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BattleMech

2021-11-03T06:13:35Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Assault */

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Other''': experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

=== Weight Class ===
* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but lightly armed and armored, these speedsters rely on agility and small size to get intel from their sensors on the enemy to wire back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race along with a short ranged arsenal with decent armor, these jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best with covering fire from other units as well as terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor, these are generalist units who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper armor is too light to survive but need support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility, having medium-to-long ranged weapons, and thick armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as defensive guards, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the Missile Boat but with a long ranged weapon that requires direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While short ranged escorts make up for their lack of perimeter defense, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with large slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]] - The little mech that could!
*[[Hollander]] - Mech with a big gun, or big gun with legs? You decide!
* Locust - Totally not stolen from Crusher Joe.
* Wasp - ...or Macross
* Stinger - Really. Believe us.

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]] - Or any anime inspired by Suns, Fangs, or Dougrams of such.
* Hunchback - The original "My, what a big gun" mech.
* Griffin - And back to IP infringement accusations.
* Phoenix Hawk - Max wants his plane back.

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]] - The bastard lovechild that everyone loves.
*[[Catapult]] - Proud parent of furry children.
* Marauder - Proud parent of furry children, deported for being an illegal alien.
* Rifleman - Proud uncle of furry children. Was also deported for shooting other illegal aliens.

==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]] - Big Death! Big Death Big Death!
* King Crab - Preferred tool for cracking thick shells.
* [[Mackie]] - The Original!<small>(tm)</small> Accept no substitutes!
* Banshee - The Bradley of the Mech world. Big, fast, lightly armoured, and questionably armed.

==== Super Heavy ====
*Matar
*Omega
*Poseidon
*Ares

[[Category:BattleTech]]

BattleMech

2021-11-03T06:12:35Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Assault */

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Other''': experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

=== Weight Class ===
* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but lightly armed and armored, these speedsters rely on agility and small size to get intel from their sensors on the enemy to wire back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race along with a short ranged arsenal with decent armor, these jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best with covering fire from other units as well as terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor, these are generalist units who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper armor is too light to survive but need support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility, having medium-to-long ranged weapons, and thick armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as defensive guards, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the Missile Boat but with a long ranged weapon that requires direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While short ranged escorts make up for their lack of perimeter defense, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with large slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]] - The little mech that could!
*[[Hollander]] - Mech with a big gun, or big gun with legs? You decide!
* Locust - Totally not stolen from Crusher Joe.
* Wasp - ...or Macross
* Stinger - Really. Believe us.

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]] - Or any anime inspired by Suns, Fangs, or Dougrams of such.
* Hunchback - The original "My, what a big gun" mech.
* Griffin - And back to IP infringement accusations.
* Phoenix Hawk - Max wants his plane back.

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]] - The bastard lovechild that everyone loves.
*[[Catapult]] - Proud parent of furry children.
* Marauder - Proud parent of furry children, deported for being an illegal alien.
* Rifleman - Proud uncle of furry children. Was also deported for shooting other illegal aliens.

==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]] - Big Death! Big Death Big Death!
* King Crab - Preferred tool for cracking thick shells.
* [[Mackie]] - The Original!(tm) Accept no substitutes!
* Banshee - The Bradley of the Mech world. Big, fast, lightly armoured, and questionably armed.

==== Super Heavy ====
*Matar
*Omega
*Poseidon
*Ares

[[Category:BattleTech]]

BattleMech

2021-11-03T06:05:31Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Heavy */

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Other''': experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

=== Weight Class ===
* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but lightly armed and armored, these speedsters rely on agility and small size to get intel from their sensors on the enemy to wire back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race along with a short ranged arsenal with decent armor, these jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best with covering fire from other units as well as terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor, these are generalist units who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper armor is too light to survive but need support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility, having medium-to-long ranged weapons, and thick armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as defensive guards, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the Missile Boat but with a long ranged weapon that requires direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While short ranged escorts make up for their lack of perimeter defense, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with large slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]] - The little mech that could!
*[[Hollander]] - Mech with a big gun, or big gun with legs? You decide!
* Locust - Totally not stolen from Crusher Joe.
* Wasp - ...or Macross
* Stinger - Really. Believe us.

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]] - Or any anime inspired by Suns, Fangs, or Dougrams of such.
* Hunchback - The original "My, what a big gun" mech.
* Griffin - And back to IP infringement accusations.
* Phoenix Hawk - Max wants his plane back.

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]] - The bastard lovechild that everyone loves.
*[[Catapult]] - Proud parent of furry children.
* Marauder - Proud parent of furry children, deported for being an illegal alien.
* Rifleman - Proud uncle of furry children. Was also deported for shooting other illegal aliens.

==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]]
* King Crab
* [[Mackie]]
* Banshee

==== Super Heavy ====
*Matar
*Omega
*Poseidon
*Ares

[[Category:BattleTech]]

BattleMech

2021-11-03T06:04:55Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Heavy */

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Other''': experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

=== Weight Class ===
* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but lightly armed and armored, these speedsters rely on agility and small size to get intel from their sensors on the enemy to wire back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race along with a short ranged arsenal with decent armor, these jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best with covering fire from other units as well as terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor, these are generalist units who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper armor is too light to survive but need support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility, having medium-to-long ranged weapons, and thick armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as defensive guards, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the Missile Boat but with a long ranged weapon that requires direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While short ranged escorts make up for their lack of perimeter defense, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with large slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]] - The little mech that could!
*[[Hollander]] - Mech with a big gun, or big gun with legs? You decide!
* Locust - Totally not stolen from Crusher Joe.
* Wasp - ...or Macross
* Stinger - Really. Believe us.

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]] - Or any anime inspired by Suns, Fangs, or Dougrams of such.
* Hunchback - The original "My, what a big gun" mech.
* Griffin - And back to IP infringement accusations.
* Phoenix Hawk - Max wants his plane back.

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]] - The bastard lovechild that everyone loves.
*[[Catapult]] - Proud parent of furry children.
* Marauder - Proud parent of furry children, deported for being an illegal alien.
* Rifleman - Proud uncle of furry children.

==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]]
* King Crab
* [[Mackie]]
* Banshee

==== Super Heavy ====
*Matar
*Omega
*Poseidon
*Ares

[[Category:BattleTech]]

BattleMech

2021-11-03T06:01:11Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Medium */

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Other''': experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

=== Weight Class ===
* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but lightly armed and armored, these speedsters rely on agility and small size to get intel from their sensors on the enemy to wire back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race along with a short ranged arsenal with decent armor, these jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best with covering fire from other units as well as terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor, these are generalist units who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper armor is too light to survive but need support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility, having medium-to-long ranged weapons, and thick armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as defensive guards, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the Missile Boat but with a long ranged weapon that requires direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While short ranged escorts make up for their lack of perimeter defense, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with large slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]] - The little mech that could!
*[[Hollander]] - Mech with a big gun, or big gun with legs? You decide!
* Locust - Totally not stolen from Crusher Joe.
* Wasp - ...or Macross
* Stinger - Really. Believe us.

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]] - Or any anime inspired by Suns, Fangs, or Dougrams of such.
* Hunchback - The original "My, what a big gun" mech.
* Griffin - And back to IP infringement accusations.
* Phoenix Hawk - Max wants his plane back.

