Always wanted a BattleTech MechTech game where you are the head MechTech of a mercenary company and have to fulfill repairs, loadout specifications, or put your recommended loadout on mechs that will suit the mission. Like a BattleTech car mechanic simulator.
The real heroes of the mechwarrior/battletech games are the MechTechs who put up with all of the protagonists’ outrageous outfitting requests, and still get them done in a timely manner with no major issues.
Damn, the battletech creators seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Glad to see another person addressing the "not just big stompy robots" aspects of battletech. If you can find copies of the old FASA books, a "long form" video regarding the capabilities of the various dropships might write it's self out of the campaign rules and "fluff text". (Sarna's got the bibliography, and the "on map" rules & stats to give you a jump-start.)
The crazy thing about swapping out an IS AC with a different caliber IS AC is that it's not much more work to just put a Clan one on if you have it laying around.
@@Lastburn I generally don't charge extra for the connectors, but I do charge for the work. Most Defiance equipment is not too bad... Until you get into one of their weird proprietary 'mech.
I got that Kintaro for my nephew. It even came with ORGINAL vintage "conehead" neurohelemet. But my nephew says it looks "tacky", and he said that he will NOT!! use our Family Heirloom Cooling Vest (with fitting undies) that is still used by our family since the times of my grand-grandad. Eh kids...
Getting a more modern neurohelmet WILL help the pilot perform better. They can get expensive, but is clearly an upgrade over time in term of ease of use and performance.
I always saw it as the techs cutting and welding everything to fit all over again if they're good. I also imagine some old mechs have structure points that are at least 40% pure weld.
@@Marxon1134 At some point, it gets easier to replace the entire "bone", especially when you have a facility to cast them PlanetSide. Doing it "on a dropship" might not be as easy, however.
Theres a reason why custom fit battlemechs are extremely rare in the battletech universe and usually reserved for exceptional and famous mercenaries or heads of noble houses. Hell some of the most famous pilots in battletech history actually DIDNT have custom rides. Not only basically having to rebuild the entire inner structure of a mech to "simply" exchange weapon systems, but also maintaining and repairing those custom builds is just prohibitively expensive in material and manhours. Every new tech you hire will have to learn your custom build too so thats even more cost ontop of the allready piled up mountain of money and hours XD In short: Its not really worth it in a universe where it can be really difficult to get spare parts to begin with. So its nice to find a content creator who finaly addresses the big atlas elephant in the room: Mechs are not "plug and play" or nearly as customizable as the video games make them look to be.. hence why omni mech technology was such a huge friggin deal too and an absolute gamechanger at the time.
Hello Professor. I recently came across your video about Battlemech Refits. Overall, I agree with just about everything you spoke about. Time, costs, labor, parts availability, ease or difficulty to produce equipment and replacement items, and the absolute need for a full up Mech Repair and Refit Facility at the very least. Although Repair Bays on drop ships, and the Mobile Repair Bays are useful, they are not meant for extensive upgrades. Especially things like Endo-Steel internal structures, and changing Engine ratings to alter a Mech's combat movement performance. There are so many specialists needed to make up a good Refit and Repair team, and even more for one that specializes in Mech redesigns of existing Mech types and variants upon those types. In some cases it is impossible to perform such extensive remodeling of a Mech without both types of teams and their specialists. And attempting to do so without the benefit of a full Facility is literally almost impossible. Even having full a full up Repair and Refit Facility, one requires the manufacturing base to support the effort. One also needs the logistics, time, and planning to successfully see such an upgrade or rebuilt to completion. On top of all this is the 'cost'. Both in time, manpower, resources, machinery, tools, equipment, supplies, and even housing for those working upon the project. Huge investments must be made in Computer capacity, computer banks, data stores, and even physical, historical documentation storage and cataloging. That last factor is why the Hellsport Mek Werks is so closely connected to the Hellsport Mech Museum and their vast store of existing Mechs, Mech parts, data banks, and historical archives. The Mek Werks updates the Mech Museum with full copies of all files associated with every project taken on by the Mek Werks. Some of the Museum staff have offices here at the Mek Werks to make those copies, literally on a daily, or even hourly, basis. Plus, both Digital and Physical copies are forwarded to the Mech Museum to ensure that the processes used remain fully documented and current. This is so that should anything detrimental happen, the data can be used by another team to replicate any stage of the process, up to and including final construction and testing. The Stygian Compact has not been invaded during its 130 years of existence, and the Compact has ties with most of the Periphery Powers, as well as many of the smaller Periphery Nations and Single Planet Governments. On top of this is the on-going relationship with Clan Diamond Shark / Sea Fox, and communications links with groups like yourself and your team in the Fronc Reaches, and others. This stability is mostly due to the Compact's location in the relatively 'un-mapped' Perseus / Cepherus Cloud Complex that Compact Citizens call the Staplin Nebula. It is also influenced by the relative richness of the Rare Earth Element deposits in the Stygia System, which are mined, refined, and shipped all throughout the Periphery. Which, has led to the Compact being wealthy enough to afford to build and expand manufacturing, refining, and industry as a whole to levels unseen since the days of the old Star League. At most, anyone stumbling upon the Stygia System would see a heavily industrialized solar system with no 'habitable' worlds, several gas giants, dozens and dozens of moons, three asteroid belts, and hundreds of drop ships plying between them and various orbital smelters and other space-based facilities. The system is guarded by dozens of Corvettes that are actually armored and armed Merchant Class Drop Ships, as well as well over 70 armed and armored drop ships, specifically redesigned and rebuilt to be 'Carriers' for multiple Aerospace Fighters. Any Bandit group attempting to raid the system would be intercepted and destroyed before they could recharge their KF Drives to jump out of the system. Actual Warships would be overwhelmed by the combined firepower of the Corvettes and the Combat Drop Ships, even though they would take terrible losses in doing so. Losses can be replaced, in time. The Mek Werks is a facility for designing, redesigning, and constructing new variants on existing Mechs, Vehicles, and other equipment. Once the 'bugs' are worked out, the data is handed over to the Compact's Manufacturing groups and the Government, to determine if the design has enough merit to warrant production on any scale. The Mek Werks makes 'one off' designs, with full documentation, and suggestions for scaled up production. We do not engage in production lines, unless it is for some testing purpose, like the building of a limited number of a design for full Combat Testing and Assessment. I do hope that this message finds you and your team in good spirits, and fully employed. My own staff is always busy with one project or another, and rarely finds the time to 'make trouble', unless you count various practical jokes to be 'trouble'. Jason Andrews Chief Tech Hellsport Mek Werks Hel, Sheol III Stygia System Stygian Compact
A solid overview, especially from a tech at a refit center. How much more difficult/impossible would repair (not refit) jobs be if performed on a dropship? Would damaged armor be a quick fix while internal damage takes much longer? Is an Overlord notably more capable than a Union or Leopard?
