Niops Association and the Nighthawk

[Archangel]

Can anybody please explain to me how a star league research colony founded to research stellar evolution gained access to plans for the Nighthawk Mk XXI AND the Mk XXII?

I can understand that they would have access to technical data for commonly deployed SLDF battlemechs, armor vehicles and aerospace fighters, but access to a battlesuit whose "deployment was never acknowledged publicly" and were only deployed with the SLDF's Special Armed Services troops who "were so skilled that all the other Star League Member States ever heard were vague rumors of some kind of advanced sneak suit." (TRO3075, p.14)

Yet a stellar research colony who "did not have anything approaching a complete memory core" and was completely ignorant of the Amaris Civil War, the fall of the Star League and the subsequent First Succession War was able to obtain production data on not only the Nighthawk Mk XXI but the non-existent production data on the Mk XXII (It hadn't entered production when the Amaris Coup took place.) and bring both of them into production?

What's next? Is the Niops Association going to be deploying Combat Jumpships (aka Warships) soon?

[Col.Hengist]

I know it sounds a little cheesy. This is how  see it tho. It was a stellar research station, yes. That doesn't mean that's all they did, it just means it was their main focus. It also says they didn't have a complete core but they do have a core. We don't know exactly what was in it. As for the MKII, well it could have been a natural progression. They have/had some brilliant scientists and engineers there. Could be the wobbies/C* were secretly trying to bring them into the fold and gave them the plans...

[Niopsian]

Can anybody please explain to me how a star league research colony founded to research stellar evolution gained access to plans for the Nighthawk Mk XXI AND the Mk XXII?

I can understand that they would have access to technical data for commonly deployed SLDF battlemechs, armor vehicles and aerospace fighters, but access to a battlesuit whose "deployment was never acknowledged publicly" and were only deployed with the SLDF's Special Armed Services troops who "were so skilled that all the other Star League Member States ever heard were vague rumors of some kind of advanced sneak suit." (TRO3075, p.14)

Yet a stellar research colony who "did not have anything approaching a complete memory core" and was completely ignorant of the Amaris Civil War, the fall of the Star League and the subsequent First Succession War was able to obtain production data on not only the Nighthawk Mk XXI but the non-existent production data on the Mk XXII (It hadn't entered production when the Amaris Coup took place.) and bring both of them into production?

What's next? Is the Niops Association going to be deploying Combat Jumpships (aka Warships) soon?

Data transmission error? Someone (contractor, SLDF, BSLA) routed the data to the wrong place. The scientists filed it away and went back to researching. No one noticed because they were too busy getting killed in the Coup.

[truetanker]

They had a SL-era exosuit, the combat exosuit ( Mk. XXI ), the plans for an improved combat exosuit ( Royal (P)AL Mk. XXII ) but since they had no need to build them, as they had the origanal (P)AL Nighthawks. The origanal was kept in shape by all the little factories puttering out hand-built products. Same as the rest of the, I belive Royals myself, SL-era stuff.

Also, I belive they have at least a Bastion or two for system defence, but that is my thoughts. Wouldn't surprise me that they have a SDS grid as well...

TT

[Arkansas Warrior]

I very much doubt that.  Raiders would never make it to the ground.

[Maelwys]

There's really no way to explain them having the ability to produce them. Or for them to even know about them. Niops was interesting when they were able to hand build what they already had, but for them to suddenly discover the Nighthawk was more than a little silly.

Kind of like suggesting that an Antarctic Research station has the plans for the F-22 onhand.

If they have the plans for the Nighthawk, why not the plans for everything else the Star League has? "Oh no, wait, they have the plans for the super secret special Forces only PA(L) suits, but not the Royals."

[Greyhind]

I would fluff it in my games as Niops becoming a rallying point during the Amaris Coup. A unit of Spec-Ops infantry who were in the vicinity re-route to Niops after their base goes down (or perhaps were just working out of Niops as a temporary thing). Eventually old age gets to them and some low ranked scientist gets told to go through their stuff and store it.

[Niopsian]

I would fluff it in my games as Niops becoming a rallying point during the Amaris Coup. A unit of Spec-Ops infantry who were in the vicinity re-route to Niops after their base goes down (or perhaps were just working out of Niops as a temporary thing). Eventually old age gets to them and some low ranked scientist gets told to go through their stuff and store it.

The difficulty there is that Niops was completely unaware of the Coup, the Civil War or the Succession Wars. You could possibly hand-wave that away by saying that they just slipped in and never bothered telling anyone - or the government kept it a secret until the refugee arrival made that impossible.

Barring that, I still think the two most plausible arguments are error or retcon. We have plenty of canon examples of Star League inefficiency - it may have been a golden age of technology but it certainly wasn't one of logistics or information security. The SLDF found the specs to the Reagan SDS in a computer stuffed into a closet, remember.