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]]
*[[Catapult]]
==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]]
* King Crab
* [[Mackie]]

==== Super Heavy ====
*Omega
*Poseidon

[[Category:BattleTech]]

BattleMech

2021-11-03T05:59:35Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Medium */

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Other''': experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

=== Weight Class ===
* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but lightly armed and armored, these speedsters rely on agility and small size to get intel from their sensors on the enemy to wire back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race along with a short ranged arsenal with decent armor, these jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best with covering fire from other units as well as terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor, these are generalist units who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper armor is too light to survive but need support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility, having medium-to-long ranged weapons, and thick armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as defensive guards, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the Missile Boat but with a long ranged weapon that requires direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While short ranged escorts make up for their lack of perimeter defense, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with large slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]] - The little mech that could!
*[[Hollander]] - Mech with a big gun, or big gun with legs? You decide!
* Locust - Totally not stolen from Crusher Joe.
* Wasp - ...or Macross
* Stinger - Really. Believe us.

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]] - Or any anime inspired by Suns, Fangs, or Dougrams of such.
* Rifleman - Dammit, Harmony Gold...
* Hunchback - The original "My, what a big gun" mech.
* Griffin - And back to IP infringement accusations.

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]]
*[[Catapult]]
==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]]
* King Crab
* [[Mackie]]

==== Super Heavy ====
*Omega
*Poseidon

[[Category:BattleTech]]

BattleMech

2021-11-03T05:56:17Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Light */

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Other''': experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

=== Weight Class ===
* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but lightly armed and armored, these speedsters rely on agility and small size to get intel from their sensors on the enemy to wire back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race along with a short ranged arsenal with decent armor, these jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best with covering fire from other units as well terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor, these are generalist units who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper armor is too light to survive but need support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility, having long range weapons, and thick armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as defensive guards, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the Missile Boat but with a long ranged weapon require direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While short ranged escorts make up for their lack of short range defense, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with large slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]] - The little mech that could!
*[[Hollander]] - Mech with a big gun, or big gun with legs? You decide!
* Locust - Totally not stolen from Crusher Joe.
* Wasp - ...or Macross
* Stinger - Really. Believe us.

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]]
* Rifleman

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]]
*[[Catapult]]
==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]]
* King Crab
* [[Mackie]]

==== Super Heavy ====
*Omega
*Poseidon

[[Category:BattleTech]]

BattleMech

2021-11-03T05:50:48Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Combat Role */ Re-ordered roles to match excerpt from Classic BattleTech Introductory Rules, pp 51-54.

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Other''': experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

=== Weight Class ===
* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but lightly armed and armored, these speedsters rely on agility and small size to get intel from their sensors on the enemy to wire back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race along with a short ranged arsenal with decent armor, these jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best with covering fire from other units as well terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor, these are generalist units who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper armor is too light to survive but need support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility, having long range weapons, and thick armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as defensive guards, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the Missile Boat but with a long ranged weapon require direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While short ranged escorts make up for their lack of short range defense, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with large slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]]
*[[Hollander]]
* Locust

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]]
* Rifleman

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]]
*[[Catapult]]
==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]]
* King Crab
* [[Mackie]]

==== Super Heavy ====
*Omega
*Poseidon

[[Category:BattleTech]]

BattleMech

2021-11-03T05:46:17Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Combat Role */ Stripped Ambusher as per per Classic BattleTech Introductory Rulebook, pp. 51-54: Roles.

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to Star Trek, [[Lightsaber]]s are to Star Wars and Space Marines are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's usually more resource intensive to use in ground warfare and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and the like. The Tank is venerable, mounts all the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks in-universe are still dependent on comparitively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as treads and structural weakpoints that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs) that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move like a human does in most cases, and if they happen to run into some, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Some can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit in one piece, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time. A legion of tanks might be able to do that, and as cool as Aerospace Fighters are, they're simply not built to handle that kind of sustained combat with clear ground objectives like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut a whole company of soldiers and tanks' firepower down into four giant robots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks, blasting those pests out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Pesky Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Other''': experimental gear such as ECM electronic warfare suites, stealth armor, tasers, and targeting beacons, and reactive armor modules take out battle armored infantry.

=== Other ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which sugnifignantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance. More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

=== Weight Class ===
* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Most of them are effectively just aluminum eggs with legs used to patrol garrisons and colonies out in the boondocks with a glock wired to a button. The difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In Universe they are usually the most common type of Mech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in purpose in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 32nd century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. In the 31st century people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility, having long range weapons, and thick armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as defensive guards, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with large slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets.
* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but lightly armed and armored, these speedsters rely on agility and small size to get intel from their sensors on the enemy to wire back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor, these are generalist units who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper armor is too light to survive but need support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the Missile Boat but with a long ranged weapon require direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While short ranged escorts make up for their lack of short range defense, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race along with a short ranged arsenal with decent armor, these jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best with covering fire from other units as well terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mechs]]''': sometimes called LAMs. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' but are way more expensive.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]]
*[[Hollander]]
* Locust

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]]
* Rifleman

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]]
*[[Catapult]]
==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]]
* King Crab
* [[Mackie]]

==== Super Heavy ====
*Omega
*Poseidon

[[Category:BattleTech]]

The Culture

2021-11-02T23:33:04Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: /* Good reasons to live in the Culture */ Fixed a link

[[File:Gsv.jpg|400px|thumb|right|It's more fun in the Culture.]]
{{Topquote|You might call them soft, because they’re very reluctant to kill, and they might agree with you, but they’re soft the way the ocean is soft, and, well; ask any sea captain how harmless and puny the ocean can be.|Cheradenine Zakalwe, ''Use of Weapons''}}

'''The Culture''' is a series of Scifi novels by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, about a spacefaring utopian society called 'The Culture'. The stories focus mainly on space politics, ethical dilemmas, black humor, sexuality, and despair.

However, a lot of its relevance on /tg/ stems mainly from the fact that the universe in general is so ridiculously fucking powerful and can utterly and completely assrape nearly anything put against it, [[Skub|for better or worse]].

==Overview==
The Culture is a galactic civilization which serves as the main setting for many Iain M Banks novels and short stories, the first novel in the series being ''Consider Phlebas''.

It is basically what would have happened if the humans from the [[Dark Age of Technology|Golden Age of Technology]] did not have a small problem with genocidal [[Men of Iron]]. More cynically, it is what would happen if the government of ''Brave New World'' was a galactic superpower: making sure everyone wants for nothing, but desperate for something to fill the emptiness. Well, they are a bit less extreme than that; eugenicism is ''definitely not'' something the Culture would agree with, but that's the general idea.

The Culture is set in our own timeline, with the stories taking place between 1300 AD and 2100 AD; Earth is contacted roughly around 2100 AD. It is the product of six or seven pan-human civilizations that decided to merge together 10,000 years ago and create what is basically a space utopia. The Culture is a post-scarcity society, where basically everything is available for free, time being the only resource to take into account. It does not have a centralized government, as it is more a society than a real state or nation. Very few written laws exist (and if you feel the need to ask what are these written laws, then ''there is clearly something wrong with you'') and people are basically allowed to do pretty much whatever they want. Now, in the novels, we do not have many details about how the Culture actually works, but, in Banks' words, it's "an ethical and cynical anarchy that tries to be a ''rather good society'', following socialist, libertarian and anarchist principles.

(This may [[wat|sound weird]] if you're from that part of the English speaking world where the term "libertarian" was hijacked by a guy in a dumb-looking bowtie with a weird fixation on selling babies; in most other locales, "liberal" is basically synonymous with capitalist, and "libertarian" more or less means "left-anarchist").