@@matthewmarek1467 Repair jobs while on a dropship are doable, especially armor work. There is not much difference in how much room you get in the different dropship classes, as the mech bays are standardized. Internal work will be much harder, as usual.
I agree with the Professor. Armor replacements are fairly 'easy' to do in a drop ship's Repair Bays, but Internal Structures would take longer and require the right materials to be 'on hand'. Repairing a damaged Mech's leg internals would entail the total removal of the armor, removal of the myomers, all cabling, both power and signalling, as well as computer controls,. Only then have you 'torn down' the leg to get access to the damaged internal components. If you have the correct materials on hand, the job can be pretty straight forwards, although time consuming and backbreaking hard. Trying to replace existing IS (internal structures) with other materials is near-impossible. Such as replacing 'standard' IS with Endo-Steel, or vice versa.
With the gantries seen in the game's mechbays, they should be able to handle any repairs / mods they have the time & parts for. (It is lore accurate for mercenary companies to spend years building and re-fitting mechs out of salvage in their drop-ship bays, and to know that the factory could do the job in hours.) Since it's a leopard, the repair bays are supposed to also be the deployment bays, with four 100 ton working bays and four 100 ton storage bays (Those storage bays are supposed to be ALL your spare mechs, spare parts, and ammo - which is why mercenary companies ditch the leopard as soon as finances allow.) Unions are supposed to be 3-4 decks that are each about the size of all of a leopard's bays, with a dedicated salvage deck, dedicated repair deck or both being more common than packing mechs on all the decks. (Rules wise it came about with the wolf's dragoon's and rules for mercenary companies. Lore wise, they've been hot swapping and adjusting the deck hight on eggs since Alexander Kerenski's day.) P.S. I'm a "clan invasion era" player, Wolf's Dragoons were the hot new thing when I started, and the last of us went our own way shortly after the Tukayyid tournaments.
Logically speaking replacing the structure is basically rebuilding the mech, replacing the myomer is similar, the engine would be difficult, especially trying to install an XL, same with the heatsinking, but armor and weapon loadouts should be pretty easy.
If you were only replacing SHS with DSHS in an old 3025 Era Mech (depending upon the exact Mech), you may find that the Mech has enough internal space to enable the tech staff to mount heat sinks beyond those contained by the Engine. In most cases, the total number of DSHSs needed is far less than the previously mounted SHS. This leaves space and weight available for other means, or the Mech runs 'light' on tonnage. Finding space, weight, and mounting points for more weapons and equipment can be a truly daunting task, and it would take time. Lots and lots of time, trials, adjustments, dis-mountings, re-mountings, and the 'project' may end up too expensive, time consuming, and just plain beyond any shipboard Tech's means to perform in any case. NOT taking all this into consideration has ruined Mercenary Commanders over the centuries.
@@franksmedley8619 It was more how much they have to strip out to replace it, I assume that there are fluid runs throughout the mech that have to be replaced.
Love it! Sounds just like a mechanic back here on Terra doing custom jobs for cars. And being a phone technician myself I mean comm-tech, i do appreciate the complexity of repairing electronics. This is the level of in game complexity that should be part of Mechwarrior 5, mercenaries. I've never liked how easy it is do do a full custom job with standard mech techs on your dropship. Specialist factories and refit yards like this should be destinations in the game.
Hey just changing your worn out tires requires calibration and some checks before the let you on the road, but people switch out a PPC for an AC/20 like they go for a new oil filter in their car.
If your tech is actually a tech (7 to 9 points in the skill) then get traditional mechs, and Clan tech that wasn't ripped out of an omni-pod to refit them with. Build the perfect machine. If your tech doesn't meet that criteria, then they are only qualified to play with Legos, and should be given Legos to play with. That is to say that you should purchase omnimechs since they're easy to work on as long as nothing went internal, or you're just playing with the pod loadout.
Sometimes Im glad that things like endo-steel or endo-composite are incompatible with combat vehicles. The amount of bitching from the motor pool is already bad enough when the hardened armor tanks roll back in. And say what you will about missile carriers but those things are fire on sunday and load the rest of the week.
