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On the left below is an e-mail addressing issues in the Comments on the Battletech game system. This was received in November of 1999 from Jonas Lepsoy. On the right is my response to it. While I didn't agree with some of his ideas, at least he made some good points, and did so in a well thought out manner.
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E-mail by Jonas Lepsoy:
Please note:
First, I'd like to refer to your page [the URL for the Comments page was here] and your excited trashing of the "Fasaverse" as you call it. I must say, is was quite amusing to read about the flaws and errors that I have noticed myself during countless Battletech games. To mount a Gauss Rifle in the left torso alongside an XL-engine is not exactly a clever thing to do, is it? However, I'd like to comment on the subject "loss of technology". You claim that it is impossible that so much technology could be lost so quickly, and bring in WW2 as an example. This analogy is (in my opinion) actually quite poor, because WW2 lasted less than a decade, while the succession wars lasted for three hundred years. Yes, it is correct that the V2-rocket was a peak of engineering skill and that the production site was eventually cut off from Berlin (not during the R&D-phase, though). However, you have to consider that the knowledge was acquired during the Thirties and early Forties. This means that intimate rocket control-knowledge had formed a community of scientists. As long as they were alive, the science of rocketry remained safe. (Note that they were shipped to the States after the production site was captured.) Consider the Succession Wars in the Inner Sphere. The science of battlemechs was refined to the peak at first, but after just a hundred years, all scientists who knew anything about battlemech construction at the start of the wars were long dead. Sure, some of the knowledge would be passed on, some even enhanced, but in general, one hundred years of warfare will eventually make sometechnology uninvented. Now, consider three hundred years ... Communication is also a factor to implement. HPG-uplink, ok, but if the scientists in a research facility were about to be overrun by enemy battlemechs and had no time to beam the latest discoveries to home world, what would they do? Destroy as much as they could, I presume? Never let superior technology get into enemy hands is a key issue here. A lot of knowledge were likely destroyed in such a way.
A last issue:
And, yes, the battlemech weaponry is REALLY pathetic. |
My E-mail Response:
I appreciate you comments on my Battletech web pages. I also apologize for taking so long to respond, but things have been rather busy here. Your comments were interesting and suggested a number of new approaches to the subject. In the following I have attempted to cover all of the issues you raise, although not always in the order you addressed them. Thank you for the comments, and I hope you find the following interesting. Loss of Technology My view is that the length of the Succession Wars should actually contribute to the ability of the various nation-states to retain or even improve their technology. The length of the wars shows that no nation had military ascendancy. The wars were fought in fits and spurts rather than in long extended campaigns. This indicates that the nations did not have the economic capability to sustain extended military operations. In the Battletech history this is used as part of the reason why so many raids were conducted against specific battlemech technology related targets. However, this gives the target nation the time to recover from the attacks, and rebuild their manufacturing capability. Just as the Germans in World War II used the strategic bombing lull around D-Day to move and repair their industry (a period of less than four months), so the Battletech nations would use the periods between heavy fighting to fix their industrial infrastructure. Unless the manufacturing plants for battlemechs were fully integrated affairs (take in raw materials, turn out mechs; and note that the post 3025 economy makes it clear this is not how battlemech plants are structured), even a significant raid would, at best, only eliminate a nation's ability to produce some parts of mechs (ex. the destruction of a fusion engine factory would reduce the supply of engines rated 10 though 150 for a few months). This would not, however, prevent a nation from continuing to produce mechs, although it might influence what types of mechs were produced. What would be the result of a raid as describe above? Either the damaged plant would be rebuilt, with improved defenses, or a new plant would be built somewhere safer. This is exactly what the Germans did, and they didn't have the luxury of up to hundreds of planets to call upon for support, or the effectively limitless raw materials that each of those planets possess. The Battletech technology loss scenario is also not supported by our own history. Take for example the fall of the Roman Empire and the ensuing Dark Ages. According to the popular history, the barbarians sacked Rome, the empire fell apart, and its technology was lost, except in a few monasteries, where dedicated monks copied and recopied ancient texts until the time Europe was ready for the knowledge again. Ain't true! At least not the way the popular history tells it. The technology was never lost. It continued on in the hands of the Eastern Empire, and later the Arab states for well over a thousand years. The problem wasn't the technology, but rather the European-centered view of history. The Europeans got the technology back when they advanced back to the point where they could effectively interact with the rest of the civilized world. This is not to say that no technology has ever been lost in history. We know that the ancient Greeks had advanced calculating devices, differential gears, and steam power. It is now believed that the Babylonians had simple electro-plating and batteries. But