Well, apparently that works. The Culture has been around since ten millennia, and is now considered to be one of the most powerful civilizations of the galaxy. And they aren't, contrary to many [[Tau|utopias]], hiding anything. The Culture is a ''genuine'' utopia and a very good place to live, which is actually quite rare in sci-fi in general, and modern sci-fi in particular.

Now, where is the trick?

[[Gets shit done|Well, you do not attain such a level of power in the galaxy while being space hippies all the time.]] There is a faction/intelligence service in the Culture called ''Contact'', which is dedicated to establishing contact with other civilizations. The books focuses on the interaction between the Culture and said civilizations, mainly through the eyes of people that belong to ''Special Circumstances'', which is basically the Culture's CIA. They try to influence other civilizations to make sure they will, one day or an other, end up joining the Culture willingly. Said interactions may imply technological transfers, or propaganda for the purpose of ''starting revolutions and civil wars''. Space hippies inside, sure, but imperialist outside. The Culture is like a sponge that slowly absorbs other civilizations over the course of millennia.

Oh, and did we mention they are ''quite advanced''? And when we say advanced, we really mean it. The Culture is ruled... ahem, benevolently overseen by extremely powerful AIs called ''Minds''; so powerful are these Minds that they dedicate only a fraction of their power to such trivial matters, and spend the rest building virtual worlds with 12 dimensions. From the biggest sentient ships (because yes, all of their ships are sentient, why did you even ask?) to the smallest drones, AIs in general are considered citizens of the Culture. Aside from being sentient, their ships have hulls made of force fields (because metal is for pussies anyway), and can reach 230,000 times the speed of light; the biggest ones measure in hundreds of kilometers and can carry entire ecosystems with billions of people on board.

Oh, and the Culture does not live on planets, because that's absolutely ''inelegant'', so they use Orbitals, basically Halo-style Ringworlds that are scattered across the galaxy. Instead they prefer to build massive residential space stations in orbit around either planets or around stars that can be more easily calibrated for the comfort of their residents. This is regarded as significantly superior to either building a biosphere from scratch on a lifeless planet or tinkering with a pre-existing ecosystem and hoping you don't cause mass extinctions in the process. Realistically, this is actually better than settling on a planet and hoping for the best, because it'd be very rare for a planet to be optimal for a species that never evolved on it and the environment would be much easier to control. But of course, nobody has ever actually lived on a space station with its own significant gravitational pull but (presumably, we're not sure about some people) everyone who has written a story published on Earth has been on Earth at least once, so most science fiction and space fantasy works go for planets. The Culture absolutely ''can'' make megastructures like Ringworlds that encircle the entire star or Dyson spheres, but consider them wasteful; they don't have enough members to populate a Ringworld even remotely densely, and they can vastly exceed the power output of a star with far smaller devices than a sun-encompassing swarm of satellites/metal shell, so a Dyson sphere would be absolutely pointless.

The average Culturnik may live for 400 years and technically reach immortality, even if it is not considered as fun (and thus not really popular). ''In one novel, a ship saved the life of a beheaded man by simply teleporting the severed head back and creating a new body from scratch''. This isn't as far fetched as you'd think, as studies have shown that it's possible to sustain the life of complex mammals like dogs with severed heads with mid twentieth century medical technology, and humans can survive a few seconds after decapitation based on studies done at executions via beheading. Growing a new body entirely for the head is rather out of the reach of our current medical technology, but there's nothing that would make it actually impossible in the laws of physics, you'd just have to make sure the body you grow is compatible with the tissue of the head. The body is also quite adept at reconnecting nerves for severed limbs if they're sewn back on; when somebody loses a limb usually, doctors will try seeing if they can't stitch the limb back on, with prosthetic limbs only being considered if it's beyond recovery (though obviously the Culture uses something much more sophisticated).

Last but not least, the Culture are ''peaceful'' and not ''pacifist''. Which means that, contrary to [[Ork|certain]] [[Imperium of Man|people]], they won't invade you without a reason, but if you fuck with the Culture, they ''can'' and most certainly ''will'' obliterate you. The base weapon of their military ships is "gridfire", which basically amounts to ''[[Awesome|using the fabric of space and time as a weapon.]]'' That actually says a lot about Banks' universe, considering that the Culture is NOT the most advanced race in the setting, although certainly in the top ten. To wit, the first novel ''Consider Phlebas'' features a galactic war between the Culture and another race called the Idirans; after a few years of being crushed, the Culture finally started mobilizing and simply steamrolls and utterly annihilate its foe. After this, the Culture started designing actual dedicated warships, going so far as to give them obviously threatening class designations like Torturer, Thug, and Murderer (remember now, their ships are all sentient). Their most powerful warship, the Abominator, is so overpowered in the current setting that it was capable of wiping out millions (not an exaggeration) of enemy vessels unaided, and actually did so far slower than it needed to because it was enjoying itself too much to finish the engagement quickly.

Other races find it odd that a race like the Culture turned out to be so martially capable; the wiser Involved civilizations note that whilst most races start off more aggressive and learn to tone down, the peaceful Culture had to do the opposite. So while hippies they may be, there is one axiom that you should not forget: "Don't Fuck With the Culture".

In essence, the peace of the culture is maintained by having enough firepower to make anyone who wants to declare war on them regret that decision. It's the same theory that kept the Soviets and Americans from going for broke with tens of millions of dudes crammed next to each other in a small part of Europe. If either decided to go balls to wall, the other would destroy them in the process. So instead of outright war to jockey for power and position, most societies engage in proxy conflicts with smaller powers or factions of smaller powers, espionage, and manipulating the societies and economies of less powerful civilisations. Given that warships are capable of unleashing over a thousand times more energy than god damn supernovas, and can devastate ''solar systems'' by braking too hard in hyperspace while fighting at several hundred thousand times the speed of light... it's probably for the best that all out war between the major powers is rare.

For those of you who study history, it's important to note that the Culture is able to enjoy its lifestyle because the conditions of its home setting allow for it, something significantly more important than its guiding beliefs in deciding the kind of society it is. ([[Skub|On the other hand]], lots of civilisations in the books have or had at least some of the same tech as the early Culture and actively use it to commit atrocities or were destroyed by it, so it could also be argued that the Culture would not be remotely like itself if it didn't start with a clear philosophical grounding.) It's doubtful whether humanity in Warhammer 40k was ever at the general level of technology that the Culture was, let alone to the point of being able to ensure MAD in short order with any conceivable foe. The Culture also doesn't have to contend with creatures of Chaos OR a Void Dragon eager to hijack most A.Is. Also of importance is that in the Culture's galaxy, international relationships actually have reached a level of normalcy where most issues are resolved with diplomacy or indirect conflict. rather than with total warfare; the Imperium's four most serious enemies are essentially impossible to [[Necrons|buy]], [[Chaos|bargain]], [[Tyranids|negotiate]], or [[Orks|reason]] with.

== Why the hell is that interesting? ==
Because it's a rather original take on the human galactic society theme: the socialist/libertarian/anarchist utopia. Banks called the Culture a ''rather good'' society, and it's exactly what it is - a civilization that tries to be as good and benevolent as it can, both inside and outside of its (very loose) borders. It may actually be the only utopia in recent sci-fi. And it's a realistic utopia, to a certain extent; the consequences of its imperialism are sometimes quite grimdark. In fact, Banks' fiction overall is quite grimdark, but never goes into grimderp. Some might say it's simply realism. The fact that most of the stories starring the Culture take place on its borders or in other civilizations bring different points of view about this society that is, ultimately, the main character of Banks' sci-fi - a character that manages to be both extremely reasonable and sometimes ''batshit insane'' while remaining realistic and believable.