Reminds me of this other guy, Hodges or something. Everyone calls him the Ferret. Anyway, he does *antique* restoration! Oh, the bellyaching he did when a client brought in a Swordsman 1! Just crazy. You have any difficulties working on certain era's hardware, prof?
Of course, every armor type you name also requires a layer of synthetic diamond or carbon nanotubes, polymer sealant, and maybe some extra treatment in a machine that has more in common with a PPC than a lathe in order to get the atoms in your print or casting bumped around into exactly the right configuration by the electron or proton beam radiation. Mech armor is light, and only centimeters thick, but it's complex stuff. I know a company who does various High-entropy alloys like Endosteel in a powder form so you can laser-sinter them together, but the powder still needs to be milled in 0g. And while you can sinter the parts to order, you still gotta strip the mech completely and rebuild it. That's a factory job, no question. I'd much rather be assigned to find the right connector than to find the right driver to make a 2600 vintage Star-league bit of programming talk to a 3050 vintage Clantech Laser. And, while the laser modules themselves are plug and play, armory work on those lenses requires a clean room, and heaven help you if you drop a diamondoid lens and crack it. I want to build a time machine, go back in time, and fight a trial of refusal against the guy who decided the Clans were gonna standardize on such sizes as 115mm. As far as I can tell, that was just to make the Technician caste's life more hell. Once, I had to install actual ballast, 1 ton of lead weights, on a mech when it got a clan missile launcher. Never worked with ATM, so no idea what that's like, but I think my worst experience is doing electronics refits. Getting the mech to talk to a new ECM system or an advanced targeting system is all about those drivers, and good libraries for them are sometimes worth more than the parts themselves. Bad drivers and interface programs can rob you of efficiency, or even be trojans to sabotage your mech.
How much TSM do you encounter in structural requests? Triple-strength myomer seems an extension of the structure issue, and I know our folks at Bergan Alshain, Balmung, and Ares get a *ton* of requests for that swap.
@@christopherpurches2774 It is fairly common, but it is easier to replace myomer bundles than a full skeleton (as long as the connectors are in the same family). It is one hell of a job, but easier than swapping an engine or the entire skeleton.
In my heat cannon with all the stat similarities I always figured that LBX autocannon would be easier swaps for the same reason as the guass rifle, its all based on a standardized Star League template. Ultra auto cannons and standard autocannons are based off the different nations ideas of what a good caliber would be.
@ yeah less chances for the good idea fairy to convince say Defiance that having a proprietary caliber is better way to protect their market share than say pushing refit packages at some kind of discount to major buyers for their models that fit a common mounting structure so they can get the military where the big money is, the maintance and replacement parts licenses on those 5,10,20 year supply contracts.
Based on the number of official designs described as beginning as simple field refits I don't think Mech refits are incredibly hard. Refitting with clan hardware might be harder but Archer Christifori's Penetrator was refit with at least some Clan weapons in the field or while in transit. so its certainly possible. Yes the refit was probably done on Huntress but it was a Huntress after the military industrial infrastructure had been smashed, bulldozed, and bombed into toothpaste. I always found it odd that Autocannon barrel diameters were never standardized. Say 40 or 50 mm for a 2, 75 mm for a A5, 120 mm for an AC 10, and 175 mm to 200 mm for an AC 20.
That's because the terms we use are just broad general categories instead of being specific models of weapon. Just as an example some Atlas models have quick fire missile launchers which get classified as lrm 10s or even 20s despite only having 5 tubes.
Playing with pod space is the easiest thing to do after simple armor replacement. Next easiest is equipment swaps on the sort of tech (IS or Clan) that the worker is used to. Then you've got putting Clan tech in an IS machine and visa versa. Next is messing with the fixed equipment of an omni, which is nearly as difficult as designing a mech from the ground up. I remember scouring the rulebooks for that info when preparing to run my A Time of War campaign.
@@noanswer1864 Yeah theres a difference between. "We're converting this to a new configuration that someone has published the design specs for." and "The mech pilot has asked for some custom loadout deal that's going to mean we have to redo the internals." Woe betide the mechpilot who just casually asks for something like endo-steel or TSM because he is about to have hand tools thrown at him.
@@virado255 Yeah but you would think someone, the Star League if no one else, would push for that kind of thing to be standardized to make logistics, and keeping track of munitions stockpiles easier. As it stands instead of say just worrying about how much AC 20 ammo a unit has the quartermaster has to worry about how many different AC 20 types the unit has, and making sure they have enough ammo for each type.
@@roguerifter9724 Thinking like that is what ends up making people fall down the classic hole of "We have four different standards of thing. We need to unify them and streamline it out! >there are now five different standards of thing. It sounds nice but it doesn't really end up working out in practice. You'll never have 100% adoption rate for a variety of reasons. Maybe within one nation you'll see some more commonly used parts and calibers but not beyond that.
The video games have warped people perception of things so much it is crazy. I understand the WHY, but it made people not understand how hard some of those changes would be.
@ProfessorHeyTeeEn The pre-MW4 games essentially made every mech an OmniMech, yes, and like you say I can understand the WHY of the hardpoint system, but it's implementation has crowded out a number a modifications I've been using for years, and I don't just mean "Put 12 medium lasers on everything and be a cheesedick" either, I mean balanced variants that are different enough to be unique but still fit within the "spirit" of the design, or fill a capabilities gap. Rather than simply locking out certain mods, there should be a system that allows users to make whatever they want, but radically different mods should be wildly expensive and time consuming to accomplish. To balance it out, OmniMech designs should have unlimited and easy modifications, but the repair costs from battle damage should be wildly expensive. Of course this system would really only work on a single player, linear campaign style game, and we all know that the hardpoint system was implemented specifically because multiplayer games had devolved into 16 player free-for-all games of Shadow Cats with 16 ER Small Lasers being *absolute* *assholes* to anyone trying to have even a modicum of immersion. 🤷
I mean once you have pre built adaptors plugging odd stuff would get easier. Maybe in 3050 you'd be splicing wires but by 3058 I could see usb J to USB IIC adaptors showing up
The problem is that everyone wants their proprietary stuff in the Battletech universe. This is what makes OmniMechs and pods so much more superior to everything else.
