BattleTech

This article is awesome. Do not fuck it up.

NEW-BT-LOGOFLAT.png

BattleTech
Wargame published by Catalyst Game Labs
No. of Players	Billions
First Publication	1984
Essential Books	Total Warfare or The BattleMech Manual

"It is the 31st century, a time of endless wars that rage across human-occupied space. As star empires clash, these epic wars are won and lost by BattleMechs, 23-56 foot tall humanoid metal titans bristling with lasers, autocannons and dozens of other lethal weapons; enough firepower to level entire city blocks. Your elite force of MechWarriors drives these juggernauts into battle, proudly holding your faction's flag high, intent on expanding the power and glory of your realm. At their beck and call are the support units of armored vehicles, power armored infantry, aerospace fighters and more, wielded by a MechWarrior's skillful command to aid him in ultimate victory. Will they become legends, or forgotten casualties? Only your skill and luck will determine their fate!"

– Product promotional tagline

BattleTech, or MechWarrior as most of the non-neckbearded populace know it, is a tabletop wargame about armies of giant robots fighting one another for honor, money, and territory in a far-distant feudal future. Think Star Wars AT-STs, or Warhammer 40,000's Imperial Knights (Games Workshop decided they liked Battlemechs too). It’s also perhaps the most realistic example of walker warfare. Using their size to mount sufficient energy generation and armor that they are fast enough, maneuverable enough, and armored enough that being a bullet magnet does not matter. Using their vertical build to mount numerous huge weapons that each would take up all the space on most tanks modern militaries would consider super-heavy. Usually operating in combined arms warfare and supported by tanks, hovercraft, aircraft, and infantry. Not sinking into the ground like its quicksand because dirt reaches maximum compression very quickly (and thus all anti-mech arguments are rendered invalid by combined arms, armor, power-plant, firepower, and actual science), and so on. The realism of the technology (if not the moronic House Lords and nonsensical events) is so great it could be a glimpse into the future. Y’know, before Bolos come along and replace everything.

This article is mostly concerned with the fluff and story of BattleTech. If you're looking for a guide to getting into the game in the first place, check out Starting Battletech. If you're looking for the hardware itself, please go to BattleMech.

Holy Crap, Giant Robots Are Awesome

Battledroids, the first edition of the game, c. 1984, with the Destroid Tomahawk Unseen Warhammer on the cover. A literally-textbook example on how to get sued nine different ways from Sunday.

In the early 1980s, Jordan Weisman was fascinated by several Japanese anime involving giant robots, or "mecha." He was quoted as saying that he liked the designs and idea of giant robots fighting on the battlefield, but did not have a taste for the storylines that the Japanese wrote about them. In 1984, Weisman founded FASA and acquired the licenses to designs from several series, the most famous being Super Dimension Fortress Macross, though the largest portion came from Fang of the Sun Dougram and combined them to make BattleTech.

The first edition of this game, called Battledroids, was a hex-based boardgame played on a battlefield illustrated with various types of terrain. It came with two large plastic minis of featured mechs, imported from Japan. Initially, sales were mediocre as the sheer size of the 'Mechs made them awkward in gameplay. Soon after the launch of Battledroids Lucasfilm filed a lawsuit against FASA for using the name "droids," which they had trademarked in 1978. Discretion being the better part of valor, FASA changed the name of the game to BattleTech in time for the second edition printing in 1986. This time, cardboard stand-ins replaced the plastic miniatures, and a tradition was born. To this day, BattleTech can be played without purchasing any physical models and with any proxy you please.

Following the release of the second edition, fans of the game clamored for new miniatures. FASA obliged, rescaling their 'Mechs for more convenient play and designing a host of in-house 'Mechs to broaden variety and bridge the gap between the sleek Macross and crude Dougram designs. New models notwithstanding, the third edition was shipped with solely Macross and Dougram-based minis. However, in 1995 Harmony Gold, an American localization company which had licensed the international distribution and toy rights to SDF Macross, issued a C&D against FASA for the use of all mecha designs from the Macross franchise. FASA ceased production of these miniatures, which were among the most popular designs in the franchise, and published a fourth edition of the game in 1996 again featuring cardboard tokens, which were all based on their own original 'Mechs.

BattleTech hasn't had true new edition of the rules since 1995. Rulebooks and material published in '95 are still usable today in 2022. There have been a few box sets and other releases since then, including two entire side games. The first came in the mid 2000s, and was called MechWarrior: Dark Age. A Clix-based game that abandoned the traditional hex grid and was sold with pre-painted miniatures in blind bundles, Dark Age lasted from 2003 to 2007. It attracted some new players but various decisions alienated a lot of the playerbase, and in the end classic BattleTech outlived it. The other was Alpha Strike. Published in 2013, Alpha Strike uses the same miniatures and background as BattleTech, but uses a faster paced rules system with less detail and a focus on larger clashes of 'Mechs. Alpha Strike exists in parallel to BattleTech, and is still receiving support with a new box set being released in 2022.

Through the 2010s, BattleTech in something of a lull. After the closing of the Dark Age line and the shift to focus on classic BattleTech and Alpha Strike, the narrative spent effort filling in the sixty year time skip that Dark Age started with. As a game, BattleTech had issues - the market was crowded and BattleTech, alone out of its competition, didn't have access to decent plastic 'Mechs. An anniversary box set released in 2012 came with 26 plastic 'Mechs, but they were of low quality and plagued with miscasts and missing pieces, so the majority of miniatures were still cast in metal. This changed at the beginning of 2019.

In January of 2019, BattleTech was on a major upswing. After the release of the generally well-received PC game from Harebrained Schemes (titled BattleTech but often called HBS BattleTech to distinguish it from the tabletop), the property was in a good position, and Catalyst Game Labs released two new box sets - the first was the BattleTech: Beginner Box and the second was BattleTech: A Game of Armored Combat. These came with a total of 9 new miniatures (two in the Beginner Box and eight in AGoAC, with one duplicate between them), but these were only the first pebbles of the avalanche. In June of 2019, Catalyst announced a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funding for a new box set: BattleTech: Clan Invasion. The campaign reached its goal in less than seven minutes, and in the end it lead to not only the Clan Invasion box with seven Clan miniatures, but a range of Force Packs, each having a set of 4, five, or 6 miniatures. Nine Inner Sphere lance packs, nine Clan Star packs, and two ComStar Level II packs were released in all, priced at $25, $30, and $35 and containing four, five, and six miniatures respectively. The Kickstarter was an absolute success, and while the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted delivery, by 2021 the 'Mechs were in players' hands and on store shelves. For the first time in its nearly forty year history, BattleTech had a complete line of plastic miniatures. All had been redesigned to match modern aesthetics (and eliminate certain legal troubles), many of them by noted /tg/ artist ShimmeringSword, who had been hired based on 'Mech fanart he posted to /tg/.

As of 2022, the plastic release train is still going strong - in April, Catalyst announced a new Kickstarter campaign titled BattleTech: Mercenaries, along with a set of six mercenary themed Force Packs and a new box set for Alpha Strike. The story has advanced significantly, moving the "current" of BattleTech into a new era known as the ilClan, and the first plastic miniatures for this era are trickling in with a Regent in one of the Mercenary force packs. The 32nd century may be a dark time, but for BattleTech players, the future is bright.

The Mechs

"Shoot for his cockpit! Kill the meat, save the metal."

– Sergeant Robert "Deadeye" Unther, MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries - Training Tutorial

BattleTech 'Mechs function and are utilized more like tanks with legs than the super-agile flying mecha common in Japanese depictions. 'Mechs are deployed in formations of four or five, called lances in the Inner Sphere and stars in the Clans. They are able to operate in space, on planets with caustic atmospheres, underwater, and in a wide range of temperatures that would be lethal to unprotected humans. One of the biggest upsides of 'Mechs as combat vehicles is their extreme efficiency-of-arms: an effectively limitless amount of time without requiring fuel due to their fusion reactors alongside hyper-efficient Myomer 'muscles' inside the BattleMech’s limbs that can carry more weapons and armor per-ton than any other combat platform in existence. The only things stopping a 'Mech from being able to fight forever are ammunition, repairs, and allowing the pilot to rest. Even when a 'Mech is destroyed, losing the pilot is a relatively rare occurrence thanks to very effective ejection systems. A destroyed 'Mech chassis can also be salvaged and rebuilt to fight another day, good as new. In the early 3000s setting this means many 'Mechs are often decades or even hundreds of years old, Ship of Theseus-style. Some 'Mechs even have unique identities and/or affiliations with certain royal Houses or mercenary families. Also, as stated in the quote above, it's not uncommon for cash-strapped mercenaries, pirates, or even planetary militia to prioritize aiming for the cockpit and/or forcing MechWarriors to eject from overheating/battle damage in order to claim the surviving BattleMech wreckage for salvage or as a spoil of war.

As far as locomotion styles, bipedal 'Mechs are the most common, with the weapon systems mounted either in the torso compartments or on the arms. Quadrupedal 'Mechs do exist but are relatively rare, they are slower than bipedal 'Mechs and don't offer the same amount of weapon space for a given weight class and more legs (and more everything else) on a 'Mech means, of course, greater expenses. Even rarer are tripod 'Mechs, generally restricted to experimental super-heavy designs. Bipedal 'Mechs can also grasp things in their hands (if they have them) like melee weapons or pesky tanks. Early versions of BattleTech feature 'Mechs that could transform into fighter planes, but these were dropped relatively quickly in its life cycle due to copyright problems.