== Good reasons to live in the Culture ==
*Any form of work is now a hobby.
*You live for at least 400 years, but immortality is absolutely a thing, although you'll get bored of it and put yourself in storage or autoeuthanize yourself.
*Alternatively, you can chose to sublime which is a literal apotheosis to a higher plane of existence that is so perfect that a Mind-ship dedicated to going back and informing on the whole thing only succeeded after many, many attempts and once returned was effectively brain-damaged from how stupid our reality is in comparison to the sublimed one.
*You can change sex at will (takes a few months, though).
*Every Culturnik has a gland that can synthesize any drug, without side effects or addiction of course. That also includes a very deep control over your body.
*Your ships have awesome names. Seriously. ''Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath'' is one of them. Well, also a hell of a lot of them are puns, plays on words or running jokes. For example, ''Frank Exchange of Views'' is a fast warship, while one of them most powerful referenced is called ''Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraint''. See [https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_spacecraft#Novels this list for more comedy.]
*You can do pretty much whatever you want.
*No, really.
*The only things you can't do are the obvious really bad things.
*Of course, if you want your own planet, it'll take a while, but why not?
*You can live in simulations so complex their simulations have simulations.
*War is but history. Except when galactic wars break out. Even then...
*Even then your chances of ''actually dying'' are quite low, given the number of medical, back-up and consciousness-transferring systems the Culture has.
*Name a landscape or a place you would like to live in. One Orbital somewhere has it.
*If a landscape or a place you would like to live in doesn't exist. You can have it custom built for you.
*With a bit of luck, the drone that accompanies you is not crazy.
*Name a game or a sport. It is played somewhere in the Culture. You could even become a professional (read: hobbyist) Player Of Games.
*Want some action, travels and overly complicated plots? The nearest Contact recruitment office is here for you.
*Travel wherever you want.
*You live in a space utopia instead of [[Imperium of Man|this]] and you still complain?

== Why it might sometimes not be that good ==
*They laugh at the Prime Directive from [[Star Trek]] and make the Federation look like ultraconservative capitalists.
*Some minds may also not shy from killing sentients and siccing mercenaries on other civilizations if it would advance their/Culture's agenda.
*The Mind of your Orbital/Ship knows everything about you. Not that it cares, mind you. But still.
*Minds and Drones will always be benevolent for you. Which doesn't mean they can't troll you with style.
*Everyone can change sex at will, and it's actually a common custom for heterosexual couples to both switch genders, each parent bearing the child of the other. Thus, expect extremely complicated family and relationship issues.
*Things get boring after a while. So much that you could want to join Special Circumstances...
**Which, apart from the fact that they do not recruit people like this, is not always a good idea. You will probably end up as a cog in the machine of a Culture plan so complicated it would make [[Tzeentch]] jealous.
**You will also learn that the Culture is just as ideologically militant as many other empires but justifies this as being nice and acts like it gives them the authority to meddle in everybody's business despite being so powerful that virtually no other society is a threat to them.
*If you are religious, be prepared to face ''militant secularism'' that was described as cult-like by non-culture species.
*Other races laugh at you because your death-ships' names lack gravitas... which has become a running gag among Minds, who now try to jam the word "gravitas" in the name of as many ships as they can.
*You live in a place where there are weapons that can kill you while still making you believe you are alive. And one of the military Minds is called ''Meatfucker'' by the others - how do you think it took that nickname? (It read organic beings' minds, something that's considered deviant and taboo even among the hyper anarchistic Culture.)
*The Culture is not the top dog in the galaxy (or the dimension) so there are real threats out there for both you and your society.
*Your personal drone is definitely crazy. Or a undercover agent of Special Circumstances. Or was crazy, and is now a SC agent. Or is crazy and is an agent.
**Oh, and given the basic field-manipulation technology inherent to all drones, well, there's no such thing as an 'unarmed' drone.

== Other civilizations ==
*The Idiran Empire - a race of tripod like reptiles that evolved on a deathworld, forcing the Idiran race to evolve into a tall, armour-plated, biologically immortal warrior race. Their religion is an odd form of racial solipsism; only beings with souls are considered sentient, souls can only exist in an immortal body, therefore only Idirans deserve to exist. The Culture, with its (unarguably) actually sentient Minds and Drones, are seen as the exemplars of sacrilege, hence why the Idirans declared a Jihad war against them. Despite being roughly equal to the Culture technologically and having superior allies, they ultimately end up losing the war (prompting the other galactic civs to coin the term "don't fuck with the Culture") and tone down their xenophobic tendencies over the following centuries, ironically becoming more Culture-like in the process.

*The Homomdan Empire/Polity - The only race outright stronger than the Culture, not including the Sublimed. They view themselves as the space police who need to keep any one force from growing too fast too quickly to maintain "balance", but they aren't malicious about it and have pretty lenient limits. They're pretty cool with the Culture on the whole, and when the two got into a border skirmish (which the Culture were fighting at the same time as the Idiran war) they ended up as friendly trading partners afterward.

*The Sublimed - technically not a race but are encountered by virtually every spacefaring society. The Sublimed are the end stage of almost every civilization, representing ascension into an energy based being residing in an adjacent dimension. The technology to do so isn't actually that complicated, but only a Mind level AI or sizeable planetary community can Sublime and still maintain any meaningful presence. They're effectively capable of doing anything they want, but don't tend to interact with the material universe, save for seemingly random and inscrutable actions (like flinging moons at the planets of civilisations that hunt the local variety of space whale, or keeping people away from memorial planets of dead civilisations with weaponized barriers of spacetime). Many civilisations have tried to enter the Sublime without subliming first. Almost all attempts result in failure, and the tiny number that enter and come back aren't mentally capable of describing what it's like. The Culture is considered unusual because it's had the ability to Sublime for millennia, but hasn't - the Sublimed themselves consider them the equivalent of a party guest that stays a bit too long. The Culture, conversely, finds it a bit too convenient that most civilisations sublime everyone at once, implying coercion of some kind. Even when a Subliming goes well, the local galactic community have to make sure that less advanced civilisations don't make a rush for the abandoned remains of the civilisation and disrupt the local order.

*The Empire of Azad - an autocratic monarchy of humanoids based in an isolated part of the galaxy. They have made contact with other galactic civilisations, but all have been technologically inferior - the Culture is the only civilisation they have encountered that are more advanced, to a ludicrous degree. Their main shtick is having three sexes (males as workers and soldiers, females as trinkets and breeders, and an "apex" sex that controls everything). The other more important feature is the game of Azad: A ludicrously complicated board-game played on football pitch sized boards, it plays like a real life version of Civilisation writ large (the specifics are left deliberately vague). The complexity of game simulates the skills needed to rule the empire, so the winner of the regular tournament becomes the Emperor. Male and Female Azadians are allowed to play, but are never allowed to get very far due to the apex sex being the only ones allowed to hold offices and having access to specialised schools and learning drugs. The Culture encounters them during a period of aggressive expansion, which isn't a positive thing as Banks intended them to be a dark reflection of parts of our own civilisations. The Culture sends a professional game-player to participate in the tournament (in an unofficial capacity), effectively acting as a proxy war between the Empire and the Culture.