these were isolated instances, where the technology did not spread beyond a very small geographical area, and so actually was lost when the knowledgeable persons died. This however, does not describe the Battletech universe, where humanity, and its technology, is spread over a vast number of star systems. So, I still have to hold that the loss of technology due to the selective destruction of economic infrastructure just isn't likely. I would grant that it is remotely possible, but not at all probable. Loss Of Knowledgeable Personnel And Data Storage Your suggestion that loss of the 'scientists who knew anything about battlemech construction', especially when coupled with your comments on the problems of data storage make sense, and would probably be a much more logical way to explain the problems described in the Battletech history than was actually used, but I don't think they hold up in the long run. First, the data storage issue. All of what you said is true, but misses one crucial point. If the data is important, it will be copied; over, and over, and over. I know. I was responsible for this with a major military contractor. I was the Software Configuration Manager for Magnavox Electronic Systems Company on the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS), and other projects. One of the jobs of Configuration Management is to maintain all of the records for each project. We controlled thousands of paper documents and hundreds of items of magnetic media. Some of this was extremely hard to preserve (for example, early SyQuest removable hard disks, which could go bad if you dropped them as little as two inches onto a hard surface, like a desktop). Magnetic tapes, which have a safe storage life of about three years, were taken out of storage every two years, and copied onto a new tape to insure the data remained active. It required scheduling, and constant attention to detail, but we never lost any data. And this is going on all over the world, right now. So, the storage of data, regardless of media is not the problem. If it is important enough, the data will be retained. This does suggest, however, that unless they were specially preserved, technology caches are unlikely to survive more than a few dozen years, at best. Second, the loss of data due to being 'overrun by enemy battlemechs'. Again, from the experience mentioned above, this isn't going to happen, except in highly exceptional circumstances. Important data, such as research discoveries, or new systems developments, is regularly shipped off to other sites (under the U.S. DoD this is a contractual requirement, and part of the responsibilities of Configuration Management on development projects). In the U.S., depending on the contract, the stage of the project, the sensitivity of the data, and other factors, it will be sent to the contracting authority periodically. On the AFATDS project we shipped data off site about every three months during the first couple of years, and as often as every two weeks towards the end of the project. The shipments went to a number of locations; independent test contractors, the military project office, the independent configuration contractor, and to a number of military administrative commands. Had our Technical Center been destroyed, the AFATDS program could have started back up in a few months, with a slippage of less than a year (i.e., less than a year after our center would be knocked out, the project would be back to were it was when we were lost). And this was a peace time development effort. So, while specific advances may be destroyed, and development projects set back, no sudden overrun is likely to eliminate enough of the research or development information of a major nation to make a significant difference. Of course, all of this assumes that the people running the research and development efforts are at least as competent as current people, something which, from the Battletech histories, can not be taken for granted. Third, the loss of critical personnel. Here, again, the length of the Succession Wars, and the size of the stellar empires, works to the advantage of the nations. With exceptions, most scientific advances are not the work of individuals, but of groups of people, and often very large and diverse groups of peoples. There are clear exceptions to this, but they are exceptions, not the rule. Even more importantly, technological advances (i.e., the application of scientific research) are almost always a large group activity. A fine example of this is the modern military aircraft industry in the U.S. There are hundreds of independent companies, all working on military aircraft, and, until recently, there were almost a dozen major companies, any one of which was capable of taking a military specification from the idea stage to production. In the Battletech universe we have to imagine this situation spread out across the stars, with dozens to hundreds of planetary systems to draw upon for people and materials. Except for a very small stellar nation, it just would not be possible to strike at enough of this structure quickly enough to permanently reverse the flow of science and technology. Finally, I would note that the length of the Succession Wars, provides plenty of time for new people to be trained as scientists and technologists, thus increasing the ability of nations to retain their technologies. Length Of War Causing Technology Loss You suggest that 'one hundred years of warfare will eventually make some technology uninvented'. I don't think I can agree with this, in fact, I think history shows that exactly the opposite is true. Warfare, of any serious length, will cause technology to flourish, and whole new technologies to be born. The obvious thing would be to point to World Wars I or II, to show how, despite terrible military and economic warfare, rapid advances were made. Of course, the counter argument to this is that these wars were short, and the advancements were, generally, based heavily on pre-war work. A better place and time to look, is