The main downside of 'Mechs is their inability to efficiently manage heat buildup. Heat is generated by the fusion reactor, the environment, movement, and mostly as a result of firing weapons. 'Mechs mount multiple gigantic one-ton heatsink units to deal with this buildup, but it is a constant problem for pilots to manage. 'Mechs that feature a lot of energy-based weapons will generate especially high levels of heat, and therefore manage very poorly in extremely hot environments. Firing all the weapons of certain 'Mech variants at once (the Nova 'Mech is most infamous) can cause it to overheat to such an extent that the reactor core melts down before the heatsinks can shunt the heat out of the chassis, which is bad. Safety measures that shut down the entire 'Mech when it reaches a certain temperature threshold are always installed, but since this usually happens in a combat situation, and thus leaves the 'Mech defenseless, some pilots will intentionally disable the safeguards to take their chances. Depending on the technology level of a given game, more efficient heatsinks can be assigned to 'Mechs that remove heat more quickly and allow hotter builds. The fluff also mentions some experimental heatsinks that changed the heat energy to light (???Actually plausible, we have been experimenting with this concept irl) but had the downside of making the 'Mech look like a walking rave, as well as heatsinks that utilized caustic liquids to move heat faster but with a limited lifespan.

Weapons consist of three general categories: ballistic, energy, and missile. Each has its own strengths and weakness: ballistic weapons weigh more, require ammo, but do not generate much heat, energy weapons are the opposite, and missiles generate some heat/consume ammo but can be indirectly fired with targeting data from scouts. Outfitting a 'Mech for the proper engagement is key to obtaining victory: 'Mechs outfitted for 'Mech-to-'Mech combat will generally mount only high-damage weapons with lower ammo counts and slower rates of fire, while 'Mechs set for vehicle and infantry combat will mount weapons that fire quickly but do lower damage per shot. Likewise, 'Mechs that do not expect steady resupply will mount more energy weapons so they are not beholden to ammo counts.

BattleMechs range between 20 to 100 tons in four weight classes, though a few experimental units lie outside these ranges. The weight classes are light (20-35 tons), medium (40-55 tons), heavy (60-75 tons), and assault (80-100 tons). Considering their size (23-56 feet), that's pretty light; the Maus (33 feet long and 11 feet high) mega-tank that Adolf Hitler demanded weighed 188 tons. (One possible explanation here is that the "tonnage" in a weight class isn't the weight of the 'Mech, but rather the weight available to mount things on the chassis. So an Atlas assault 'Mech has 100 tons of available space for reactor, life support, weapons, armor etc, explaining why various sub-types of a 'Mech drop something and replace it with something else of equal weight. A Flea light 'Mech has 20 tons). Rarer still are super heavy 'Mechs (with weights between 110 to 200 tons). While they are walking fortresses that put even Assault Mechs to shame, they tend to be ridiculously expensive, extremely slow, have issues with supporting that weight, are vulnerable to attacks from swarms of smaller enemies like tanks, and have difficulty installing reactors with sufficient power. Top sustainable speeds of 'Mechs vary from 32.4 kph (20 mph) for the assault Annihilator to 162 kph (101 mph) for the light Firemoth scout. Keep in mind that the American M1A1 Abrams tank has a top speed of 72 kph (45 mph) on a paved road and much less crossing difficult terrain. 'Mechs can also be mounted with rechargeable jump jets that give them the ability to hop across the battlefield or up/down terrain. According to varying fluff depictions, 'Mechs are even able to climb up/down cliff walls and perform flying dropkicks to enemy cockpits, which is awesome.

Depending on where in the timeline the specific game takes place (this is a player choice), there will be two possible classes of mechs: BattleMechs and OmniMechs. BattleMechs are the older style, with a set number of variants that cannot be changed in the field. This style was universal in the Inner Sphere before the arrival of the Clans. OmniMechs, a Clan invention, feature a modular construction style and a snap-on software integration which gives them the freedom of changing loadouts quickly. For example, a Dragon BattleMech comes in a default configuration consisting of one LRM-10, one Autocannon/5, and two medium lasers. The -1C variant replaces the Autocannon/5 with an Autocannon/2 and more armor, while the -5N upgrades the Autocannon/5 to an Ultra Autocannon/5. A pilot must use one of these variants and is incapable of changing the loadout without serious hours-long reworking of the 'Mech's internals in a 'Mech maintenance facility. Conversely, a Mad Dog OmniMech comes with a default configuration of two LRM-20s, two medium pulse lasers, and two large pulse lasers. A pilot is able to modify this loadout as they see fit within less than an hour with a technical team, say dropping the two medium pulse lasers for more missile ammo/armor or changing the LRMs to SRMs for short-range engagements.

Like most Western sci-fi series, BattleMechs are somewhat inspired by real theoretical technologies; their weapons range from machine guns (albeit very big ones) and missiles, to coilguns and particle accelerators. The biggest leaps from reality (aside from FTL travel and communications) are the fusion reactor, (a technology still only theoretically possible,) the neurohelmet, (which interfaces with the pilot's brain and keeps the 'Mech upright based on the pilot's own sense of balance,) and the massive muscle-like Myomer fibers that actually allow the 'Mech to move upon being exposed to electrical current.

While BattleMechs dominate the battlefields of BattleTech, armored vehicles still have a place. Most of the time, tanks, hovercraft, and APCs are used where 'Mechs would be too expensive (or too advanced) to maintain, or in roles where a 'Mech would be ineffective. This means that, in addition to BattleMechs, one can find infantry, vehicles, aerial vehicles, naval vehicles, and spaceships. It is worth noting that vehicles can be a real threat to BattleMechs in great enough numbers, since they mount the same weapons as 'Mechs. Some tanks can also push the 100-ton limit and sport the gigantic weaponry usually mounted on an Assault 'Mech chassis. In other words, where 'Mechs are Space Marines, the vehicles are more akin to Eldar Aspects.

BattleMechs in BattleTech fiction also have a curious tendency to go up in a mini nuclear explosion when their reactor core is breached by weapon fire. Mushroom clouds, explosions, heat, radiation, the whole bit. This has been nicknamed "stackpoling" after BattleTech novel author Michael Stackpole, who includes at least one of these events in each novel he writes. If the reactor was actually breached, what should happen is a meltdown of the reactor (and probably some chunks of the surrounding 'Mech) that quickly burns out because the reactor can't maintain the fusion reaction without proper containment. Reactors are generally incapable of generating an actual nuclear explosion: real-world reactor "explosions" are usually a result of the coolant flash-overheating and generating a pressure-based steam explosion that destroys the reactor building. Lingering radiation would still be a problem of course, but that is usually handwaved away in BattleTech fluff or not mentioned at all.

To get into the actual science of this, a hypothetical fusion reactor wouldn't produce that many radioactive substances. And what few they do would be relatively short lived and would be weak beta emitters. The most likely substance would be Tritium, which is where the stereotypical glow in the dark green radiation comes from. The 'Mech would glow in the dark but a decent decontamination process would render it mostly harmless. In other words, the stories are right for the wrong reasons.

More on actual science. A containment breach would produce a pretty big explosion. The reactor (assuming H+H fusion, which seems reasonable since we never hear anything about deuterium or H3 mining) would be operating at something close to 15,000,000K temperature and 250,000,000,000 atmospheres of pressure to induce fusion. Assuming there's a couple of cubic meters of gas being contained at those pressures by magnetic fields and surrounded by a few more cubic meters of vacuum, a sudden and catastrophic loss of containment would almost certainly cause an explosion that would cause a mushroom cloud and be easy to mistake for a small nuclear weapon.

Warfare in the Thirty-first Century

When somebody decides to attack another world, they load up their 'Mechs (and tanks, and infantry, etc...) onto massive shuttles called DropShips. These boost off into space and link up with JumpShips, semi-mobile Space-Fold drives sitting a ways out into the star's system (due to the limits of BattleTech FTL, JumpShips can't get any closer to a system's star than a radius roughly around the orbit of Saturn in the Sol System. For simplicity's sake, most JumpShips move to the zenith or nadir points directly "above" or "below" the star's orbital plane). The DropShips latch onto the JumpShips, which make a series of jumps from star to star until they reach the target system.

Compared to some sci-fi franchises such as Star Wars or Star Trek, aerospace combat between ships isn’t really that common for several reasons. For one, KF Drive used to propel JumpShips (all of which can’t land on a planet) makes up 95% of its mass and leaves little room for anything else besides DropShip docking ports, basic ship equipment, crew quarters, and the Jumpsail used for recharging the drive. And while Warships do exist with drives half the size as their civilian models, the drives alone are more than five times more expensive to build and are prioritized for only strategically-vital missions, like real-life Dreadnoughts. In that regard, BattleTech’s JumpShips are closer to Dune’s massive but ungainly Heighliners, which transport combatants between stars and planets, but lack any inherent ability to fight, than Star War’s Star Destroyers, which are capable of both transporting combat units between stars and planets and are themselves capable of fighting. As a result, most aerospace combat is dominated by armed DropShips or aerospace fighters. Orbital and naval blockades are a thing but not typically used frequently due to how much firepower is required for a planetary scale.