*The Affront - a race of gas-dwelling octopus-like beings that can be best described as a cross between a jolly British colonial aristocrat and your average [[Dark Eldar]]. At best, they are considered to be boisterously good-natured (if they become your friend, you're in for life) and, at their worst, monstrously sadistic; one of the first things they did when they achieved genetic engineering was to [[Slaanesh|alter their females and young males to only feel terror and agony in any sexual situation as a means of population control and because the older and more powerful males considered it more fun that way]]). It's not that they can't understand the concept of morality, but rather that they take the idea of pain building character to a rather grotesque extreme. This attitude carries over to their other race relations, with less powerful races being considered as fair game and more powerful races to be placated enough to let them keep doing terrible things. Even worse, the Affront seem to thrive on the negative attention they get from their neighbours, even changing their name to the Affront from whatever they were called originally. The Culture is put into a difficult position with them, as they are too advanced to be readily manipulated and don't pose any threat to the Culture to prompt military action. This doesn't last long.

*The Chelgrians - A civilisation of five-legged cat-like predators. Their society was historically dominated by hereditary castes, with all the social issues that would imply. They're unique in that not only a part of their civilisation sublimed independently of the majority (named the Chelgrian Puen), but they also keep in regular contact with their living descendants, who universally revere them. They are also a rare example of the Culture getting things really wrong with their Special Circumstances interventions, as their attempts to dismantle the caste system from within Chelgrian society led to a devastating civil war that killed 5 billion Chelgrians. The Puen were not happy when the Culture fessed up and contrived to balance the books by destroying a Culture Orbital that contained an equal number of lives. It failed for a variety of reasons, and the Culture responded by sending a Terror Weapon (a nanocloud assasin) to murder the conspirators in ways that would make a Eversor blanch.

*The Morthanveld - An equivalent level species to the Culture comprised of water-based Spiniforms. Their primary form of communication is shooting subtly altered molecules of water at people (no really). They are on good relations with the Culture but tend to be cagey of them, partly because they know exactly what the Culture are capable of and what Special Circumstances try to do. They are also seen as a responsible civilisation and so are given oversight of one of the Shellworld Mega Structures left behind by an ancient civilisation. They don't reside on ring like Orbitals but instead construct gargantuan rings of overlapping, insecting toroids in a dyson sphere around empty stars. The largest of these "Nestworlds" contains more sentients than the entire Culture combined.

*The Saal - a humanoid species living on one of the middle levels of a Shellworld - think of a planetary form of a Russian Doll, spheres inside spheres inside other spheres. No one knows who built them or why - theories range from a network of shield emitters to protect the galaxy from extragalactic threats or a cage to enslave everyone instead. Regardless, the original builders aren't around anymore. The Saal attained an early industrial monarchy technologically but were fully aware of there being space bound civilisations beyond their world. Their ancestors were placed on the Shellworld as a form of punishment for unknown crimes. They suffer a rather bad case of regicide, leading their surviving prince to find his sister - who just happens to be a Culture Special Circumstances agent. They're desperate to find anything that will give them an edge technologically which leads to them digging up things best left alone...

* The Sichultean Enablement - another humanoid species. They've only had FTL travel for a short amount of time, but are trying to do anything to jump tech levels as fast as they can. As a society, they appear to be a capitalist-based democracy, albeit with some odd cultural practices. The most notable is the process of Entagliation: a form of indentured servitude for a variety of civil infractions like debt or contract breach, and marked by elaborate tattoos all over their bodies. This wouldn't be too controversial in itself, except that it's usually wildly disproportionate to the crime (indefinite servitude and diminished autonomy/civil rights for a finite crime), as well as potentially applying to any children or descendants, culpability be damned. In these cases, the tattoos can be applied on a genetic level in the womb.

* The GFCF - Short for the Geseptian-Fardesile Cultural Federacy. Small fairy-like beings with a lesser tech level to the Culture. They are, essentially, an entire race of Culture Fanboys, imitating their favourite civilisation in numerous ways (but not quite getting it right). The Culture itself is rather baffled at the whole thing, despite normally liking other civilisations being more like them. Turns out that they're not as innocent as they'd first appear, nor as powerful as they think they are - one Culture ship wipes out an entire armada of their ships in several seconds.

* The Pavulians - a herd species of quadrupeds with two prehensile trunks instead of conventional limbs. Fairly religious and generally deferential to older authority, as befitting their evolutionary history as herd animals. An otherwise unremarkable species, save for one incredibly dark secret: They send their citizens to Hell when they die... Okay, it's a virtual hell, and what's sent is a mind-state captured at the point of death, and then placed in a perfectly accurate simulation of what their people consider Hell to be (often crafted with the assistance of "creative" consultants). As the galactic community at large treats mind-states as being equivalent to the real person they were when they were alive, it's regarded as a needed social tool by its advocates, but a despicably unnecessary act by most everyone else. It isn't helped by the fact that the general public don't know for certain if the hells actually exist, nor by the fact that hosting the data farms necessary to keep all the mind-states and separate hells running smoothly is a very lucrative trade. The Culture publicly disapproves of the Hells, and is a covert participant in the entirely simulated wars to contest the issue.

*The Gzilt - a race of minorly reptilian humanoids who were almost one of the founding species of the Culture, but declined at the last minute. Like many other species before them, on reaching a certain level of ennui they decide to Sublime, leaving all their tech and territory to other species as a kind of civilisational will. Their culture is organised into clan-like regiments based on periods of compulsory military service, and a permanent reserve status on leaving active duty. They have one religion based on a holy text that appeared randomly in their pre-history. The book had a variety of technological and social shortcuts built into the religious language, as well as listing several prophecies that then happened to all come true. The book's seeming infallibility lead the Gzilt to a certain arrogant civilisational mindset, seeing themselves as the favoured people in the galaxy, despite many other civilisations having similar occurrences or - in the case of the Sublimed and Minds - being actual godlike beings. There's just one problem: The Book was a social experiment by a rogue alien scientist into manipulating the development of young races, which worked just a little too well. As this revelation is the kind of thing that could cause enormous civil wars, not to mention botching the impending Subliming, the remains of the Gzilt military attempt to destroy the secret before they ascend.

[[category: Literature]]

The Culture

2021-11-02T23:14:57Z

2001:569:FC7C:7600:5D28:426B:2E1:D917: Tweaked it a bit, since the argument on the Culture being imperialistic is a bit weak; That said, they do meddle if they feel it's the 'right thing to do'.

[[File:Gsv.jpg|400px|thumb|right|It's more fun in the Culture.]]
{{Topquote|You might call them soft, because they’re very reluctant to kill, and they might agree with you, but they’re soft the way the ocean is soft, and, well; ask any sea captain how harmless and puny the ocean can be.|Cheradenine Zakalwe, ''Use of Weapons''}}

'''The Culture''' is a series of Scifi novels by Scottish writer Iain M. Banks, about a spacefaring utopian society called 'The Culture'. The stories focus mainly on space politics, ethical dilemmas, black humor, sexuality, and despair.

However, a lot of its relevance on /tg/ stems mainly from the fact that the universe in general is so ridiculously fucking powerful and can utterly and completely assrape nearly anything put against it, [[Skub|for better or worse]].

==Overview==
The Culture is a galactic civilization which serves as the main setting for many Iain M Banks novels and short stories, the first novel in the series being ''Consider Phlebas''.