Western Europe, from about 1000 AD to 1600 AD. Warfare was almost constant during this period, especially in the first four hundred years. Few areas went more than about five years without experiencing the effects of war, either due to being attacked, or due to sending men off to fight. Consider the Hundred Years War (1337-1453). It could almost be a prototype for the Succession Wars; an extended period of time during which warfare varied from raiding to major battles, and went on constantly. Certainly as much as the Succession Wars, the Hundred Years War was an economic war; or rather, a war against the economy of the enemy. The single most common military action was the raid on a town. The purpose of this was to not only stop the enemy's income from an area, but to force the enemy to invest in the re-establishment of normal life. According to the technological decline theory, both England and France should have ended the war financially and technologically bankrupt, and easy pickings for the emerging Italian and German states. Yet, both were still strong, with France not only one of the strongest countries in Europe, but emerging as the first near-modern nation-state. Further, not only did technology not regress, it improved significantly. By the end of the war, knights were equipped with massive sets of full plate, heavier war horses had been bred, new forms of warships created, and the gun had become a standard feature of both siege and field combat. While these may not seem like huge advancements compared to the development of the atomic bomb in four years, they were equally as important relative to their times. How To Create The Battletech Situation Until prompted by this discussion, I had not actively tried to suggest a replacement logic which would bring a stellar empire to the situation presented by the early Battletech game. Rather than asking; Why doesn't this system work? It might be better to ask; What would produce the desired condition of civilization? Disclaimer: As I have said elsewhere, the FASAverse and the Battletech system cannot exist. There are simply too many logical errors and to much divergence from reality for it to ever come into existence. The following addresses only how could the political, economic, and military situation emerge, given the existence of the FASAverse.
Requirements:
What would 'civilization' have to look like to achieve this? Well, it looks like nothing! Every time I tried to define a civilization which would fit the above criteria, it fell apart when analyzed. After about three tries I realized that there is a fundamental problem with the very existence of battlemechs. To have mercenary units, battlemechs must be relatively rare. Thus the mechwarrior becomes something like a medieval knight. The possession of his equipment puts him head-and-shoulders above all other units on the battle field. So that's easy. Just as in the existing history, battlemechs can be family possessions, handed down over the years. This is coupled with a general inability to manufacturer battlemechs. If mechs can be manufactured in quantity, then they will not be rare, and nations will have armies of their own mechs. But then comes the issue of how battlemechs are maintained. Or more specifically, how can they be maintained, but not manufactured in quantity? To achieve the 'knight' situation, battlemechs cannot be generally available, and specifically, major governments cannot be able to produce them (as is happening in the 3055 and later Battletech history). When this happens, there is no more need for mercenaries (the emergence of the nation-state and the professional army was the primary cause of the end of the grand mercenary period in Europe). So, for some reason, battlemechs cannot be manufactured. But, it must be possible to repair them. Does not compute! If one is able to FULLY repair something, then one has the knowledge necessary to build that thing. The actual creation of a manufacturing plant is a matter of time, logistics, and money; but it is able to be done. The only way that battlemechs can be something which cannot be manufactured, is if there is at least one critical component which cannot be reproduced, and which involves a sufficiently advanced technology, such that existing scientific knowledge is not adequate to begin to understand how it works. Is there such a part on a battlemech? Unfortunately, no. The myomar would, at first glance, be the obvious candidate, but the 3025 rules are clear that it was repairable. Worse, everything is described as repairable (excluding totally destroyed items). Therefore, everything is able to be built. My conclusion must be, that not only does the Battletech universe violate fundamental laws of physics and fail to follow the simple logic of history; but it also simply can't work at the socio-economic level (and for more than just the reasons above), because there is no way to postulate a system which can have working advanced military equipment which cannot also find out how to create that equipment. The following is an additional comment added when this page was posted. In retrospect, there is a counter argument to the last point above. Looking at the European age of mercenaries, one of the major factors which made this possible was not the difficulty of producing the armor and weapons, but rather the great expense of equipping men for combat. Thus, one might argue that the extreme expense of battlemechs is what makes it too hard for governments to create them. Unfortunately, in the Battletech FASAverse, this doesn't hold up. In the mercenary period, the "government" was a hierarchy of nobles, each taking a cut of the "taxes". Thus, raising and equipping a large standing army was extremely difficult for any one noble. However, in this FASAverse, there are actual nation-states, which collect the taxes, and have the huge amounts of money needed to raise and equip standing armies. So that argument doesn't cut it either. |
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Updated 5 May 2005. |