Once they reach the destination (normally the "northern" or "southern" jump points of a star), the DropShips detach from the JumpShips and burn deeper into the system towards the targeted planet. Now JumpShips aren't stealthy, so anyone on the target planet likely detected their entrance into the system, and it typically takes DropShips seven days (varies dramatically for each star system) to reach the planet. Surprise attacks are nearly impossible, and defenders will have up to a week to get ready (some clever, smart, or just plain foolish people try to shave time by trying to match the target world's orbit with a nonstandard point closer to the planet, or even rare "Pirate" points caused by gravitational interactions between celestial bodies, but even this usually gives defenders at least a day to prepare, not to mention the hilarious habit of Pirate points to just mangle JumpShips attempting to use them beyond recognition). In reality however, points in space where gravitational forces balance out aren’t actually rare (they're called Lagrange points in real life) and there are five of those null-gravity points just for the Sun-Earth system, along with five more for the Earth-Moon system, and five more again for every other pair of celestial bodies orbiting each other that you care to name. Those points can be so close to destinations of strategic interest that by BattleTech standards, it would take probably just a few minutes to reach the Earth from one of its own null gravity points, seeing as BT DropShips can reach Sol's zenith (the Sun's "northern" null-G point) or nadir (the Sun's "southern" null-G point) in just a few days from Earth, i.e., crossing more than the distance of one Astronomical Unit, or 150 million kilometres, in a strategically-insignificant amount of time.

As the invading force reaches planetary orbit, the defenders will usually try to intercept them with their own defensive ships, usually DropShips, Shuttles, Aerospace Fighters, and Conventional Fighters (like the 'Mechbuster) while the Attackers will launch fighters of their own. Space battle will begin in earnest as the defenders try to keep the enemy from landing on world at all (FASA originally had two separate games, Aerotech and Battlespace, that dealt with this stage of combat, but current BattleTech rules incorporate Aerospace combat for those who prefer it or want the full Theater of War experience).

If the Attackers can break through the orbital defenders, they can choose their landing site (usually near the target of course) and deploy either via a combat drop with Drop Pods launched from DropShips or via DropShips landing at a secure LZ. The enemy will deploy to stop them and battle begins in earnest with ground combat typically consisting of combined-arms use of infantry, battle-armored troops, conventional armored vehicles, artillery, and BattleMechs. Meanwhile, any air assets in the form of aerospace or conventional fighters will duke it out to secure air superiority for shipping reinforcements via air drop, or trying to take out enemy ground units from above.

Fluff

The Timber Wolf (Mad Cat if you're Inner Sphere Freebirth Scum Degrazi), one of the most iconic BattleMechs in the series.

"A thousand horrid Prodigies foretold it.
A feeble government, eluded Laws,
A factious Populace, luxurious Nobles,
And all the maladies of stinking states."

– Dr. Samuel "What The Fuck Am I Reading" Johnson

Much like Warhammer, the BattleTech franchise has an extensive expanded universe. Dozens of books, numerous spinoff games, video games in multiple genres, and even an animated cartoon have delved into the setting and created an entertaining, if convoluted, history that has real influences on how the game is played. Unlike Warhammer, there are no Xenos (outside of some cavemen-like species), so humans get all the glory (and blame).

History of the Inner Sphere

After a period of typical Cold War-era speculative history: in details, the Soviet leadership is inherited by a fictional hardliner in the 80s and the Union survives until the 2010s where it splits in the Second Soviet Civil War (this was retconned in as the game was made when the USSR hadn't collapsed yet). The appointment of a hardliner leads to NATO reforming into the Western Alliance along with the proto-EU. The Western Alliance helps the split post-Soviet Eurasian states, is joined by China and other Asian countries after a brief crisis and eventually mankind was mostly united under the Western Alliance, having renamed itself to the Terran Alliance and discovered how to travel faster-than-light by opening up artificial wormholes.

By 2235, most of mankind's interstellar colonies, already mistrustful of the heavy-handed Alliance, threw off the yoke of the Alliance in the Outer Reaches Rebellion and formed their own stellar nation-states. What followed was a period of war and chaos which led to the rise of the Great Houses, feudal dynasties of powerful families adhering to various pseudo-historical ideals (like Kurita's Japan fetishism, specifically the most evil aspects of WWII Japan and every other Asian countries' worst parts of their histories up to eleven) competing for total dominance of mankind. However Terra, as Earth became known after its Latin name, remained the most technologically-advanced star nation, and remained unconquered by the competing Great Houses who turned their focus on one another instead.

Shortly after the eve of this Age of War, once the Terran Alliance left the far-off colonies to fend for themselves, its bickering political parties were subject to a coup by the charismatic Admiral James McKenna with support from the populace. He reformed the Alliance into the Terran Hegemony and eventually, his titles were inherited by a distant cousin in House Cameron. In addition, both the colonies and Terra began placing more emphasis on nobility-based peerage to handle planetary governance, education, and manufacturing instead of the loathed vote-buying that defined the corrupt Alliance. This is one of the reasons for the severe technological stagnation that is a hallmark of the BattleTech universe. After all, any idiot knows that destroying a factory or all of a certain factory production and all such factories means the knowledge of how to build their products magically disappears and the knowledge of how to build those factories poofed away the moment they were built anyway as that is the only explanation conceivable for why destroyed factories were not simply replaced and why the knowledge disappeared from every paper, computer, and mind; after all, universities and libraries can still preserve knowledge while remaining civilian institutions. Obviously space magic is to blame... or exceptionally short-sighted writers who’ll wave it off as neo-feudalism in space.

The main reason for the lack of tech was due to the Terran Hegemony hoarding most of the good tech for themselves and the Star League Defence Force. ER Lasers, XL Fusion engines, Pulse Lasers and so on were all SLDF exclusives, and the vast majority of advanced tech was only produced in the Terran Hegemony, which was utterly wrecked in the Amaris Civil War. Universities and libraries were nuked alongside military targets, and the BattleTech universe lacks a true internet expy, making dissemenating information even by HPG a slow, expensive process. Any advanced tech factories or research institutes left after the Amaris Civil War vanished in the nuclear firestorm of the First Succession War. It took 80 years of more or less constant warfare before the great houses decided that blowing up civillian targets wasn't such a good idea. AND THEN, ComStar decided that nobody but them should have nice things so they started assassinating anyone who might make things better and stealing their research. Nobody really bothered trying to build a new university for actual research until 3015, when the Davions built the NAIS and the moment it looked like the NAIS might actually make some progress in reversing the technological decline, ComStar tried to blow it up. They failed, and the Federated Suns figuring out that ComStar was behind the attack marked the start of the decline in ComStar's influence.

To be clear, the given reason for how the neo-feudalism came about was due to oppression, social inertia, and interstellar communication lag. Before the invention of the HPG in 2630 (5 centuries after the KF Drive) it took weeks and months for planets to send updates on their status to their national capital and the entirety of the nation. Yet other than the Federated Suns good bois and to an extent the Lyran Commonwealth, most other nations don't have the same problems that destroyed the Alliance despite being oppressive. Super oppressive. Which begs one to question how the hell the Outer Reaches Rebellion happened outside of the same tension that tore the Star League apart later. And it still doesn't explain how the neo-feudalism came about as it would make much more sense to have technocratic administrators selected by merit to manage regions of space instead of giving someone and their offspring the level of authority an ancient noble would have had. Perhaps it began the same way some monarchies are known to have: lords (or whatever name for a rose you want to use) being basically miniature kings of their local areas who united and elected a royal dynasty from among their number to handle external affairs beyond their national borders.

In 2349, the Terran Hegemony introduced the first BattleMech, the 100-ton MSK-6S Mackie, and the face of war changed forever.

Mechs Just Got Real

The introduction of the Mackie shifted the focus of military development away from interstellar Warships back to ground forces. The Terran Hegemony was able to prove that the 100-ton BattleMech was far superior to conventional ground vehicles (interestingly, the Terran Hegemony's main battle tank was the Israeli Merkava named Merkava but utterly unrelated to the Israeli tank of the same name), allowing a single man to destroy formations of opposing non-'Mechs. Of course, the rest of the Inner Sphere wanted the same capability, and in 2355 the plans for the BattleMech were stolen (as usual, the writers don’t realize that stealing a design is pointless if you don’t know how to build all the parts...like myomer (Myomer that was already a popular material throughout the Inner Sphere, used in the IndustrialMechs before the Mackie was even a concept). ). The Age of the BattleMech had begun.

During the next hundred years, as the Great Houses vied for supremacy and founded the nucleus of the future Successor States, the Terran Hegemony was able to exert great influence as the most technologically-advanced and neutral of the great powers. This would lead to the creation of the Star League in 2571, a grand union of all of humanity's interstellar nations. While ostensibly created for the purpose of uniting mankind and keeping the peace between the stars, it was also a massive power play by Terra to secure the raw materials it needed to maintain its technological edge and once more bring mankind under Terra's dominion. In keeping with the feudal society that now dominated mankind's worlds, the position of First Lord of the Star League was invested in Terra's ruling House, the Cameron dynasty.

While Hidden Wars would plague the Star League throughout its reign, no conflicts were fought between its members as long as the Star League Defense Force kept the peace between factions. Terra's hoard of advanced technologies were shared freely among the worlds of man, and a new Golden Age descended.