Uh. No. realistically, replacing normal armor with FF would be fairly complex, because any military device isn't going to have "free internal space". Why? Because leaving lots of unneeded voids inside a vehicle of any time means you are making the vehicle bigger then absolutely neccessary. Which means you have a larger siloutte to be hit. So your going to be building the armor out, not in. Which means it's going to imping on all the joints.
Well it shouldn't be that hard. You got a hole saw you got a welder. You got duct tape and an extension cord. You should be able to wire anything up right now. You know making tubes for an lrm or srm rack addition that might be a little hard
having worked on crusaders in the past, bud, if the missiles go, you tend to replace shit quickly from damage. or just have the unit totaled. but hey, that's the crusader mech lifestyle, insanely useful one moment, mushroom cloud the next.
@@baker90338 Or the Crusader becomes a 'hanger queen' and used to salvage parts from, until it is basically rendered down enough to just break it into pieces that can be stored in case they might prove useful in the future. Or, doing that in the first place, and just 'warming up' a replacement Crusader and saving the other's parts for replacements.
Oh dear, BT and it's "weird" history of tech and upgrades. Clans go through their own Succession War, but ten times worse, still crank out super tech by the 2820's with only a few million people mostly former grunts. IS has a full industrial base with a pool of a few trillion people, thousands of planets to mine for resources and they can't even copy a Clan MG until at least the 2100's because it's apparently made from Space magic unobtanium, unicorn tears and the dreams of little children. And even when you do get Clan tech in your mech there is a 95% chance it all came from Clan can't even figure what its own name is. When the chips were down humanity was able to mass produce cheap, but effective weapons like the PPsh or the Sten gun or even simplify the Bren so much it was cheaper and faster to produce than an MG-42 ! In the BT universe people who need weapons go back to making the equivalent of matchlock muskets and handgonnes. They don't build a T-34, but try building a Hussite War Wagon with an M1887 Gatling on it because retrotech is a thing. Mechs hardly change until about the 3050's. Once a model is established it's around for centuries (and perpetual copyright as well as people still get sued for producing a 300-year old design) but after 3050, it's like the GM yearly model catalogue. Before 3050 a Warhammer is a 6R model. After 3050, you can barely keep count. What really got me in the frozen, finger raised speechless position was the fact that Omnimechs come as they are. Let me emphasize this so it can sink in. So if you pilot something like a Mad Cat, you don't get to do some math and figure a combination of weapons that will be ideal for the fight ahead. No, you have to pick option A, B or C, no discussion, no custom work, you only get the standard configs. Only really special people who come with a plot immunity card, are mentioned in dozens of books or have Alaric in their name get to do customs. If you notice your Loki is a heat death trap you don't get to pick a mix of weapons that works better, nope, no way, too hard to do. Meanwhile some guy with a wrench can completely rebuild his Warhammer and nobody makes a problem about it. Try to reconfigure an OMNIMECH and the whole world loses their mind. I love BT, but the moment you start to look a bit closer it is based on some really weird logic.
I get what you're saying, but claiming the Clan civil war was *worse* than the Inner Sphere's FOUR SUCCESSION WARS seems a bit suspect. The Inner Sphere lags behind the Clans tech-wise because the Inner Sphere spent literal centuries nuking each other to bits. Just look at WW2 for a real-life example - it only takes a few years of bombing to reduce a high-tech nation to scrounging literal museum pieces to equip last-resort militias. The idea that the neo-feudal societies of the Inner Sphere would struggle to recover after having their industrial and tech bases repeatedly nuked is, in my opinion, one of the more reasonable elements of the setting. For all their faults, the Clans at least did a good job of NOT undoing their own progress with periodic nuclear annihilation. It's easy to win a race when your opponents keep breaking their own legs.
@@nuclearattackwombat8390 I may be rusty but I recall that either the Wolf Clan Sourcebook or the Jade Falcon one made that claim that it made the IS going to war look like a garden party as they had this immense density of mechs, weapons all sitting in caches and ready to be thrown into the fight with the vast majority being soldiers it was a nasty slog. Also the 1st succession war was incredibly destructive, but they held back on the nukes because they had warships that could erase a city in a matter of minutes and what was left of the SLDF and the Hegemony arsenals to throw into the fight.
Always wanted a BattleTech MechTech game where you are the head MechTech of a mercenary company and have to fulfill repairs, loadout specifications, or put your recommended loadout on mechs that will suit the mission. Like a BattleTech car mechanic simulator.
@@Shredneck92 There is a mechtech simulator game on Steam, played it a bit and it was fun.
@ProfessorHeyTeeEn Yeah Mech mechanic simulator. It was alright.
The real heroes of the mechwarrior/battletech games are the MechTechs who put up with all of the protagonists’ outrageous outfitting requests, and still get them done in a timely manner with no major issues.
makes you really appreciate Omni-Mechs, eh?
@@imadethistopostponi OmniMechs are so great when you start moving weapons and equipment around it is crazy.