It is basically what would have happened if the humans from the [[Dark Age of Technology|Golden Age of Technology]] did not have a small problem with genocidal [[Men of Iron]]. More cynically, it is what would happen if the government of ''Brave New World'' was a galactic superpower: making sure everyone wants for nothing, but desperate for something to fill the emptiness. Well, they are a bit less extreme than that; eugenicism is ''definitely not'' something the Culture would agree with, but that's the general idea.

The Culture is set in our own timeline, with the stories taking place between 1300 AD and 2100 AD; Earth is contacted roughly around 2100 AD. It is the product of six or seven pan-human civilizations that decided to merge together 10,000 years ago and create what is basically a space utopia. The Culture is a post-scarcity society, where basically everything is available for free, time being the only resource to take into account. It does not have a centralized government, as it is more a society than a real state or nation. Very few written laws exist (and if you feel the need to ask what are these written laws, then ''there is clearly something wrong with you'') and people are basically allowed to do pretty much whatever they want. Now, in the novels, we do not have many details about how the Culture actually works, but, in Banks' words, it's "an ethical and cynical anarchy that tries to be a ''rather good society'', following socialist, libertarian and anarchist principles.

(This may [[wat|sound weird]] if you're from that part of the English speaking world where the term "libertarian" was hijacked by a guy in a dumb-looking bowtie with a weird fixation on selling babies; in most other locales, "liberal" is basically synonymous with capitalist, and "libertarian" more or less means "left-anarchist").

Well, apparently that works. The Culture has been around since ten millennia, and is now considered to be one of the most powerful civilizations of the galaxy. And they aren't, contrary to many [[Tau|utopias]], hiding anything. The Culture is a ''genuine'' utopia and a very good place to live, which is actually quite rare in sci-fi in general, and modern sci-fi in particular.

Now, where is the trick?

[[Gets shit done|Well, you do not attain such a level of power in the galaxy while being space hippies all the time.]] There is a faction/intelligence service in the Culture called ''Contact'', which is dedicated to establishing contact with other civilizations. The books focuses on the interaction between the Culture and said civilizations, mainly through the eyes of people that belong to ''Special Circumstances'', which is basically the Culture's CIA. They try to influence other civilizations to make sure they will, one day or an other, end up joining the Culture willingly. Said interactions may imply technological transfers, or propaganda for the purpose of ''starting revolutions and civil wars''. Space hippies inside, sure, but imperialist outside. The Culture is like a sponge that slowly absorbs other civilizations over the course of millennia.

Oh, and did we mention they are ''quite advanced''? And when we say advanced, we really mean it. The Culture is ruled... ahem, benevolently overseen by extremely powerful AIs called ''Minds''; so powerful are these Minds that they dedicate only a fraction of their power to such trivial matters, and spend the rest building virtual worlds with 12 dimensions. From the biggest sentient ships (because yes, all of their ships are sentient, why did you even ask?) to the smallest drones, AIs in general are considered citizens of the Culture. Aside from being sentient, their ships have hulls made of force fields (because metal is for pussies anyway), and can reach 230,000 times the speed of light; the biggest ones measure in hundreds of kilometers and can carry entire ecosystems with billions of people on board.

Oh, and the Culture does not live on planets, because that's absolutely ''inelegant'', so they use Orbitals, basically Halo-style Ringworlds that are scattered across the galaxy. Instead they prefer to build massive residential space stations in orbit around either planets or around stars that can be more easily calibrated for the comfort of their residents. This is regarded as significantly superior to either building a biosphere from scratch on a lifeless planet or tinkering with a pre-existing ecosystem and hoping you don't cause mass extinctions in the process. Realistically, this is actually better than settling on a planet and hoping for the best, because it'd be very rare for a planet to be optimal for a species that never evolved on it and the environment would be much easier to control. But of course, nobody has ever actually lived on a space station with its own significant gravitational pull but (presumably, we're not sure about some people) everyone who has written a story published on Earth has been on Earth at least once, so most science fiction and space fantasy works go for planets. The Culture absolutely ''can'' make megastructures like Ringworlds that encircle the entire star or Dyson spheres, but consider them wasteful; they don't have enough members to populate a Ringworld even remotely densely, and they can vastly exceed the power output of a star with far smaller devices than a sun-encompassing swarm of satellites/metal shell, so a Dyson sphere would be absolutely pointless.

The average Culturnik may live for 400 years and technically reach immortality, even if it is not considered as fun (and thus not really popular). ''In one novel, a ship saved the life of a beheaded man by simply teleporting the severed head back and creating a new body from scratch''. This isn't as far fetched as you'd think, as studies have shown that it's possible to sustain the life of complex mammals like dogs with severed heads with mid twentieth century medical technology, and humans can survive a few seconds after decapitation based on studies done at executions via beheading. Growing a new body entirely for the head is rather out of the reach of our current medical technology, but there's nothing that would make it actually impossible in the laws of physics, you'd just have to make sure the body you grow is compatible with the tissue of the head. The body is also quite adept at reconnecting nerves for severed limbs if they're sewn back on; when somebody loses a limb usually, doctors will try seeing if they can't stitch the limb back on, with prosthetic limbs only being considered if it's beyond recovery (though obviously the Culture uses something much more sophisticated).

Last but not least, the Culture are ''peaceful'' and not ''pacifist''. Which means that, contrary to [[Ork|certain]] [[Imperium of Man|people]], they won't invade you without a reason, but if you fuck with the Culture, they ''can'' and most certainly ''will'' obliterate you. The base weapon of their military ships is "gridfire", which basically amounts to ''[[Awesome|using the fabric of space and time as a weapon.]]'' That actually says a lot about Banks' universe, considering that the Culture is NOT the most advanced race in the setting, although certainly in the top ten. To wit, the first novel ''Consider Phlebas'' features a galactic war between the Culture and another race called the Idirans; after a few years of being crushed, the Culture finally started mobilizing and simply steamrolls and utterly annihilate its foe. After this, the Culture started designing actual dedicated warships, going so far as to give them obviously threatening class designations like Torturer, Thug, and Murderer (remember now, their ships are all sentient). Their most powerful warship, the Abominator, is so overpowered in the current setting that it was capable of wiping out millions (not an exaggeration) of enemy vessels unaided, and actually did so far slower than it needed to because it was enjoying itself too much to finish the engagement quickly.

Other races find it odd that a race like the Culture turned out to be so martially capable; the wiser Involved civilizations note that whilst most races start off more aggressive and learn to tone down, the peaceful Culture had to do the opposite. So while hippies they may be, there is one axiom that you should not forget: "Don't Fuck With the Culture".

In essence, the peace of the culture is maintained by having enough firepower to make anyone who wants to declare war on them regret that decision. It's the same theory that kept the Soviets and Americans from going for broke with tens of millions of dudes crammed next to each other in a small part of Europe. If either decided to go balls to wall, the other would destroy them in the process. So instead of outright war to jockey for power and position, most societies engage in proxy conflicts with smaller powers or factions of smaller powers, espionage, and manipulating the societies and economies of less powerful civilisations. Given that warships are capable of unleashing over a thousand times more energy than god damn supernovas, and can devastate ''solar systems'' by braking too hard in hyperspace while fighting at several hundred thousand times the speed of light... it's probably for the best that all out war between the major powers is rare.