It all came to an end in 2766. The last of the Camerons was assassinated by Stefan Amaris, a power-hungry politician from the Periphery, the ring of interstellar nations that had refused to join the Star League and had been conquered for their trouble. Claiming the mantle of Emperor of the Star League and Director-General of the Terran Hegemony, Amaris was immediately denounced by the commander of the SLDF, Aleksandr Kerensky.

A New Dark Age

"Fuck you guys, I'm out." - Aleksandr Kerensky, Great Father of Clans

The Amaris Civil War destroyed the League, and led to a new Dark Age. The Great Houses, throwing off their loyalty to Terra, refused to aid either Amaris or Kerensky, and waited for the war to pass. Kerensky emerged the victor, but with the Cameron dynasty ended the other Great Houses began to vie for position of First Lord of the Star League. Disgusted by the politicking and betrayal, in 2784 Kerensky took the greater portion of the SLDF into exile beyond the Periphery. Those who remained pledged their loyalty to the Star League's last civil authority, the Ministry of Communication, which would later become ComStar, the sole provider of internet connections between worlds. Thus the Star League lost its last measure of power, and the Great Houses began the First Succession War.

Four Succession Wars, over the course of two centuries, would follow. Never would a Great House gain enough strength to declare itself master of mankind, especially since none would ever conquer Terra. Technology would stagnate and regress, creating the Lostech phenomenon, technology which mankind could no longer reproduce, maintain, or even understand. Where before feudalism had been a political phenomenon, hundreds of worlds across the Inner Sphere regressed to or below the technological level of the 20th Century, and hundreds more in the Periphery failed entirely. The sole bright spot was Comstar, the corporate religious entity which maintained the Hyper Pulse Generator network that enabled FTL communications between inhabited worlds. ComStar became the rulers of Terra in the wake of the Star League's collapse, and leveraged their control of the HPG network to ensure their inviolability in exchange for maintaining the incomprehensible HPG networks and neutral treatment of all communications between worlds. In order to maintain their power, they would actively sabotage, headhunt, or kill all promising technological advancements and promising scientists to maintain their monopoly and techno-religious authority. To be fair, unlike a certain cargo cult, ComStar intervened because they realized the Great Houses were psychopaths and couldn’t be allowed to advance. Also, they were actually loyal-ish to the Star League and hated the Great Houses.

Eventually the Inner Sphere would stabilize around the Great Houses and their associated stellar empires. However, technological progress remained stagnant, and the rare factories capable of producing such advanced technologies as BattleMechs became critical components in the shattered military-industrial complexes of the so-called Successor States. Millions would die so that a LED monitor factory could be taken by one side, or so that a hundred precision-machined laser lenses could be plundered from a forgotten SLDF armory. Real progress towards recovery could only be made after large caches of information which survived the fall of the Star League were recovered; the most significant were the recovery of a long-lost Star League university's library in 3013, and the recovery and free dissemination of the contents of the Helm Memory Core in 3028. In 3028, the two largest and most powerful Successor States, the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, were united by dynastic marriage, and it seemed that a new Golden Age might be only decades away.

But the Inner Sphere had forgotten all about Kerensky's exodus, and nobody wants Peace to break out in a wargame setting, soooo...

Suddenly Clannerscum

Kerensky and his followers first settled on the Pentagon Worlds, where they tried to start a new society and a new Star League. They failed though, and the wars erupted between the worlds, showing the bitter irony of life. Kerensky tried to move on, but suffered a heart attack, and the leadership was overtaken by his son, Nicholas Kerensky (who unlike his father had hair and was probably a closet furry). Nicholas took the remaining followers with him to a planet he called "Dream Land" and established the twenty original Clans.

The Clans are a tribal society that is divided into five castes - Warriors (religious and political leaders and soldiers), Scientists (less respected but are considered highly important), Merchants (detested and only kept as a necessity), Technicians (engineers and warriors' servants), and Laborers (serfs, repressed as needed). Although during the birth each child is tested for their relevance to a certain caste, but more often than not are the same as their parents. Speaking of which, Clanners strongly believe in eugenics, and most of the Warrior Caste members are genetically enhanced clones/mashups. Other castes are selectively bred by the instructions from Science Caste. On a positive side it would mean that even neckbeards would end up breeding (though given the Clan's brutal meritocracy/kratocracy, they'd end up as outcasts in the Bandit Caste). On the other hand, the society has only a few acceptable non-technical forms of information, meaning that there really is no reason for there to be neckbeards. Paradoxes aside, Clans were created towards efficiency, and even their language differs from the one used in the Inner Sphere. Clans constantly compete in everything, from combat to technological prowess, as they foresaw their return to the Inner Sphere and its liberation. (By their hands, of course. And logically resulting in their control.)

And that day was not far off. Unfortunately for the Inner Sphere, ComStar never forgot about Kerensky's Exodus and sent exploration vessels out to sniff out their trail and reclaim lost Star League outposts on the side. When the Clans captured one of the expeditions, they believed that the Inner Sphere would invade the Pentagon worlds. Ironically, the Clans used that as an excuse to return and invade before being forced back by the very invasion they were trying to prevent.

A prophecy of days far off, the ilClan is a religious myth that states that someday a Clan will take control of Terra, the Cradle of Humanity. The Khan (leader) of the Clan of Clans which captures Terra will become the new, true ilKhan (Khan of Khans) and re-establish the Star League, over which their blood shall reign in perpetuity. All will be Clan, Clan will be all.

ilClan is also an abortive BattleTech rulebook that has been in the works since 2002, ever since the Dark Age Era was published. Ostensibly intended to be the next historical Era, featuring all new rules to reflect the dominance of Clan society and technology, the bankruptcies and sales that BattleTech went through stalled all development. In addition, most fans are vehemently opposed to the destruction of most of the factions in the game, and have spoken up at every opportunity to denounce the plans behind ilClan. A prank release of a provisional ilClan historical outline drew tremendous outcry and Catalyst Game Labs has subsequently decided to focus on rereleasing and updating older Era rulesets.

Meanwhile, In The Inner Sphere

...Of course, when the Clans returned to the Inner Sphere with the intent of liberating it from the feuding Great Houses, those same great houses said "okay" and handed over the reins put aside their differences and fought the Clans to a stand-still. This was an incredible show of camaraderie, and the most cooperative the houses had been since the Star League fell. It was all quite touching, really.

Okay, not really. The Clan invasion was getting bogged down and while they were making progress towards Terra it seemed like the new normal would be just constant unending war because they couldn't manage to put any of the successors away for good. The problem the Clans had was that their society had ritualized combat to the point where they expected the enemy to just fight them head on, all the time, always. Even the Lyrans weren't thick enough to play down to this standard (usually), meaning the unstoppable clan juggernaut kept getting stopped by dishonorable, cowardly tactics like flanking, backfield raids, and straight up running away from fights you can't win.

ComStar, the self-serving treacherous pricks that they are, decided that something needed to be done and so made the Clans a bet. The deal was, come to Tukayyid and fight our best in one big PROVE YOUR WORTH honorduel smackup. If the Clans won, ComStar would stab all the successors in the back, disconnect their HPG access and throw the doors to Terra wide open. If ComStar won, the Clans would agree to a fifteen year armistice.

The Clans, being honourable glory-seeking meatheads, agreed and converged on Tukayyid, dividing up objectives between Clans thinking that this was the beginning of the glorious endgame. All the while blissfully unaware that ComStar are every bit the cheating bastards you'd expect of an ISP in space with their own army. The Battle of Tukayyid wasn't a complete shutout for the Clans but it definitely illustrated that while the Clanners were good at winning fights, they still had a real problem winning wars (where the enemy can go anywhere and do anything). In most of the engagements the Com Guard pounded the Clanners like discount tenderloin and because of their stubborn honourable ways the Clanners were obliged to abide by the cease fire by the logic of no-takey-backsies.

And then once the Clans were wrapped up behind a truce line it was time to get back to good-old inter-house wars. In an ultra-brief summary: There was the FedCom Civil War, kicking off the Fifth Succession War Word of Blake Jihad, the religious fanatic (well, moreso than usual) faction of ComStar went crazy over the entire Inner Sphere with cyborgs and nukes, until some dude named Devlin Stone got everyone to work together and kick them off Terra, then went on to form the Republic of the Sphere, essentially a re-establishment of the Terran Hegemony. In the meantime, the Clans got a bug up their asses over ideological purity after their Scientist Castes tried to take over, and all the Clans who invaded the Inner Sphere got kicked out of Clan Space to live there instead. Eventually someone forgot to pay the phone bill and the interstellar faster-than-light communication network went down. This ushered in the last era in the fluff known as the "Dark Age."

