I don't know old wargames enough to guess what the mechanical inspirations were. Keith Laumer's
Bolo series seems like the obvious inspiration for BattleMech designation codes; that suggests Ogre, which in turn suggests Car Wars.
I've heard of "Hammer's Slammers" and "Canticle for Liebowitz" but never thought of them in this context, so I might give them a read next. Thanks for the suggestions guys!
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On that note, anybody ever read Gordon R Dickson's "Dorsai!" (1959)?
I think
Canticle for Leibowitz is sort of like
Starship Troopers, in that lots of later fiction owe it a general debt. The specific scene that struck me, though, is where a relatively civilized nation wants to ally with a relatively illiterate and warlike people - to me, it resembles Melissa's marriage with Hanse, but it could also be that
everyone is just copying whatever history the GoT Daenerys/Drogo marriage is based on.
I haven't read the
Dorsai! saga; perhaps I'll borrow it from my brother. (I'm currently reading
Moby Dick, and it's slow going because, well... it's
Moby Dick. For what it's worth, I've not found it to have much relation with BattleTech.)
"Foundation" and "Shogun" on the other hand feel like a stretch, but I hadn't thought of either in that light before, and new perspectives are always good.
Shogun's tea ceremonies are the first, last and only scenes I need to clinch it's influence on BattleTech.;) There's also how widely read it was at the time; judging from Wikipedia, it'd be more surprising if it
weren't an influence.
Foundation, besides having the Illuminati tech-priests on the former imperial throneworld, also has a couple short chapters in the merchant-prince era showing the difference between calculating FTL coordinates by hand and by computer. That's something you see in the
DropShips and JumpShips rules, though I don't know if it came directly to BT or indirectly via Traveller. Whoever wrote the old Marik book certainly had Foundation in mind: both "merchant princes" and "psychohistory" are mentioned. (I want to say BattleTech also has a parallel in that both Trantor and Terra tore old cities down to restore greenery, but I think they do it at different phases of their civilization.)
Dune is also a likely influence on the Free Worlds League specifically, given that their throneworld is named Atreus and their logo is an eagle.
I haven't thought of more TV influences, but I do want to call out Hanse Davion's heart attack as an homage to
Dougram; that suggests the treacherous minister there might be the inspiration for Michael Hasek-Davion.
I'll tease you with the premise - Earth and its colonies are controlled by 4 states, policed by 1 supposedly neutral military organisation who also controls space traffic and communication. A bunch of war orphans who are forced to be child soldiers set up a mercenary unit with Lostech they found.
Huh. That could almost be the pitch for
Dougram.
Of the few
Gundam shows I've watched (which does not include the more recent shows you mentioned, unfortunately), I think
Gundam 008th MS Team is closest to BattleTech.