BattleTech Spacecraft

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This page is about Spacecraft in the BattleTech universe. In general BattleTech space travel is mostly fairly well grounded. From a narrative perspective, Spacecraft in the BattleTech universe generally takes a secondary role to combat on the ground with BattleMechs, Elementals and similar. Never the less, it is fairly well explored.

Systems

Kearny-Fuchida Drive

FTL Travel in Battletech is achieved thanks to Kearny Fuchida Drive (KF Drive or Jump Drive for short). Developed in the early 22nd century by the Deimos Project it made it's first jump in 2108, it opened up space to human colonization shortly afterwards. After that there has been some incremental refinements but the basic system have not changed much since then.

To Jump from system to system, you need a lot of power and that power takes a long time to build up. Then you need a Jump Point, typically these are zones of space above the North and South Poles of a Star which are the preferred points but there are other spots to jump from called Pirate Points which are riskier. It takes a bit of time to spin things up even when the Drive is fully charged but once the timer reaches zero, you are effectively instantly transported to your destination, another Jump Point within 30 LY of where you started from. Jump Drives release a lot of light and radiation when they Jump, meaning that a stealthy arrival is not really possible. They are also rather pricey pieces of hardware.

Occasionally things go wrong: a ship missjumps and ends up far off course, arrives badly damaged, blows up or simply disappears. The risk goes up if you don't calculate things right and there is less fudge factor with Pirate Points. Even so while it is kind of clunky, it's a generally safe way to get from Point A to Point B across interstellar distances (at least in comparison to the inherent risks of Space Travel), they can last for centuries and of course you are not literally taking a detour through Fucking Hell.

Artificial Gravity

Either comes from thrust while the ship is under acceleration or rotating centrifugal sections.

Weapons

• Lasers
• Particle Projector Cannons
• Missiles
• Gauss Cannons
• Nukes

JumpShips

A Ship with a Jump Drive is called a JumpShip. Typically the Ship is built around the Jump Drive, with up to 95% of the total volume of a typical JumpShip being dedicated to that specific mechanism and it's ancillary systems. They are also typically large. The smallest JumpShip was the Bug-Eye, a 129 meter long 6,100 tonne specialized surveillance craft and it's rare to find one under 100,000 tonnes.

Civilian JumpShips as a rule can't do much more than Jump, having only minimal STL fusion drives they spend most of their days skipping from point to point ferrying STL ships which latch onto their Jump Points and using big solar panels to recharge. Only occasionally coming into port for maintenance and so their crews don't die of boredom. Some of them might might have a few guns for defense and occasionally pirates might slap on some more for raids, but this is like slapping an M2 Browning and some rocket launchers onto a river barge. Yes, it works but it's far from optimal and you'd only really do it if you could not put together something proper, speaking of which...

WarShips

WarShips are JumpShips that have two defining features. First of all and most obvious is that they are are armed and armored and are made for combat. Secondly they have Compact KF-Drives which do the same job as the regular civilian models while being half the size, but come at a price-tag five times higher than normal. This means they have space left over for fuel, weapons, armor, redundant systems, engines that can get around a system faster than a metaphorical space tortoise and similar. These range from small frigates to kilometer long Dreadnoughts.

The thing about WarShips is that one of them in orbit of a planet can drop a lot of fuckload of nukes and cause a lot of devastation, as well as being able to provide less apocalyptic orbital support to forces on the ground. After the collapse of the old Terran Alliance the powers that had the resources to build WarShips of their own were able to impose their social orders onto systems and planets which lacked them, giving rise to the Successor States. When the peer powers met, this caused it's own problem. The best WarShip is another WarShip, hopefully to intercept before it reaches a populated world or if that fails as a means of retaliation. The Ares Convention was put into place to prevent worlds from burning and Star League tried it's best to demilitarize the Inner Sphere to avoid that. Unfortunately, their worst nightmares came true after the First Succession War when the Successor States proceeded to spend their fleets bombing everyone back into the stone age.

During the Succession Wars Warships became LosTech to most of the Inner Sphere the Near Periphery. All examples were destroyed and the survivors had only a limited capacity to churn out a few new civilian JumpShips every year. ComStar had a few Warships squirreled away in distant asteroid bases. The only place were WarShips were actively being made was Clanspace, in which bigger and badder WarShips than ever before were coming out of Clan drydocks.

DropShips

DropShips are STL ships which are capable of landing on a planet's surface, launching themselves back into space and getting around a star system on their own. It is possible to build a JumpShip which can do this as well, but it's generally considered to be not worthwhile and almost all of them them are built, work and meet their ultimate fates beyond a planet's atmosphere.

Both Civilian and Military DropShips are built and used, with the distinction being one of armor, armament and intended cargo. In a pinch a civie DropShip can deploy Mechs into the fray, but you'd prefer one that can take a beating and actually fight back somewhat against interceptors.

Most of them are egg shaped.