This is also considered the second ruination of the franchise by some. Many long-time fans think highly of the Succession Wars era of Battletech, right after the fall of the Star League. Marching around the field with walking tanks so expensive and rare that it's better to lose a pilot than a weapon is a powerful fantasy. It's often described as being "Mad Max with mechs." Of course, the blasted hellscape of the post-apocalypse is hard to maintain when the Clans invaded with their own brand-new shiny toys. The shift from "squabbling tribes with rusty guns" to "courageous defenders with shiny factories" is often considered the first ruination of the property (while a vocal minority, ie the clannerscum, hold it up as the only reason they got into it). When the squabbling of the Inner Sphere was broken up again by quasi-religious zealots and BattleTech was forced to stitch in apocrypha from its bastard child, the miniature game MechWarrior: Dark Age, people considered it the second collapse of the franchise.

ilClan Era Dawn of a New Age, or Not

In 2019 Catalyst released Shattered Fortress, the first half of a two-sourcebook set intended to finally advance the franchise into a post-Dark Age era. It ended with a cliffhanger: on New Year's Day 3150 a Clan fleet lands on Terra, but we don't know which Clan. Continuing the recurring theme of Battletech players not caring one bit about advancing the storyline, the release of the second book was then delayed indefinitely by the massive success of a Kickstarter offering more new miniatures and rules set 100 years back on the timeline. While each republished or recompiled rulebook has prologues hinting that the ilClan and Third Star League are around in 3250 from framing documents as archival material, details were deliberately left vague. Come 2021, and the novels have finally pushed the timeline out of the Dark Age, reception has been... eh. While some factions and characters got a lot of development and heroic action, many others were given the shaft or reduced to 2D caricatures when they had potential for development.

On January 1st, 2021 the novel Hour of the Wolf was released. Long story short, the Wolf Khan managed to get his hands on a way to bypass the Fortress Walls (unknown to most, Devlin Stone snuck them the access codes as he believed they were the least terrible of bad outcomes). Clans Wolf and Jade Falcon then beat the shit out of the Republic of the Sphere (but not before having the bulk of their commanders assassinated by headhunter units), fought a Trial of Possession for Terra, and the Wolves won. So, Clan Wolf is now ilClan. Their Khan made the Jade Falcons his clan's bodyguard (the bad elements having died fighting), and reconstituted Clan Smoke Jaguar as a non-voting clan and to serve as his clan's black ops/special forces. These Clans then created a new Star League (to a point). And with the combined might of these admittedly terribly mangled clans now strengthened by working together, they might actually make something of themselves. Others in the setting might not recognize them yet, but with the industrial might of the region(s) of space they occupy, they'll probably end up smashing faces and making it clear whose boss. Or they'll get booted off or everyone will just wait for them to self-destruct and then just walk right in.

Factions Summary

While each faction has a certain flavor and preferred equipment/tactics, factions do not limit your gameplay choices to particular sets of 'Mechs/units/components, as in many other games (Warhammer 40,000 is a good example, amongst many other skirmish-level wargames). So if something you want to use is in specific era of BattleTech History (FEDCOM Civil War, Clan Invasion, et cetera), anything goes. Although it's common for players to roleplay as being employed by some major power, and limiting themselves to their styles. Either that or they play as mercenaries and do as they please. Seriously, the amount of in-fighting is in effect galactic level (in Warhammer 40k -- aside from humanity itself -- only the Necrontyr, the flesh incarnations of the Necrons, ever fought each other to such a long and drawn out extent).

The Inner Sphere

While other time periods might have better or more interesting rules, the most popular ruleset remains the eras between the Fourth Succession War (3028) to just before the Word of Blake Jihad (3067). This list of Inner Sphere factions covers those periods with the most prominent being the Great Houses in the Inner Sphere (a region within a 550 light year radius of Terra):

Federated Suns

Ruled by House Davion, the Federated Suns is feudal Space America or nepotistic Space UK. Lawful Good, ruled by a Great House as inbred as any other is, and with all positions of power occupied by the same set of mostly blood-related elites. Without the blue blood, you're just a clever commoner. However, the Federated Suns isn't as stratified as the other Successor States, and it's easier for a common citizen to climb the ladders of wealth and power, which fuels an entrepreneurial society that is among the wealthiest in the Inner Sphere. They’re heroic defenders of freedom and democracy, provided you define “freedom and democracy” as “being ruled by the Federated Suns”. Their colors are red, white, and blue. Something about that sounds strangely familiar...

Similar to a certain faction in a certain other wargame, the Federated Suns usually win most of their battles, and are usually presented as the good guys, drawing a lot of accusations of Mary Suehood. Unfairly, though, as the FedSuns win so much due to wealth-fueled research and production. In other words, they work hard, do a good job, encourage businesses, and they get rewarded with victory. Unlike the Smurfs, however, the Federated Suns has actual flaws - their “democracy” is a rubber stamp, their rhetoric about freedom is mostly just an excuse to justify warmongering and imperialism, and they have such a staggering degree of wealth inequality that there are cases where the populations of multiple planets only have a single school to go between them. This means that the FedSuns attract two kinds of fans: twelve-year-olds who buy all the propaganda, and people who can appreciate playing a bunch of self-righteous, hypocritical jackasses. On the bright side, they do live up to the hype when it comes to individual liberties, and their rulers are genuinely competent and mostly don't dick them over.

Thanks to their great wealth, the Federated Suns can afford to fund actual scientific research in the form of the New Avalon Institute of Science, or Space MIT, and the Davions supported most of the tech development and recovery in the Inner Sphere prior to the Clan Invasion. They also got lucky when they found an ancient Star League library filled with various editions of tabletop wargame splatbooks. They are known to be the house that first heavily employed or utilized a lot of Clan personnel and technologies after the conclusion of the invasion.

The Federated Suns also kind of have a thing for autocannons. Think Space Wolves with wolves, or Orks with Dakka, and you have an idea. If it does not have an autocannon on it the Suns will find a way to give it one, and if it does have an autocannon they find a way to upgrade it to a rotary autocannon. So if you like autocannons (and you should) this is the faction for you.

Prior to the Fourth Succession War, the Federated Suns and Lyran Commonwealth were united through marriage (technically the political union was a treaty and the marriage was out of love and had no impact on the nations' unification), forming the Federated Commonwealth, the largest and most powerful empire in the galaxy since the Star League. In order to bridge the distance between the two nations, however, the Federated Commonwealth had to conquer large swathes of the Capellan Confederation, which they did easily. However, only a few decades later the Commonwealth was broken up by the FedCom Civil War, when Katherine Steiner-Davion schemed to either take over the Commonwealth or secede the Lyran half of it because she was a royal bitch. She is commonly known as simply The Bitch by many fans. And her splitting of the FedCom is incredibly weird since her nobles were against her, her military mostly liked the advantages brought by the FedSuns, and her public liked the massive boosts in economy and technological progress. Oh, and she was rebel usurper and had no authority to do any of the things she did. So her successful secession doesn't make a lick of sense and you just kinda have to suck it up. And to top it off, she had her mother murdered out of greed. The FedSuns are currently getting kicked around by pretty much everybody during the Dark Age, primarily because the current head of the house, Caleb, is extremely paranoid and rather psychotic.Thankfully he got killed by the Kuritans with some insider help from Clan Snow Raven (in exchange for some buffer territory). Not so thankfully, his death also brought the destruction a major chunk of the Davions' regular armed forces concentrated on one planet while enabling the Kuritans to take over the capital. Kuritans being what they're like, they probably raped and tortured everyone they didn't murder and alongside their dogs. Save us, Julian!

Lyran Commonwealth

A typical scene of a Lyran Archon wondering why their cousin has failed to relieve the Commonwealth alongside a bloody frontline against their enemies. They're likely either at a ball dance or planning a coup.

Space Germany with some Space Scotland and Space Scandinavia kicking around, the Lyran Commonwealth is the largest successor state and owns the most resource-rich planets in the Inner Sphere, making them an industrial and economic powerhouse. Their government was supposed to be modeled on ancient Athens, led by a council of nine Archons, but this did not work out at all, and eventually Archon Robert Marsden decided he'd had enough of this shit and overthrew the other Archons in a military coup. The Marsdens were eventually replaced by the Steiners via marriage, who have ruled the Commonwealth to this day.

The Lyrans are rich. Really, really absurdly rich. The only reason they haven't conquered the Inner Sphere yet is that they prefer to put the relatives of rich businessmen in charge of their army rather than, y'know, actual soldiers, meaning a significant amount of Lyran officers are terrible at their job. There is at least one recorded case of the Lyran military starting a major interstellar war by accident. Fortunately, since they're so rich, they're able to make up for their ludicrous incompetence with the biggest and heaviest weapons in the Inner Sphere. The joke goes that a typical Steiner scout lance consists of four 100-ton Atlas 'Mechs (imagine a scout-recon team composed entirely of Warlord Titans and you'll get the idea). Steiner forces tend to be big and slow, barely able to outmaneuver enemy fortresses. Of course, once they (eventually) get into range, you can kiss that fortress goodbye... And God-forbid you run into the rare Steiner commander who knows what they're doing. Ask the Clans at Tukayyid how that went for them.