Damn, the battletech creators seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Glad to see another person addressing the "not just big stompy robots" aspects of battletech.
If you can find copies of the old FASA books, a "long form" video regarding the capabilities of the various dropships might write it's self out of the campaign rules and "fluff text". (Sarna's got the bibliography, and the "on map" rules & stats to give you a jump-start.)
I am working on 'mech reviews mainly. These little aside videos are really fun to do, however.
The crazy thing about swapping out an IS AC with a different caliber IS AC is that it's not much more work to just put a Clan one on if you have it laying around.
ac our good.heat wise
Were you the guy quoting me 2500 cbills for a martel to defiance adapter connector?
@@Lastburn I generally don't charge extra for the connectors, but I do charge for the work. Most Defiance equipment is not too bad... Until you get into one of their weird proprietary 'mech.
I got that Kintaro for my nephew.
It even came with ORGINAL vintage "conehead" neurohelemet. But my nephew says it looks "tacky", and he said that he will NOT!! use our Family Heirloom Cooling Vest (with fitting undies) that is still used by our family since the times of my grand-grandad. Eh kids...
Getting a more modern neurohelmet WILL help the pilot perform better. They can get expensive, but is clearly an upgrade over time in term of ease of use and performance.
I always saw it as the techs cutting and welding everything to fit all over again if they're good.
I also imagine some old mechs have structure points that are at least 40% pure weld.
@@Marxon1134 At some point, it gets easier to replace the entire "bone", especially when you have a facility to cast them PlanetSide. Doing it "on a dropship" might not be as easy, however.
Theres a reason why custom fit battlemechs are extremely rare in the battletech universe and usually reserved for exceptional and famous mercenaries or heads of noble houses. Hell some of the most famous pilots in battletech history actually DIDNT have custom rides. Not only basically having to rebuild the entire inner structure of a mech to "simply" exchange weapon systems, but also maintaining and repairing those custom builds is just prohibitively expensive in material and manhours. Every new tech you hire will have to learn your custom build too so thats even more cost ontop of the allready piled up mountain of money and hours XD
In short: Its not really worth it in a universe where it can be really difficult to get spare parts to begin with.
So its nice to find a content creator who finaly addresses the big atlas elephant in the room: Mechs are not "plug and play" or nearly as customizable as the video games make them look to be.. hence why omni mech technology was such a huge friggin deal too and an absolute gamechanger at the time.
Solid presentation as always Professor.
Hello Professor.
I recently came across your video about Battlemech Refits. Overall, I agree with just about everything you spoke about. Time, costs, labor, parts availability, ease or difficulty to produce equipment and replacement items, and the absolute need for a full up Mech Repair and Refit Facility at the very least. Although Repair Bays on drop ships, and the Mobile Repair Bays are useful, they are not meant for extensive upgrades. Especially things like Endo-Steel internal structures, and changing Engine ratings to alter a Mech's combat movement performance.
There are so many specialists needed to make up a good Refit and Repair team, and even more for one that specializes in Mech redesigns of existing Mech types and variants upon those types. In some cases it is impossible to perform such extensive remodeling of a Mech without both types of teams and their specialists. And attempting to do so without the benefit of a full Facility is literally almost impossible.
Even having full a full up Repair and Refit Facility, one requires the manufacturing base to support the effort. One also needs the logistics, time, and planning to successfully see such an upgrade or rebuilt to completion.
On top of all this is the 'cost'. Both in time, manpower, resources, machinery, tools, equipment, supplies, and even housing for those working upon the project. Huge investments must be made in Computer capacity, computer banks, data stores, and even physical, historical documentation storage and cataloging.
That last factor is why the Hellsport Mek Werks is so closely connected to the Hellsport Mech Museum and their vast store of existing Mechs, Mech parts, data banks, and historical archives. The Mek Werks updates the Mech Museum with full copies of all files associated with every project taken on by the Mek Werks.
Some of the Museum staff have offices here at the Mek Werks to make those copies, literally on a daily, or even hourly, basis. Plus, both Digital and Physical copies are forwarded to the Mech Museum to ensure that the processes used remain fully documented and current. This is so that should anything detrimental happen, the data can be used by another team to replicate any stage of the process, up to and including final construction and testing.
The Stygian Compact has not been invaded during its 130 years of existence, and the Compact has ties with most of the Periphery Powers, as well as many of the smaller Periphery Nations and Single Planet Governments. On top of this is the on-going relationship with Clan Diamond Shark / Sea Fox, and communications links with groups like yourself and your team in the Fronc Reaches, and others.
This stability is mostly due to the Compact's location in the relatively 'un-mapped' Perseus / Cepherus Cloud Complex that Compact Citizens call the Staplin Nebula. It is also influenced by the relative richness of the Rare Earth Element deposits in the Stygia System, which are mined, refined, and shipped all throughout the Periphery.
Which, has led to the Compact being wealthy enough to afford to build and expand manufacturing, refining, and industry as a whole to levels unseen since the days of the old Star League.
At most, anyone stumbling upon the Stygia System would see a heavily industrialized solar system with no 'habitable' worlds, several gas giants, dozens and dozens of moons, three asteroid belts, and hundreds of drop ships plying between them and various orbital smelters and other space-based facilities.
The system is guarded by dozens of Corvettes that are actually armored and armed Merchant Class Drop Ships, as well as well over 70 armed and armored drop ships, specifically redesigned and rebuilt to be 'Carriers' for multiple Aerospace Fighters.