Or, we can go with the "Niops was really a cover for something else" theory. And while that would be nice for Niops fans it's been done before, and really takes away some from the character of the faction.

Let the nerds be nerds.

[Arkansas Warrior]

When you think about it though a small, unknown research station would be a great place to put a testing facility for experimental military tech.  And unlike something large, like mechs, warships, or the like, battle armor testing can probably be hidden away even from the scientists present who aren't involved in the project.

[Ratwedge]

Niop's would make sense. Black-Op's guys are like "Hrrm, should we join in on all the NUCLEAR FIRE or just go and chill at the highly advanced research planet". Tada, they now have those suits.

Still, what interests me is they have the resources to do it. Sure its not a battlemech but its still a precision pieces of high tech equipment.

[Col.Hengist]

Thing is, they didn't loose the ability to make the stuff. They weren't nuked to the stone age and they still had somewhat of a core. Their scientists and engineers weren't assassinated so they still had learned people.

 It would just take setting up a place to make them.
 All in all i don't think its a stretch to reproduce them either from schematics or if they had a few examples to tear apart.

[Dragon Cat]

I'd just like to see the Royal one I've heard lots but seen little

[Col.Hengist]

I've never heard of a royal nighthawk. What's it out of?

[Maelwys]

Its out of the 3075 fluff.

Attempts to develop a combat-orientated version for deployment in SLDF Royal Divisions produced the Mk. XXII, but the Amaris Coup and the fall of the Star League prevented that version entering full production.

Or atleast I assume that's what they're talking about when they mention a Royal version. All it does is drop the ECM for a Grenade Launcher (Which makes it similar enough to the Combat suit mentioned in Royalty and Rogues that I wonder if that was the intention..though not exact)

There's also the XXX version from the 3085 Record Sheets (one wonders what happened to XXIII through XXIX), which increases the ground movement to 3 and drops the ECM (Based on the XXI, not the XXII btw). And then there's the XXX Bounty Hunter which drops the jump movement (following the fluff from ISP).

[Col.Hengist]

Ohhhh gotcha. I forgot about that bit of fluff.

 Slightly off topic, but in my universe durring our op:Klondike campaign last winter some of the CHH infantry used the nighthawks. I just hadn't had a chance to use them. I found i really like them.

[Dragon Cat]

There's also the XXX version from the 3085 Record Sheets (one wonders what happened to XXIII through XXIX), which increases the ground movement to 3 and drops the ECM (Based on the XXI, not the XXII btw). And then there's the XXX Bounty Hunter which drops the jump movement (following the fluff from ISP).

Failed models I'd suspect the 'basic' Nighthawk is the first successful model I think.

Also the Bounty Hunter's suit breaks all known construction methods especially after the 3030s when the Stealth armour and jump pack both work.  Nice to have a prototype eh  [rockon]

[snewsom2997]

Wouldn't a Science Research Station have access to a memory core. They were rare after the Star league not during. They always had the technology just not the resources, to produce the more advanced stuff.

[Col.Hengist]

As we have posted earlier in the thread. It says they don't have a complete core and no Mech building facilities. They were crafting everything one piece at a time.

[Maelwys]

Wouldn't a Science Research Station have access to a memory core. They were rare after the Star league not during. They always had the technology just not the resources, to produce the more advanced stuff.

A memory core? Sure.

A memory core that contains the plans to cutting edge, top secret and experimental military hardware? Not very likely. Especially since the Star League often kept cutting edge tech heavily underwraps, including using the military to take over manufacturers that let secrets slip. They're not too likely to give a science research station a complete memory core of everything. Especially not one with limited garrison, and set in the Periphery.

[Archangel]

Thing is, they didn't loose the ability to make the stuff. They weren't nuked to the stone age and they still had somewhat of a core. Their scientists and engineers weren't assassinated so they still had learned people.

 It would just take setting up a place to make them.
 All in all i don't think its a stretch to reproduce them either from schematics or if they had a few examples to tear apart.

Before we go on all kinds of tangents, TRO: 3075 stats that they simply dug the specs out of their Star League records.  My problem has been with them getting there in the first place.  Specs for a suit so top secret that they were only deployed in the Star League SAS units and the Great Houses only heard rumors of its existence while the other suit that was still in the experimental stages when the Amaris Coup was launched 3 decades after the research station was founded.  Now I can understand that they got access to the specs of the Mk I (no matter how many people had to have made mistakes for this to happen) but for them also getting the specs for a suit that hadn't even entered production?

To make it even more incredible, the Niops Association, a power that has only had the capacity to build mechs one at a time by hand is suddenly able to produce and deploy entire platoons of high-tech battlesuits in under a decade?

[Arkansas Warrior]

But only after it was being done in other places, and after Niops was more open to the Sphere.  If companies can produce PA(L)s in quantity on Solaris, Niops can import the know how without too much trouble.