Late in the Third Succession War, Archon Katrina Steiner shocked the entire Inner Sphere by actually calling for a peace treaty. Only Hanse Davion was at all interested, and he wound up marrying Katrina's daughter Melissa and uniting the two countries into one massive empire, the Federated Commonwealth (see above). Predictably, this Beauty-and-the-Geek romance started out exceedingly awesome then epically failed and it's back to single life for the too-pretty Steiners. They recently tried to have Clan Wolf migrate through their coreward territory to keep the Free Worlds League from reforming during the Dark Age while holding the transported civilian castes as insurance. The plan backfired with the Free Worlds League still reforming and Clan Wolf taking much of the coreward and middle territory in the Lyran Commonwealth to form the Wolf Empire. This, on top of a massive amount of civil unrest means the Lyrans are too busy with damage control from Wolf and Jade Falcon invasions along with internal rebellions to be a threat to anyone. The moral of the story is: don’t try to manipulate badasses who nearly conquered everyone without trying. They will fuck you up for it. Also, trying to hold civilians hostage against a culture that thinks civilians are barely human at all is pointless. It tends to go like "Okay, I'll kill a bunch of your people and conquer chunks of your territory". You threaten to kill the civilians and your enemy is totally incapable of understanding why they should care when they treat them as replaceable subjects instead of irreplaceable citizens. Come the rise of the ilClan on Terra and there’s a sudden power vacuum where the Jade Falcon occupation zone to the North use to be. This led to a massive Balkan-style disintegration of the said region alongside the Lyran’s northern provinces; many of resulting statelets are very ticked off at the Steiners for leaving them to rot. While Jade Falcons are barely around in the region, holdout territories and other Clans like the Hell’s Horses and Ghost Bears are eyeing the new buffer zone cautiously before seeking new planets to annex.

Free Worlds League

Taking elements from America, Yugoslavia, and Austria-Hungary (distinctions which grow less relevant with each passing day), the Free Worlds League is a federal democratic republic. No, really! They have a parliament and everything. Of course, the commander-in-chief of the Free Worlds League Military is always a member of House Marik because parliament doesn’t think anyone else can do the job, and the entire country has been operating under martial law “for the duration of the emergency” since the Star League broke up. But in principle, both democracy and federalism are alive and well in Marik space, making it impossible to get anything done. Think of the Free Worlds League as Space Holy Roman Empire due to regionalist nationalism.

Everyone in the Free Worlds League hates everyone else in the Free Worlds League; the only thing keeping them together is mutual animosity to the Lyrans, Capellans, and Periphery bandits raiding their borders. After finding out that Captain-General Thomas Marik had been in hiding running the Word of Blake for decades and the guy they’d been taking their orders from all that time was actually just some hobo picked up off the street, they gave up on trying to make the thing work at all and collapsed. Which is a shame because fake Marik was actually one of the best Captain-Generals they ever had. After the Dark Age, said hobo’s daughter managed to put it back together again, which kind of makes you start to wonder about that whole “only the Mariks can handle the Captaincy-General” thing. Doesn't help that she had to make a deal with the Spirit Cat and Sea Fox clanners to cement the whole thing together as well as marrying the official Marik family's head.

The Free Worlds League Military is built around combined arms warfare, treating infantry, vehicles, and aerospace fighters as if they were just as useful as mechs. They also used to have the most LAMs back before LAMs ceased to be a thing. They don’t get a lot of attention, since they’re far away from the FedSuns and the Clans and therefore don’t get involved in stories about factions the writers actually care about. The constant in-fighting probably doesn't help. That said, they most likely do enough to keep their jobs, which is probably good enough to satisfy the average Joe, who couldn't care less about political squabbles. Recent lore hints they’re probably at the forefront of the ilClan’s attention now due to Leaguers eager to reconquer their lost territory. Whether they get out of the border war in one piece is up for debate.

Draconis Combine

Ruled by House Kurita, the Draconis Combine is the obligatory Space Japan, in the sense that it is obligatory to be Japanese. It has large Arab and Scandinavian minorities who are legally required to be weeaboos, with the country as a whole drawing on both the age of samurai and the militaristic Imperial Japan of the 1920s to 40s. The twelve-year-olds listed above, if they leave the FedSuns, will likely move to this weeaboo paradise with its delusional "fierce solo samurai warrior takes on all opponents Kurosawa Style" appeal, not realizing that lone 'Mechs get gang-banged by enemies who are teamed up like a pack of mechanical hyenas. Defended by weeaboos despite being responsible for the single most horrific massacre in human history during the First Succession War, or at the least, the only one anyone in and out of universe bothers to actually remember. For an alternate look into this supposed massacre, please read Did 52 million really die? In fact, they have a habit of doing this. “We defeated the mercenaries on this planet who have nothing to do with the general populace. Nuke everyone before we leave. Why? Uhhhh...do we really need a reason? they’re not our enemies or anything, but murder is fun SCORCHED EARTH TACTICS! Preventing enemies from using the planet’s populace or resources against us is a valid strategy!”

Like everyone else in the Inner Sphere, the Draconis Combine is a warmongering, autocratic empire ruled with an iron fist that wants to take over the galaxy. Unlike everyone else in the Inner Sphere, they actually admit it. They're the only successor state that makes absolutely no pretenses of being a democracy, with the Coordinator of Worlds being treated as a divinely anointed absolute monarch who is the sole legitimate ruler of all humanity. They were the first to start shit after the Star League collapsed, with the Coordinator declaring himself the new First Lord and launching an invasion of the Federated Suns that eventually wound up getting him killed on Kentares IV, prompting his son to launch the aforementioned massacre. They've been the mortal enemies of the Federated Suns ever since.

Similar to the Davions and their love of autocannons and the Steiners and their love of everything heavy and assault, Kuritans are really, really into PPCs (Particle Projector Cannons), mainly because they're dirt poor and Lasguns are cheaper than bullets. If there is a mech that can possibly mount a PPC, the Dracs will put one on it. For instance, see the Catapult: a 65-ton long-range fire support 'Mech intended for indirect fire using the Long Range Missle (LRM) racks in its "ears". Almost every variant of the Catapult is centered around these LRM racks with a few minor backup weapons. They are a reliable, battle-tested design that no commander in their right mind would attempt to 'fix', because isn't broken... except in the eyes of House Kurita. Once the Combine got their hands on it those ears were replaced with two PPCs for direct fire support and two machine guns for civilian massacres INFANTRY DETERRENTS.

Kuritans were also involved in the worst BattleTech novel ever written, wherein a ship of theirs was lost in time and space, and found giant, alien, sentient chickens. Far Country is a Shamefur Dispray! and pretty much serves as the only time aliens are actually mentioned in the BattleTech universe.

Capellan Confederation

Culturally, Space China and Space Russia. Politically, Space North Korea. The Confederation was originally founded when several minor states in the Capellan Zone who were sick of the Federated Suns trying to "liberate" them joined together, bombed their own capital of Capella to make a point, and fought the Davions off. Secure in this victory, they then proceeded to never win a war ever again. Sounds like their rulers were evil after all.

Citizens of the Capellan Confederation enjoy probably the highest standard of living of any commoner in the Inner Sphere, with an extensive, cradle-to-grave welfare system and the best education and health care the state can provide. *Non*-citizens of the Capellan Confederation, known as "Servitors", are basically slaves. Becoming a citizen requires you to provide a certain amount of service to the state by the age of seventeen, and citizenship can be removed as punishment for disloyalty. Even those who aren't unfortunate enough to be Servitors basically have their lives decided for them by the Capellan caste system and the government's ability to tell them that they have to move to a new planet and take up a new career at any given moment. The writers might have eventually gotten the note on how pointless this was because under chancellor Sun-Tzu (No, really) Liao in 3052 the servitors were awarded more rights, their quasi slavery condition abolished and they were given better chances at gaining citizenship, boosting Sun-Tzu's popularity in the process. Just as planned.

The Confederation is run by a Chancellor, who's supposed to be elected by the nobility but in reality is pretty much always the head of House Liao. This is rather unfortunate, since the Liaos have a noticeable tendency towards being batshit fucking insane even by Inner Sphere nobility standards. They claim descent from Elias Liao, who was either a persecuted revolutionary philosopher (if you ask a Capellan) or a psychopathic nuclear terrorist (if you ask anyone else). The main family line births a homicidal maniac at least every other generation, e.g. Kali Liao, who became the leader of a cyborg death cult with a taste for mass nerve-gas attacks. At one point, they decided that having a regular military just wasn't cool enough for them and created the Warrior Houses, a bunch of weird pseudo-religious warrior cults that only answer to the Chancellor.

Since the Capellans have lost basically every war they've ever fought and live right next to the Federated Suns, they've become the designated "sneaky" faction, focusing on guerrilla warfare and covert operations. They go for stealth and electronic warfare the way the Davions go for autocannons, best exemplified by their iconic Raven electronic warfare 'Mech (which, depending on the model, actually looks like a bird; weird but cool). After the Clan Invasion and FedCom Civil War, they acquired a taste for the newly-developed Plasma weapons. Got the absolute shit beat out of them by the Federated Commonwealth during the Fourth Succession War, got revenge when the Commonwealth tore itself apart a few decades later.

ComStar

Imagine a cross between the medieval Catholic Church and Comcast, and you have ComStar. During the Star League Civil War, the network of Hyperpulse Generators that the Star League had built for faster-than-light communications was in ruins, and the one thing that the Great Houses could agree on was that somebody had to fix all their space phones right fucking now. They named Jerome Blake, the highest-ranking HPG network official still alive, as Minister of Communications, which, since they didn't name any other ministers, basically put him in charge of Terra. As the Star League collapsed, Blake bummed some soldiers off of Kerensky, got the Successor States to agree that the space phones were important and they should therefore respect ComStar's neutrality, and then seized complete control of Terra in a lightning-fast coup, revealing that that neutrality had some teeth.