Any Bandit group attempting to raid the system would be intercepted and destroyed before they could recharge their KF Drives to jump out of the system. Actual Warships would be overwhelmed by the combined firepower of the Corvettes and the Combat Drop Ships, even though they would take terrible losses in doing so. Losses can be replaced, in time.
The Mek Werks is a facility for designing, redesigning, and constructing new variants on existing Mechs, Vehicles, and other equipment. Once the 'bugs' are worked out, the data is handed over to the Compact's Manufacturing groups and the Government, to determine if the design has enough merit to warrant production on any scale.
The Mek Werks makes 'one off' designs, with full documentation, and suggestions for scaled up production. We do not engage in production lines, unless it is for some testing purpose, like the building of a limited number of a design for full Combat Testing and Assessment.
I do hope that this message finds you and your team in good spirits, and fully employed. My own staff is always busy with one project or another, and rarely finds the time to 'make trouble', unless you count various practical jokes to be 'trouble'.
Jason Andrews
Chief Tech
Hellsport Mek Werks
Hel, Sheol III
Stygia System
Stygian Compact
A solid overview, especially from a tech at a refit center. How much more difficult/impossible would repair (not refit) jobs be if performed on a dropship? Would damaged armor be a quick fix while internal damage takes much longer? Is an Overlord notably more capable than a Union or Leopard?
@@matthewmarek1467 Repair jobs while on a dropship are doable, especially armor work. There is not much difference in how much room you get in the different dropship classes, as the mech bays are standardized.
Internal work will be much harder, as usual.
I agree with the Professor. Armor replacements are fairly 'easy' to do in a drop ship's Repair Bays, but Internal Structures would take longer and require the right materials to be 'on hand'. Repairing a damaged Mech's leg internals would entail the total removal of the armor, removal of the myomers, all cabling, both power and signalling, as well as computer controls,. Only then have you 'torn down' the leg to get access to the damaged internal components. If you have the correct materials on hand, the job can be pretty straight forwards, although time consuming and backbreaking hard. Trying to replace existing IS (internal structures) with other materials is near-impossible. Such as replacing 'standard' IS with Endo-Steel, or vice versa.
With the gantries seen in the game's mechbays, they should be able to handle any repairs / mods they have the time & parts for. (It is lore accurate for mercenary companies to spend years building and re-fitting mechs out of salvage in their drop-ship bays, and to know that the factory could do the job in hours.)
Since it's a leopard, the repair bays are supposed to also be the deployment bays, with four 100 ton working bays and four 100 ton storage bays (Those storage bays are supposed to be ALL your spare mechs, spare parts, and ammo - which is why mercenary companies ditch the leopard as soon as finances allow.)
Unions are supposed to be 3-4 decks that are each about the size of all of a leopard's bays, with a dedicated salvage deck, dedicated repair deck or both being more common than packing mechs on all the decks. (Rules wise it came about with the wolf's dragoon's and rules for mercenary companies. Lore wise, they've been hot swapping and adjusting the deck hight on eggs since Alexander Kerenski's day.)
P.S. I'm a "clan invasion era" player, Wolf's Dragoons were the hot new thing when I started, and the last of us went our own way shortly after the Tukayyid tournaments.
Logically speaking replacing the structure is basically rebuilding the mech, replacing the myomer is similar, the engine would be difficult, especially trying to install an XL, same with the heatsinking, but armor and weapon loadouts should be pretty easy.
@@killcat1971 Heat sinks is not TERRIBLE, especially adding some after you made room, or if most of them are in the engine.
@@ProfessorHeyTeeEn I was thinking more upgrading from SHS to DHS, we can assume there's enough room for SHS in the torsos at least.
If you were only replacing SHS with DSHS in an old 3025 Era Mech (depending upon the exact Mech), you may find that the Mech has enough internal space to enable the tech staff to mount heat sinks beyond those contained by the Engine. In most cases, the total number of DSHSs needed is far less than the previously mounted SHS. This leaves space and weight available for other means, or the Mech runs 'light' on tonnage. Finding space, weight, and mounting points for more weapons and equipment can be a truly daunting task, and it would take time. Lots and lots of time, trials, adjustments, dis-mountings, re-mountings, and the 'project' may end up too expensive, time consuming, and just plain beyond any shipboard Tech's means to perform in any case. NOT taking all this into consideration has ruined Mercenary Commanders over the centuries.
@@franksmedley8619 It was more how much they have to strip out to replace it, I assume that there are fluid runs throughout the mech that have to be replaced.
Love it! Sounds just like a mechanic back here on Terra doing custom jobs for cars. And being a phone technician myself I mean comm-tech, i do appreciate the complexity of repairing electronics. This is the level of in game complexity that should be part of Mechwarrior 5, mercenaries. I've never liked how easy it is do do a full custom job with standard mech techs on your dropship. Specialist factories and refit yards like this should be destinations in the game.
Hey just changing your worn out tires requires calibration and some checks before the let you on the road, but people switch out a PPC for an AC/20 like they go for a new oil filter in their car.
Refits being a pain is why I went with 43 loadouts for my ascalon heavy omnimech.
If your tech is actually a tech (7 to 9 points in the skill) then get traditional mechs, and Clan tech that wasn't ripped out of an omni-pod to refit them with. Build the perfect machine. If your tech doesn't meet that criteria, then they are only qualified to play with Legos, and should be given Legos to play with. That is to say that you should purchase omnimechs since they're easy to work on as long as nothing went internal, or you're just playing with the pod loadout.
Sometimes Im glad that things like endo-steel or endo-composite are incompatible with combat vehicles. The amount of bitching from the motor pool is already bad enough when the hardened armor tanks roll back in. And say what you will about missile carriers but those things are fire on sunday and load the rest of the week.