[Maelwys]

Are they producing PA(L) on Solaris in quantity? I would think most would be modified like the ones we see in XTRO Gladiators.

Another killer for the Niops/Nighthawk fluff is as Archangel said. They pulled the specs out of their Star League records.

And if they had access to the Nighthawk as super secret as it is, then there's absolutely no reason to think they don't have access to everything else as well.

[Arkansas Warrior]

Sure there is.  Having accesss to plans to a battlesuit doesn't mean one should have access to plans to a mech.  Infantry units across the Sphere likely have one and not the other.  Top Secret clearance isn't necessarily a blank check to access any data, it can be (and indeed is) still limited by 'need to know'.  Of course, now we must wonder why a (supposed) reasearch outpost needed to know about a top-secret battlesuit but not cutting edge mechs.

[glitterboy2098]

perhaps the model Niops had the specs for was going to be produced for general use..and niops was one of the first wave of worlds given the specs before the SL fell? alot of data was lost in the first two succession wars, and niops was pretty much untouched. if the garrison of the system was originally going to be reinforced with some nighthawk units, you'd expect information on thier design and maintnence would be sent there..and given it's isolation, the plans to build the spare parts in workshops seem reasonable too.

[BrokenMnemonic]

Niops sold 300 years of research to elements from the Inner Sphere at one point, to gain funding for military hardware and the like - maybe they bought the Nighthawk specs from ComStar, and the "we found the design in our memory core" is a leader-level euphemism for not wanting to admit they had to buy it?

[General308]

Maybe the Nighthawk was invented in Niops.   It could have been a star league area 51

[Archangel]

perhaps the model Niops had the specs for was going to be produced for general use..and niops was one of the first wave of worlds given the specs before the SL fell? alot of data was lost in the first two succession wars, and niops was pretty much untouched. if the garrison of the system was originally going to be reinforced with some nighthawk units, you'd expect information on thier design and maintnence would be sent there..and given it's isolation, the plans to build the spare parts in workshops seem reasonable too.

The plans we are talking about are for the Mk I Nighthawk (limited to service with the Terran Hegemony's elite Special Armed Services troops) and the Mk II Nighthawk (which was developed for deployment with the SLDF's Royal Divisions).  The SL assigned a minimal garrison force with the belief that if it came under attack they could easily call for help from a nearby SLDF garrison.  No reason to deploy a high-tech power armor suit at a self-sustaining astronomical research station when they hadn't even been deployed to any Royal Divisions.

[Archangel]

Niops sold 300 years of research to elements from the Inner Sphere at one point, to gain funding for military hardware and the like - maybe they bought the Nighthawk specs from ComStar, and the "we found the design in our memory core" is a leader-level euphemism for not wanting to admit they had to buy it?

They charged access to 300 years of astronomical research to astronomers and other interested parties.  As for buying the specs from ComStar?  Highly unlikely that Niops was able to buy specs for a reconnaissance and covert operations battle armor that even ComStar wasn't able to replicate until recently (their attempts resulted in the Tornado) and specs for a combat version that even ComStar hasn't been able to produce.

But speaking of finances, the cost of producing and maintaining the Nighthawk should have been excessive for the Niops Association.  Assigning a production facility, retooling the machines to produce the suit including the advanced stealth armor and ECM systems, training the personnel to manufacture the suits, training their military to utilize them and maintain them.  Considering that the Niops Association has no interest in offensive military operations one would think that the costs would far outweigh the benefits.

It would have made more sense to produce additional aerospace fighters (to help prevent any invaders from landing), armor vehicles or even vehicles.  If they really wanted to deploy battle armor it would have been far more cost-effective to acquire more commonly available battle armor, such as the IS Standard Battle Armor, that didn't require as much sophistication to produce and maintain.

[Terminax]

The way I've worked the Niops Association for my own campaigns was that they were an isolated but very well equipped and extensive research facility and fell off the radar during the collapse of the Star League. When General Kerensky led the majority of the SLDF off into exodus, it not only left behind those forces that stayed with Comstar and those who joined the Houses as troops and mercenaries but also the remnants of those units destroyed in the Periphery uprising and the later Amaris coup. One of those remnants, no more than a combined arms regiments worth (perhaps the remains of a destroyed or rebel division) dropped by the research facility on Niops for one reason or another and elected to remain there, probably hiding their presence and origin in order to avoid conflict with their Periphery neighbors. Another possibility is that it was a a cover for a forward base for the special forces the SLDF used to deal with the Periphery states which would give a reason why the technical data for the equipment they used would be handy. Technical documentation might not provide the complete story on how something is built but when you're a high tech research facility with a multitude of scientific brains that would know the basics enough to fill in the blanks, I could easy see how hand-tooled copies could, over the years become available.