After Blake died, ComStar quickly turned into a quasi-mystical and religious organization, whose stated purpose was to preserve human knowledge in the dark ages of the Succession Wars, a goal they attempted to fulfill by assassinating every scientist who wouldn't work for them and starting the Second Succession War practically the moment the first one ended. Things started to spiral out of control for them after the Helm Memory Core was leaked and suddenly everyone was able to figure out how Lostech worked again, and then things got even worse when the Clans showed up.

ComStar is also famous for introducing the ComStar Bill (C-bill) as a standard galactic currency. Rather than being backed by material goods, each C-bill is backed by ComStar's faster than light message delivery service: One C-bill will guarantee one millisecond of data transmission, enough for a few pages of bare text or a small image, with larger transmissions costing more, and with additional fees for higher priority and the like. The value of the various Great House currencies can be weighed against their worth in C-bills which allows for currency exchange on a galactic scale. The C-bill is the primary way that mercenaries are paid and in turn pay for goods and services, and thus the most common currency encountered by players. Post Jihad, ComStar was neutered of its armed forces and subject to a hostile takeover by Clan Sea Fox (outside of the universe, at least one of the game developers had a hate boner against ComStar's OP status and gave their more powerful components the ax, courtesy of Blakist nukes).

Minor Powers

• Free Rasalhague Republic: Space Norse/Vikings. They were a part of the Draconis Combine along the Lyran border, until the formation of the Federated Commonwealth meant that Kurita was about to have two borders for Hanse Davion to attack them from, so he granted them their independence as a buffer state. May have been awesome. If you're wondering why we write of them in the past tense refer to: Clan Invasion, Why Not Get in the Way of One (Third Publishing of Liao, COMSTAR ISBN 474-Alpha-467-Upsilon-345). They later join up with the Ghost Bears and become the Rasalhague Dominion. They are awesome because now we have Viking clanners. One of their aerospace pilots literally stopped the Clan invasion dead for an entire year because she banzai'd her fighter into a Clan warship and killed the ilKhan.
• Word of Blake: An ultra-reactionary splinter faction of ComStar that got butthurt after ComStar ditched all the pseudo-religious bullshit. Broke away and launched an all-out jihad (yes, they actually used that word) on literally everyone shortly after the Federated Commonwealth Civil War came to an end. Made liberal use of weapons of mass destruction and rendered several entire planets uninhabitable. Fond of genocide, re-education camps, unstable technology, and mass murder. As a result, they were eventually crushed as a result of pissing off the entire fucking universe, but not before undoing a lot of the technological progress that had been made after the Clan Invasion (apparently by magic, as not only was that knowledge now universally available, but so were copies of the Helm Memory Core...and destroying some factories doesn’t make technology go away). Basically used by the publishers to reset the average technology level of the game due to a lot of players feeling it was advancing too far and getting away from the quasi-feudal feel of earlier editions (forgetting that quasi-feudalism is a governing method, the technology level has nothing to do with it). Ironically enough, their 'Mechs were more streamlined and featured a lot more experimental technologies for people who would eventually blow the entire game setting back to the quasi-iron age. Officially, they were all supposedly killed after the Jihad for genocide. Recently hinted by a terminally ill Stone to still be around and responsible for the HPG network being taken out as a taunt against ilKhan Alaric before being killed off in bed.
• The Republic of the Sphere: Established by an individual calling himself Devlin Stone, who mysteriously surfaced at some point during the Blakefag Jihad, and helped pull the galaxy out that colossal clusterfuck through a series of successful military campaigns. Upon the Jihad's defeat, Stone met with ComStar Precentor Martial Victor Ian Steiner-Davion and laid out a philosophy which Victor would privately describe as militant socialism keyed to altruism; Officials and authorities would have their assets placed in a blind trust. Public service would be rewarded. Greed and corruption would be punished. All weapons would be placed under government control. Surprisingly, it worked, at least for a time, ushering in a new era of peace for the core worlds. However, after ruling as Exarch of the Republic for a while, Devlin Stone stepped down and shortly there after disappeared, vowing to return when he was needed most. It didn't take long before everything went to shit again and was plunged into chaos when the interstellar communication network was sabotaged. Was gangbanged by a combination of separatist factions, the Capellans, and Clan Jade Falcon before finally saying FUCK IT and retreating back to Terra. All while somehow using Word of Blake HPG disruption tech to prevent hyperspace jumps into their core territory. They also recently developed a taste for Tripod 'Mechs (which are the only modern 'Mech that can exceed Assault 'Mechs in terms of tonnage, firepower, and armor but at the cost of requiring an additional gunner and engineer onboard to shoot and monitor the machine's vitals) while also hybridizing Clan & IS technology (culminating with extremely powerful but unstable weapons). You guys realize Stone is the Emperor, right? Right? None of this makes sense, of course, as the HPG network is not only extremely well and fanatically protected by actual fanatics, but also is so large it can’t really be sabotaged. Except by magically competent Deus ex Machina mooks, apparently. Friendly clans could also build their own for the Republic’s use. Except newly built HPGs also failed somehow. Black Boxes became advanced enough that HPGs were nearly pointless, though, making the whole “Dark Age” thing really...dumb. And if someone had the sense to build building-sized Black Boxes instead of briefcase-sized, the HPGs would have a perfect backup. But common sense in BattleTech is heresy just like in any good universe. Besides that, the eyes on anyone with power to prevent corruption would stop factions from selling out the Republic and the senators would not have been able to sponsor military officers into becoming Paladins because that is extremely corrupt and would not have been allowed or tolerated. Even if such a plot succeeded, there would be no leverage for the senators to get those paladins to do what they wanted. And the Capellans are target practice, sudden separatism makes no sense when they were fine until this point under numerous oppressive regimes, and Clan Jade Falcon by itself would have been crushed and a team up of clans would have sent the whole Inner Sphere into a clan-killing frenzy panic mode. Come the latest novels in 2021, and the Republic and it's founder were reduced to a caricature of fall of the III Reich (complete with a senile leader giving contradictory orders and throwing their best units at the worst faction so the best faction can pick up the pieces). While many of their leaders and fighters survived, it's an open question of whether they cooperate with the ilClan or revolt later down the line.
  • Northwind Highlanders: A band of Scottish mercenaries hailing from the planet Northwind. Once upon a time they were a formal Royal Guard unit for House Cameron in the SLDF but they went free agent when the Star League fell apart, after which they mostly worked for House Liao. They got a surprise happy blakesday party that destroyed their HPG and wiped out their aerofighters but otherwise they survived and joined the Republic in 3081. With the Fall of the Republic, they were forced to surrender with their leader loaned as a liaison from the ilClan to the Jade Falcons; which is notable due to both factions historically and currently originating from, the Black Watch, elite SLDF units working as bodyguards for the First Lord of the Star League and nearly prevented the Amaris Civil War.
• The Periphery: The collection of non-successor states on the edges of the Inner Sphere. They were brought into the Star League by force and are still kinda sore about it, mostly because they nearly got blasted back to the Stone Age and never quite got their technology back up. The most important entities (outside of the Clans) are the Periphery powers bordering the Great Houses in the Inner Sphere while the rest is marked as the Deep Periphery and is as isolated from civilization as the Arctic Circle from the rest of civilization.
  • Taurian Concordate: Equivalent to the Space IRA/Ireland, they’re a Periphery nation bordering the Federated Suns and Cappellan Confederation. Has an axe to grind against the Federated Suns and claims they’re much more dedicated to freedom and liberty than the Davions. Think the United States right after 9/11, all of the good and the bad, and you have a good idea of the culture. Just replace paranoia about Islam with paranoid about the Federated Suns, including the fact that the overwhelming majority of who they're paranoid couldn't given any less of a shit about them. Also add the IRA, their fanatical hatred of the British, and war crime tendencies.
  • Marian Hegemony: A bandit kingdom bordering the Lyrans and Free Worlds League that decided to become the Roman Empire IN SPACE. They’re basically founded on by a noble consortium who struck gold with a vast deposit of germanium (a vital ingredient for KF Drives). Due to their practice of raiding for resources and slaves, all their neighbors (particularly the Lyrans and Free Worlds Leaguers) hate them. A shadier version of the Severan Dominate from 40k.
  • Rim Worlds Republic: A former authoritarian and militaristic state formed during the Age of War. It was a poster child in the Star League due to its founders, House Amaris, proclaiming unconsummated loyalty to the League during the Reunification Wars. Unfortunately, House Amaris was as bloodthirsty as House Kurita and spiteful as House Liao. Due to perceived “betrayal” from the Star League not rescuing them fast enough from an anti-Star League mass revolt during the Reunification Wars, they held a secret grudge and then staged a bloody coup against House Cameron. After countless war crimes and purges as the SLDF ground through their defenses to Terra, they got eradicated in the Amaris Civil War with the bulk of their planets outright annexed by the Lyran Commonwealth. If the Word of Blake or the more extremist Clans like the Smoke Jaguars and Jade Falcons are the big bads in BattleTech, the Rim Worlds Republic is in a very close second or third place.
  • Magistracy of Canopus: Equivalent to Space Las Vegas, it’s a hedonistic matriarchy bordering the Free Worlds League. A nation of cybernetic catgirls, whose largest export is pornography. No, really. We're serious. Well they're not all cybernetic catgirls but they're there if you want them, and pornography and the tourist industry makes up a large chunk of their economy. Also Medical research and technology, most likely to treat all the STDs you get from your vacation to Space Vegas. Also known for having a significant religious conservatives population as they have an open-door refugee policy.
  • Outworlds Alliance: Basically the Space Amish, they’re a backwater state near the Federated Suns and Draconis Combine. Was the Periphery-est of the Periphery states until Clan Snow Raven moved in and formed the Raven Alliance.
  • Hanseatic League: A mercantile alliance of traders descended from Lyran refugees fleeing economic declines during the Third Succession War, their nation is between the Clan Homeworlds and Lyran Space. They liked to pretend to be a neutral third party interested in trade of goods and information while also subjecting neighboring planets to debt trap diplomacy with armed merchant caravans. Also liked to play both sides against each other in any prolonged war among their neighbors to increase profits and soften them up for potential annexation (such as between Nueva Castille and the Umayyad Caliphate). Unfortunately, they were eventually conquered by Clan Goliath Scorpion (with help from their newfound Castilian and Umayyad citizens) and merged into their new Scorpion Empire some time in the Dark Age.
• Mercenary Review and Bonding Commission: An independent group that certifies and provides force rankings for various mercenary groups. At least three MechWarrior games are focused on the mercs as it allows writers more leeway and less chance to screw up the canon.
  • Kell Hounds: A merc company headed by Morgan Kell. His son Phelan was captured by Clan Wolf when the Clan Invasion first began, and by the end was running the Clan until it split. Took in Phelan and the Exiled Wolves afterwards. Generally, are tough but cool guys all around. Like the Exiled Wolves, they got a massive "kill on sight" target painted on their back after the omnicidal Jade Falcon Khan got annoyed with their feisty resistance against her campaign into Lyran Territory. Once the Jade Falcons scrambled the bulk of their military forces to Terra, the Kell Hounds were able to retake their homeworld when the Jade Falcon occupation zone and Lyran northernmost territories balkanized from the power vacuum. On the other hand, their commander has a big grudge against the Steiners for leaving them out to dry.
  • Grey Death Legion: Mercenary group who were famous for finding and distributing the Helm Core, which allowed the Inner Sphere to regain technology formerly lost during the Succession Wars. Generally an author's favorite in the books. Got destroyed during the Blake Jihad. And then got resurrected once the northern Lyran provinces balkanized.
  • Wolf's Dragoons: A bunch of Clan Wolf advance scouts disguised as a mercenary group. Came to the Inner Sphere with a ton of 'Mechs that the Clans considered outdated but hadn't been seen in the Successor States in centuries and were considered Lostech... Which should have tipped the Great Houses off that these guys might be bad juju. Instead of providing intel to the Clans for their invasion, Wolf's Dragoons pulled a fast one and tried to prepare the Inner Sphere for war with the Clans. They are generally pretty awesome guys, even if part of that awesomeness is because they get a ton of attention in the fluff due to the writers' obsession with anything related to Clan Wolf. They got screwed pretty badly during the Blake Jihad when the nutjobs assaulted Outreach. By Dark Age they are slowly recovering with help from the Kell Hounds. Recent novellas have the Wolves convince them to join them on Terra once it's conquered to prevent the genocidal Jade Falcons from becoming the ilClan. Unfortunately, latest novels also made them become meatshields used by the Wolf Khan to expend the Turquoise Turkeys' ammo supplies while being reduced to a fraction of their strength. Naturally, in a repeat of their history against Kurita, they swore an oath to stand against the Wolves permanently.