Reminds me of this other guy, Hodges or something. Everyone calls him the Ferret. Anyway, he does *antique* restoration! Oh, the bellyaching he did when a client brought in a Swordsman 1! Just crazy.
You have any difficulties working on certain era's hardware, prof?
If you change out the internal structure of a mech it’s like trying to re-keel a ship you may as well just build a new one
Of course, every armor type you name also requires a layer of synthetic diamond or carbon nanotubes, polymer sealant, and maybe some extra treatment in a machine that has more in common with a PPC than a lathe in order to get the atoms in your print or casting bumped around into exactly the right configuration by the electron or proton beam radiation. Mech armor is light, and only centimeters thick, but it's complex stuff.
I know a company who does various High-entropy alloys like Endosteel in a powder form so you can laser-sinter them together, but the powder still needs to be milled in 0g. And while you can sinter the parts to order, you still gotta strip the mech completely and rebuild it. That's a factory job, no question.
I'd much rather be assigned to find the right connector than to find the right driver to make a 2600 vintage Star-league bit of programming talk to a 3050 vintage Clantech Laser. And, while the laser modules themselves are plug and play, armory work on those lenses requires a clean room, and heaven help you if you drop a diamondoid lens and crack it.
I want to build a time machine, go back in time, and fight a trial of refusal against the guy who decided the Clans were gonna standardize on such sizes as 115mm. As far as I can tell, that was just to make the Technician caste's life more hell.
Once, I had to install actual ballast, 1 ton of lead weights, on a mech when it got a clan missile launcher. Never worked with ATM, so no idea what that's like, but I think my worst experience is doing electronics refits. Getting the mech to talk to a new ECM system or an advanced targeting system is all about those drivers, and good libraries for them are sometimes worth more than the parts themselves. Bad drivers and interface programs can rob you of efficiency, or even be trojans to sabotage your mech.
Why I love various mods for battletech. ( Thank the St. Bloodydoves. )
Very good video
Glad you liked it!
How much TSM do you encounter in structural requests?
Triple-strength myomer seems an extension of the structure issue, and I know our folks at Bergan Alshain, Balmung, and Ares get a *ton* of requests for that swap.
@@christopherpurches2774 It is fairly common, but it is easier to replace myomer bundles than a full skeleton (as long as the connectors are in the same family).
It is one hell of a job, but easier than swapping an engine or the entire skeleton.
In my heat cannon with all the stat similarities I always figured that LBX autocannon would be easier swaps for the same reason as the guass rifle, its all based on a standardized Star League template. Ultra auto cannons and standard autocannons are based off the different nations ideas of what a good caliber would be.
@@Ruggedtoaster LB weapons are made by fewer manufacturers, which is the HUGE advantage of them.
@ yeah less chances for the good idea fairy to convince say Defiance that having a proprietary caliber is better way to protect their market share than say pushing refit packages at some kind of discount to major buyers for their models that fit a common mounting structure so they can get the military where the big money is, the maintance and replacement parts licenses on those 5,10,20 year supply contracts.
Based on the number of official designs described as beginning as simple field refits I don't think Mech refits are incredibly hard. Refitting with clan hardware might be harder but Archer Christifori's Penetrator was refit with at least some Clan weapons in the field or while in transit. so its certainly possible. Yes the refit was probably done on Huntress but it was a Huntress after the military industrial infrastructure had been smashed, bulldozed, and bombed into toothpaste.
I always found it odd that Autocannon barrel diameters were never standardized. Say 40 or 50 mm for a 2, 75 mm for a A5, 120 mm for an AC 10, and 175 mm to 200 mm for an AC 20.
That's because the terms we use are just broad general categories instead of being specific models of weapon. Just as an example some Atlas models have quick fire missile launchers which get classified as lrm 10s or even 20s despite only having 5 tubes.
Playing with pod space is the easiest thing to do after simple armor replacement. Next easiest is equipment swaps on the sort of tech (IS or Clan) that the worker is used to. Then you've got putting Clan tech in an IS machine and visa versa. Next is messing with the fixed equipment of an omni, which is nearly as difficult as designing a mech from the ground up. I remember scouring the rulebooks for that info when preparing to run my A Time of War campaign.
@@noanswer1864 Yeah theres a difference between. "We're converting this to a new configuration that someone has published the design specs for." and "The mech pilot has asked for some custom loadout deal that's going to mean we have to redo the internals." Woe betide the mechpilot who just casually asks for something like endo-steel or TSM because he is about to have hand tools thrown at him.
@@virado255 Yeah but you would think someone, the Star League if no one else, would push for that kind of thing to be standardized to make logistics, and keeping track of munitions stockpiles easier.
As it stands instead of say just worrying about how much AC 20 ammo a unit has the quartermaster has to worry about how many different AC 20 types the unit has, and making sure they have enough ammo for each type.
@@roguerifter9724 Thinking like that is what ends up making people fall down the classic hole of
"We have four different standards of thing. We need to unify them and streamline it out!
>there are now five different standards of thing.
It sounds nice but it doesn't really end up working out in practice. You'll never have 100% adoption rate for a variety of reasons. Maybe within one nation you'll see some more commonly used parts and calibers but not beyond that.
Always hauling and dropping the fattest and expensive of loads!
The Hardpoint System and it's Consequences Have Been a Disaster for Mech Customization (A Rant-i-festo)
The video games have warped people perception of things so much it is crazy. I understand the WHY, but it made people not understand how hard some of those changes would be.
