always an issue in the Inner Sphere.
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That sort of acquisition is better left to deep agents, not commando raids.
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Generally documentation and design schematics would probably be worth more than actual hardware, and also be easier to grab. That isn't nearly as fun though. I think the holy grail would be trying to get some scientists/technicians who want to defect. There were a group of rogue clan scientists called "The Society" who might be willing to work with the IS in some kind of deal. They probably aren't the kind of people you could trust as an ally, but in this universe who is?
You could say that an undercover agent has already contacted a receptive group of technicians, and the commando raid is just getting them out and back to IS space. Depending on how silly you want to play this you could even work it up as less a commando raid and more a full on Clan-style Trial of Possession over the right to these scientists and their work. Of course, if the IS side cheats flagrantly (as I expect they would do, everything from completely ignoring the clan honor system to maybe even getting some technicians to sabotage the enemy mechs before the fight) it could turn into a big ol`free-for-all anyway.
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I would remind people that the computer inside the head of Phelan Kell's Wolfhound had enough technical data to allow Clan Wolf to build an entire replacement body for it. An intact mech is all the technical data and design schematics needed.
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I still think an Clan-techie, flipped, turned spy and agent for a House, is the best route to go. In Mechwarrior, RPG, it would give a good use to the fast-talk/persuasion-skill.
In ASoIaF, RPG, they treat social as just another form of combat, like physical, with NPCs/PCs being defeated, mentally. Perhaps there are some good rules in Mechwarrior for that.
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I would remind people that the computer inside the head of Phelan Kell's Wolfhound had enough technical data to allow Clan Wolf to build an entire replacement body for it. An intact mech is all the technical data and design schematics needed.
Plus the several dozen others they'd salvaged since then
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I still think an Clan-techie, flipped, turned spy and agent for a House, is the best route to go. In Mechwarrior, RPG, it would give a good use to the fast-talk/persuasion-skill.
In ASoIaF, RPG, they treat social as just another form of combat, like physical, with NPCs/PCs being defeated, mentally. Perhaps there are some good rules in Mechwarrior for that.
Having seen the end results of a social combat system*, I would not recommend setting it up that way. Have the persuader get to know the target and offer what they want instead.
*Exalted second edition, for the curious.
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Generally documentation and design schematics would probably be worth more than actual hardware, and also be easier to grab. That isn't nearly as fun though. I think the holy grail would be trying to get some scientists/technicians who want to defect. There were a group of rogue clan scientists called "The Society" who might be willing to work with the IS in some kind of deal. They probably aren't the kind of people you could trust as an ally, but in this universe who is?
You could say that an undercover agent has already contacted a receptive group of technicians, and the commando raid is just getting them out and back to IS space. Depending on how silly you want to play this you could even work it up as less a commando raid and more a full on Clan-style Trial of Possession over the right to these scientists and their work. Of course, if the IS side cheats flagrantly (as I expect they would do, everything from completely ignoring the clan honor system to maybe even getting some technicians to sabotage the enemy mechs before the fight) it could turn into a big ol`free-for-all anyway.
This could be played as 'holding a position for X turns', to reflect that you have to keep the Clan Mechs away from a hill where they can see your people sneaking the Technicians out. (They thought it was a simple duel of honor, but instead you are 'stealing' people that were not part of the initial bid.)
Or even a single-player game where the enemy units move along fixed paths 90% of the time, but on a 12 or snake eyes will go to the left or right of their path for that turn. The enemy Mechs have some sensors that are just based on distance, some that are based just on line of sight, and some that are based on how fast you are moving so the player has to balance movement, distance, and staying off crestlines.
I would remind people that the computer inside the head of Phelan Kell's Wolfhound had enough technical data to allow Clan Wolf to build an entire replacement body for it. An intact mech is all the technical data and design schematics needed.
That only works if the data is kept in the Mech. As a comparison, how many Boeing products contain the plane's complete schematics.
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I'd say that my example clearly demonstrates that Battlemechs do, in fact, contain the data in the head.