For those of you who study history, it's important to note that the Culture is able to enjoy its lifestyle because the conditions of its home setting allow for it, something significantly more important than its guiding beliefs in deciding the kind of society it is. ([[Skub|On the other hand]], lots of civilisations in the books have or had at least some of the same tech as the early Culture and actively use it to commit atrocities or were destroyed by it, so it could also be argued that the Culture would not be remotely like itself if it didn't start with a clear philosophical grounding.) It's doubtful whether humanity in Warhammer 40k was ever at the general level of technology that the Culture was, let alone to the point of being able to ensure MAD in short order with any conceivable foe. The Culture also doesn't have to contend with creatures of Chaos OR a Void Dragon eager to hijack most A.Is. Also of importance is that in the Culture's galaxy, international relationships actually have reached a level of normalcy where most issues are resolved with diplomacy or indirect conflict. rather than with total warfare; the Imperium's four most serious enemies are essentially impossible to [[Necrons|buy]], [[Chaos|bargain]], [[Tyranids|negotiate]], or [[Orks|reason]] with.

== Why the hell is that interesting? ==
Because it's a rather original take on the human galactic society theme: the socialist/libertarian/anarchist utopia. Banks called the Culture a ''rather good'' society, and it's exactly what it is - a civilization that tries to be as good and benevolent as it can, both inside and outside of its (very loose) borders. It may actually be the only utopia in recent sci-fi. And it's a realistic utopia, to a certain extent; the consequences of its imperialism are sometimes quite grimdark. In fact, Banks' fiction overall is quite grimdark, but never goes into grimderp. Some might say it's simply realism. The fact that most of the stories starring the Culture take place on its borders or in other civilizations bring different points of view about this society that is, ultimately, the main character of Banks' sci-fi - a character that manages to be both extremely reasonable and sometimes ''batshit insane'' while remaining realistic and believable.

== Good reasons to live in the Culture ==
*Any form of work is now a hobby.
*You live for at least 400 years, but immortality is absolutely a thing, although you'll get bored of it and put yourself in storage or autoeuthanize yourself.
*Alternatively, you can chose to sublime which is a literal apotheosis to a higher plane of existence that is so perfect that a Mind-ship dedicated to going back and informing on the whole thing only succeeded after many, many attempts and once returned was effectively brain-damaged from how stupid our reality is in comparison to the sublimed one.
*You can change sex at will (takes a few months, though).
*Every Culturnik has a gland that can synthesize any drug, without side effects or addiction of course. That also includes a very deep control over your body.
*Your ships have awesome names. Seriously. ''Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath'' is one of them. Well, also a hell of a lot of them are puns, plays on words or running jokes. For example, ''Frank Exchange of Views'' is a fast warship, while one of them most powerful referenced is called ''Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraint''. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Culture_series this list for more comedy.]
*You can do pretty much whatever you want.
*No, really.
*The only things you can't do are the obvious really bad things.
*Of course, if you want your own planet, it'll take a while, but why not?
*You can live in simulations so complex their simulations have simulations.
*War is but history. Except when galactic wars break out. Even then...
*Even then your chances of ''actually dying'' are quite low, given the number of medical, back-up and consciousness-transferring systems the Culture has.
*Name a landscape or a place you would like to live in. One Orbital somewhere has it.
*If a landscape or a place you would like to live in doesn't exist. You can have it custom built for you.
*With a bit of luck, the drone that accompanies you is not crazy.
*Name a game or a sport. It is played somewhere in the Culture. You could even become a professional (read: hobbyist) Player Of Games.
*Want some action, travels and overly complicated plots? The nearest Contact recruitment office is here for you.
*Travel wherever you want.
*You live in a space utopia instead of [[Imperium of Man|this]] and you still complain?

== Why it might sometimes not be that good ==
*They laugh at the Prime Directive from [[Star Trek]] and make the Federation look like ultraconservative capitalists.
*Some minds may also not shy from killing sentients and siccing mercenaries on other civilizations if it would advance their/Culture's agenda.
*The Mind of your Orbital/Ship knows everything about you. Not that it cares, mind you. But still.
*Minds and Drones will always be benevolent for you. Which doesn't mean they can't troll you with style.
*Everyone can change sex at will, and it's actually a common custom for heterosexual couples to both switch genders, each parent bearing the child of the other. Thus, expect extremely complicated family and relationship issues.
*Things get boring after a while. So much that you could want to join Special Circumstances...
**Which, apart from the fact that they do not recruit people like this, is not always a good idea. You will probably end up as a cog in the machine of a Culture plan so complicated it would make [[Tzeentch]] jealous.
**You will also learn that the Culture is just as ideologically militant as many other empires but justifies this as being nice and acts like it gives them the authority to meddle in everybody's business despite being so powerful that virtually no other society is a threat to them.
*If you are religious, be prepared to face ''militant secularism'' that was described as cult-like by non-culture species.
*Other races laugh at you because your death-ships' names lack gravitas... which has become a running gag among Minds, who now try to jam the word "gravitas" in the name of as many ships as they can.
*You live in a place where there are weapons that can kill you while still making you believe you are alive. And one of the military Minds is called ''Meatfucker'' by the others - how do you think it took that nickname? (It read organic beings' minds, something that's considered deviant and taboo even among the hyper anarchistic Culture.)
*The Culture is not the top dog in the galaxy (or the dimension) so there are real threats out there for both you and your society.
*Your personal drone is definitely crazy. Or a undercover agent of Special Circumstances. Or was crazy, and is now a SC agent. Or is crazy and is an agent.
**Oh, and given the basic field-manipulation technology inherent to all drones, well, there's no such thing as an 'unarmed' drone.

== Other civilizations ==
*The Idiran Empire - a race of tripod like reptiles that evolved on a deathworld, forcing the Idiran race to evolve into a tall, armour-plated, biologically immortal warrior race. Their religion is an odd form of racial solipsism; only beings with souls are considered sentient, souls can only exist in an immortal body, therefore only Idirans deserve to exist. The Culture, with its (unarguably) actually sentient Minds and Drones, are seen as the exemplars of sacrilege, hence why the Idirans declared a Jihad war against them. Despite being roughly equal to the Culture technologically and having superior allies, they ultimately end up losing the war (prompting the other galactic civs to coin the term "don't fuck with the Culture") and tone down their xenophobic tendencies over the following centuries, ironically becoming more Culture-like in the process.

*The Homomdan Empire/Polity - The only race outright stronger than the Culture, not including the Sublimed. They view themselves as the space police who need to keep any one force from growing too fast too quickly to maintain "balance", but they aren't malicious about it and have pretty lenient limits. They're pretty cool with the Culture on the whole, and when the two got into a border skirmish (which the Culture were fighting at the same time as the Idiran war) they ended up as friendly trading partners afterward.

*The Sublimed - technically not a race but are encountered by virtually every spacefaring society. The Sublimed are the end stage of almost every civilization, representing ascension into an energy based being residing in an adjacent dimension. The technology to do so isn't actually that complicated, but only a Mind level AI or sizeable planetary community can Sublime and still maintain any meaningful presence. They're effectively capable of doing anything they want, but don't tend to interact with the material universe, save for seemingly random and inscrutable actions (like flinging moons at the planets of civilisations that hunt the local variety of space whale, or keeping people away from memorial planets of dead civilisations with weaponized barriers of spacetime). Many civilisations have tried to enter the Sublime without subliming first. Almost all attempts result in failure, and the tiny number that enter and come back aren't mentally capable of describing what it's like. The Culture is considered unusual because it's had the ability to Sublime for millennia, but hasn't - the Sublimed themselves consider them the equivalent of a party guest that stays a bit too long. The Culture, conversely, finds it a bit too convenient that most civilisations sublime everyone at once, implying coercion of some kind. Even when a Subliming goes well, the local galactic community have to make sure that less advanced civilisations don't make a rush for the abandoned remains of the civilisation and disrupt the local order.