@ProfessorHeyTeeEn The pre-MW4 games essentially made every mech an OmniMech, yes, and like you say I can understand the WHY of the hardpoint system, but it's implementation has crowded out a number a modifications I've been using for years, and I don't just mean "Put 12 medium lasers on everything and be a cheesedick" either, I mean balanced variants that are different enough to be unique but still fit within the "spirit" of the design, or fill a capabilities gap.
Rather than simply locking out certain mods, there should be a system that allows users to make whatever they want, but radically different mods should be wildly expensive and time consuming to accomplish. To balance it out, OmniMech designs should have unlimited and easy modifications, but the repair costs from battle damage should be wildly expensive.
Of course this system would really only work on a single player, linear campaign style game, and we all know that the hardpoint system was implemented specifically because multiplayer games had devolved into 16 player free-for-all games of Shadow Cats with 16 ER Small Lasers being *absolute* *assholes* to anyone trying to have even a modicum of immersion. 🤷
I mean once you have pre built adaptors plugging odd stuff would get easier. Maybe in 3050 you'd be splicing wires but by 3058 I could see usb J to USB IIC adaptors showing up
The problem is that everyone wants their proprietary stuff in the Battletech universe. This is what makes OmniMechs and pods so much more superior to everything else.
@ProfessorHeyTeeEn yay propriety
Uh. No. realistically, replacing normal armor with FF would be fairly complex, because any military device isn't going to have "free internal space". Why? Because leaving lots of unneeded voids inside a vehicle of any time means you are making the vehicle bigger then absolutely neccessary. Which means you have a larger siloutte to be hit. So your going to be building the armor out, not in. Which means it's going to imping on all the joints.
Well it shouldn't be that hard. You got a hole saw you got a welder. You got duct tape and an extension cord. You should be able to wire anything up right now. You know making tubes for an lrm or srm rack addition that might be a little hard
having worked on crusaders in the past, bud, if the missiles go, you tend to replace shit quickly from damage. or just have the unit totaled. but hey, that's the crusader mech lifestyle, insanely useful one moment, mushroom cloud the next.
@@baker90338 Or the Crusader becomes a 'hanger queen' and used to salvage parts from, until it is basically rendered down enough to just break it into pieces that can be stored in case they might prove useful in the future. Or, doing that in the first place, and just 'warming up' a replacement Crusader and saving the other's parts for replacements.
Oh dear, BT and it's "weird" history of tech and upgrades.
Clans go through their own Succession War, but ten times worse, still crank out super tech by the 2820's with only a few million people mostly former grunts. IS has a full industrial base with a pool of a few trillion people, thousands of planets to mine for resources and they can't even copy a Clan MG until at least the 2100's because it's apparently made from Space magic unobtanium, unicorn tears and the dreams of little children. And even when you do get Clan tech in your mech there is a 95% chance it all came from Clan can't even figure what its own name is.
When the chips were down humanity was able to mass produce cheap, but effective weapons like the PPsh or the Sten gun or even simplify the Bren so much it was cheaper and faster to produce than an MG-42 ! In the BT universe people who need weapons go back to making the equivalent of matchlock muskets and handgonnes. They don't build a T-34, but try building a Hussite War Wagon with an M1887 Gatling on it because retrotech is a thing.
Mechs hardly change until about the 3050's. Once a model is established it's around for centuries (and perpetual copyright as well as people still get sued for producing a 300-year old design) but after 3050, it's like the GM yearly model catalogue. Before 3050 a Warhammer is a 6R model. After 3050, you can barely keep count.
What really got me in the frozen, finger raised speechless position was the fact that Omnimechs come as they are. Let me emphasize this so it can sink in. So if you pilot something like a Mad Cat, you don't get to do some math and figure a combination of weapons that will be ideal for the fight ahead. No, you have to pick option A, B or C, no discussion, no custom work, you only get the standard configs. Only really special people who come with a plot immunity card, are mentioned in dozens of books or have Alaric in their name get to do customs. If you notice your Loki is a heat death trap you don't get to pick a mix of weapons that works better, nope, no way, too hard to do.
Meanwhile some guy with a wrench can completely rebuild his Warhammer and nobody makes a problem about it. Try to reconfigure an OMNIMECH and the whole world loses their mind.
I love BT, but the moment you start to look a bit closer it is based on some really weird logic.
I get what you're saying, but claiming the Clan civil war was *worse* than the Inner Sphere's FOUR SUCCESSION WARS seems a bit suspect. The Inner Sphere lags behind the Clans tech-wise because the Inner Sphere spent literal centuries nuking each other to bits. Just look at WW2 for a real-life example - it only takes a few years of bombing to reduce a high-tech nation to scrounging literal museum pieces to equip last-resort militias. The idea that the neo-feudal societies of the Inner Sphere would struggle to recover after having their industrial and tech bases repeatedly nuked is, in my opinion, one of the more reasonable elements of the setting.
For all their faults, the Clans at least did a good job of NOT undoing their own progress with periodic nuclear annihilation. It's easy to win a race when your opponents keep breaking their own legs.
@@nuclearattackwombat8390 I may be rusty but I recall that either the Wolf Clan Sourcebook or the Jade Falcon one made that claim that it made the IS going to war look like a garden party as they had this immense density of mechs, weapons all sitting in caches and ready to be thrown into the fight with the vast majority being soldiers it was a nasty slog. Also the 1st succession war was incredibly destructive, but they held back on the nukes because they had warships that could erase a city in a matter of minutes and what was left of the SLDF and the Hegemony arsenals to throw into the fight.