*The Empire of Azad - an autocratic monarchy of humanoids based in an isolated part of the galaxy. They have made contact with other galactic civilisations, but all have been technologically inferior - the Culture is the only civilisation they have encountered that are more advanced, to a ludicrous degree. Their main shtick is having three sexes (males as workers and soldiers, females as trinkets and breeders, and an "apex" sex that controls everything). The other more important feature is the game of Azad: A ludicrously complicated board-game played on football pitch sized boards, it plays like a real life version of Civilisation writ large (the specifics are left deliberately vague). The complexity of game simulates the skills needed to rule the empire, so the winner of the regular tournament becomes the Emperor. Male and Female Azadians are allowed to play, but are never allowed to get very far due to the apex sex being the only ones allowed to hold offices and having access to specialised schools and learning drugs. The Culture encounters them during a period of aggressive expansion, which isn't a positive thing as Banks intended them to be a dark reflection of parts of our own civilisations. The Culture sends a professional game-player to participate in the tournament (in an unofficial capacity), effectively acting as a proxy war between the Empire and the Culture.

*The Affront - a race of gas-dwelling octopus-like beings that can be best described as a cross between a jolly British colonial aristocrat and your average [[Dark Eldar]]. At best, they are considered to be boisterously good-natured (if they become your friend, you're in for life) and, at their worst, monstrously sadistic; one of the first things they did when they achieved genetic engineering was to [[Slaanesh|alter their females and young males to only feel terror and agony in any sexual situation as a means of population control and because the older and more powerful males considered it more fun that way]]). It's not that they can't understand the concept of morality, but rather that they take the idea of pain building character to a rather grotesque extreme. This attitude carries over to their other race relations, with less powerful races being considered as fair game and more powerful races to be placated enough to let them keep doing terrible things. Even worse, the Affront seem to thrive on the negative attention they get from their neighbours, even changing their name to the Affront from whatever they were called originally. The Culture is put into a difficult position with them, as they are too advanced to be readily manipulated and don't pose any threat to the Culture to prompt military action. This doesn't last long.

*The Chelgrians - A civilisation of five-legged cat-like predators. Their society was historically dominated by hereditary castes, with all the social issues that would imply. They're unique in that not only a part of their civilisation sublimed independently of the majority (named the Chelgrian Puen), but they also keep in regular contact with their living descendants, who universally revere them. They are also a rare example of the Culture getting things really wrong with their Special Circumstances interventions, as their attempts to dismantle the caste system from within Chelgrian society led to a devastating civil war that killed 5 billion Chelgrians. The Puen were not happy when the Culture fessed up and contrived to balance the books by destroying a Culture Orbital that contained an equal number of lives. It failed for a variety of reasons, and the Culture responded by sending a Terror Weapon (a nanocloud assasin) to murder the conspirators in ways that would make a Eversor blanch.

*The Morthanveld - An equivalent level species to the Culture comprised of water-based Spiniforms. Their primary form of communication is shooting subtly altered molecules of water at people (no really). They are on good relations with the Culture but tend to be cagey of them, partly because they know exactly what the Culture are capable of and what Special Circumstances try to do. They are also seen as a responsible civilisation and so are given oversight of one of the Shellworld Mega Structures left behind by an ancient civilisation. They don't reside on ring like Orbitals but instead construct gargantuan rings of overlapping, insecting toroids in a dyson sphere around empty stars. The largest of these "Nestworlds" contains more sentients than the entire Culture combined.

*The Saal - a humanoid species living on one of the middle levels of a Shellworld - think of a planetary form of a Russian Doll, spheres inside spheres inside other spheres. No one knows who built them or why - theories range from a network of shield emitters to protect the galaxy from extragalactic threats or a cage to enslave everyone instead. Regardless, the original builders aren't around anymore. The Saal attained an early industrial monarchy technologically but were fully aware of there being space bound civilisations beyond their world. Their ancestors were placed on the Shellworld as a form of punishment for unknown crimes. They suffer a rather bad case of regicide, leading their surviving prince to find his sister - who just happens to be a Culture Special Circumstances agent. They're desperate to find anything that will give them an edge technologically which leads to them digging up things best left alone...

* The Sichultean Enablement - another humanoid species. They've only had FTL travel for a short amount of time, but are trying to do anything to jump tech levels as fast as they can. As a society, they appear to be a capitalist-based democracy, albeit with some odd cultural practices. The most notable is the process of Entagliation: a form of indentured servitude for a variety of civil infractions like debt or contract breach, and marked by elaborate tattoos all over their bodies. This wouldn't be too controversial in itself, except that it's usually wildly disproportionate to the crime (indefinite servitude and diminished autonomy/civil rights for a finite crime), as well as potentially applying to any children or descendants, culpability be damned. In these cases, the tattoos can be applied on a genetic level in the womb.

* The GFCF - Short for the Geseptian-Fardesile Cultural Federacy. Small fairy-like beings with a lesser tech level to the Culture. They are, essentially, an entire race of Culture Fanboys, imitating their favourite civilisation in numerous ways (but not quite getting it right). The Culture itself is rather baffled at the whole thing, despite normally liking other civilisations being more like them. Turns out that they're not as innocent as they'd first appear, nor as powerful as they think they are - one Culture ship wipes out an entire armada of their ships in several seconds.

* The Pavulians - a herd species of quadrupeds with two prehensile trunks instead of conventional limbs. Fairly religious and generally deferential to older authority, as befitting their evolutionary history as herd animals. An otherwise unremarkable species, save for one incredibly dark secret: They send their citizens to Hell when they die... Okay, it's a virtual hell, and what's sent is a mind-state captured at the point of death, and then placed in a perfectly accurate simulation of what their people consider Hell to be (often crafted with the assistance of "creative" consultants). As the galactic community at large treats mind-states as being equivalent to the real person they were when they were alive, it's regarded as a needed social tool by its advocates, but a despicably unnecessary act by most everyone else. It isn't helped by the fact that the general public don't know for certain if the hells actually exist, nor by the fact that hosting the data farms necessary to keep all the mind-states and separate hells running smoothly is a very lucrative trade. The Culture publicly disapproves of the Hells, and is a covert participant in the entirely simulated wars to contest the issue.

*The Gzilt - a race of minorly reptilian humanoids who were almost one of the founding species of the Culture, but declined at the last minute. Like many other species before them, on reaching a certain level of ennui they decide to Sublime, leaving all their tech and territory to other species as a kind of civilisational will. Their culture is organised into clan-like regiments based on periods of compulsory military service, and a permanent reserve status on leaving active duty. They have one religion based on a holy text that appeared randomly in their pre-history. The book had a variety of technological and social shortcuts built into the religious language, as well as listing several prophecies that then happened to all come true. The book's seeming infallibility lead the Gzilt to a certain arrogant civilisational mindset, seeing themselves as the favoured people in the galaxy, despite many other civilisations having similar occurrences or - in the case of the Sublimed and Minds - being actual godlike beings. There's just one problem: The Book was a social experiment by a rogue alien scientist into manipulating the development of young races, which worked just a little too well. As this revelation is the kind of thing that could cause enormous civil wars, not to mention botching the impending Subliming, the remains of the Gzilt military attempt to destroy the secret before they ascend.

[[category: Literature]]