The Clans

Laughable strategic and logistical ability and basically have no plan when they do something. But God have mercy on you if they're coming your way. 'Cus you're fucked. These guys reside in the Deep Periphery and tried to leave well enough alone with the Spheroid barbarians their SLDF ancestors disowned until Space AT&T knocked on their front door like an unsolicited salesman. The resulting "GTFO my lawn" response naturally made the Innner Sphere soil their pants. Each clan is named after an animal, and yes those are the animal's full names.

• Clan Blood Spirit: The smallest clan. Noted for having the toughest training, favored Battle Armor, and had no official allies after starting off idealistic but then becoming jaded grudge-holders. :( Despite above comment, not ACTUALLY an animal, but named for the warrior spirit that united the forces under Kerensky.
• Clan Burrock: The only clan to support the Dark Caste. Liked picking on the Blood Spirits before they were absorbed by Clan Star Adder.
• Clan Cloud Cobra: The Religious types. Loved aerospace fighters and jump jets. Obsessed with collecting genetic bloodlines other clans don't want.
• Clan Coyote: Native Americans in Space. Also like to scheme too much for their own good. Known for creating a shit ton of tech (unlike some people on Mars...)
• Clan Diamond Shark: Used to be called Sea Fox until Snow Raven killed their namesake (with their current one) the only clan that views the merchant caste as equal to their warrior one. Later brought back the Sea Fox and changed their name back. The only clan to allow all castes to vote, making them arguably a genuinely democratic republic.
• Clan Fire Mandrill: The clan whose gimmick was to always have a few subfactions to foster internal competition. At first it was manageable and it improved the clan, but then the factionalism snowballed into more than 10 mini-subfactions which made the whole clan a laughing stock among the clans.
• Clan Ghost Bear: The only clan to be founded by a married couple, as a result they're the only clan to still have normal family units. Much more protective of its civilian caste than the others. Nearly devoured the Free Rashalague Republic in the Clan Invasion, then merged with what was left after the Jihad. Went full blown good old fashion Viking Berserker when the Jihad nuked their civilians, attacking friend and foe alike in pure grief fueled murderous rage. Awesome.
• Clan Goliath Scorpion: Stoners with rose-colored nostalgia glasses. Also noted for elite marksmanship and ambush tactics. Likes to acquire artifacts for cultural appreciation of the Star League, sometimes with bad consequences down the line.
• Clan Hell's Horses: The only clan to think tanks are useful, often uses combined arms tactics rather than just spamming 'Mechs. They have a hot rod flames color scheme. Extremely heavily focused on teamwork. Including teamwork between castes and between the clan and its conquered worlds. Which has led to very good relations both internally and externally. Probably the only Clan other than the Star Adders that locals might actually support over a "liberating" Inner Sphere force. Maybe.
• Clan Temper Tantrum Ice Hellion: Speed freaks with a big ego. Their Khan seems to bitch every time their forces lose, which is often.
• Clan Jade Falcon: The spotlight stealing clan second only to the Wolves, with whom they have a fierce rivalry. Slightly less evil than the Jaguars.
• Clan Mongoose: Basically a footnote in clan history. Extremely aggressive, tend to attack everyone near them. Got their asses kicked by everyone else before being absorbed.
• Clan Nova Cat: The spiritual types, they decide their policy with visions, which 9 times out of 10 ends badly for them. Some of the best marksmen in the clans, often competed with Clan Goliath Scorpion. Joined Smoke Jaguar in attacking the Draconis Combine, then sided with the Combine right after everyone decided the Jags had to go. Eventually got destroyed during the Dark Ages for backing the wrong Kuritan royal in a civil war.
• Clan Chimney Kitten Smoke Jaguar: Essentially super aggressive World Eaters trained to pilot 'Mechs. Known to fuck shit up until their smaller numbers (due to infighting, shitting on their civilian castes and hating logistics) fucked them over in long campaign. Were eventually wiped out by the Inner Sphere counter-attack after they murdered an entire city from orbit. What goes around comes around. Recent ilClan lore had their descendants in the Fidelis sworn to the Wolf Khan in exchange for rebuilding their clan; despite their original hatred for letting the Second Star League annihilate them.
• Clan Snow Raven: The sinister & cunning space jockeys of the clans. Specialized in space combat and became BBFs with the Outworlds Alliance.
• Clan Spirit Cats: Offshoots of the Nova Cats after they were annihilated by the Combine.
• Clan Star Adder: Boring, but very, very practical, which benefited them a lot. They favor using assault 'Mechs, and like to upgrade their lasers to heavy lasers. Living under them or as one of them is much more like real life. If you can do a job, you can have the job. Including a laborer wanting to be a warrior. Which ironically is the same approach that caused Clan Wolverine to be destroyed by Kerensky.
• Clan Steel Viper: Self righteous xenophobes who wanted to cooperate with the Inner Sphere but also treated freeborns like dirt, and then wondered why nobody liked them. Responsible for Clan genocide known as "The Wars of Reaving". Got genocided in return.
• Clan Widowmaker: The hyper-aggressive types. Their first Khan held a grudge against the Wolverines and framed them before being killed with support from Nicholas. Widowmaker later got annihilated for accidentally killing Nicky. What was left of it, however, gave birth (lies Clanners aren't born, they're grown) to the most dangerous MechWarrior ever, Natasha Kerensky.
• Clan Wolf: The spotlight stealing Clan, courtesy of it being Kerensky's personal clan. Split up into two factions following the Refusal War.
  • Crusader Wolves: The guys who want to continue the invasion of Inner Sphere. Wound up migrating from their original invasion corridor to Lyran/Marik space & formed a new & dangerous upstart state called the Wolf Empire. Later surprise surprise, won against the Republic and Jade Falcons on Terra to become the ilClan of the Third Star League despite the other factions refusing to recognize them for now outside of the former Republic’s officials, Jade Falcons, & the Smoke Jaguars that are all a shadow of their strength. Naturally lost most of their forces to take the top prize.
  • Warden Wolf-in-Exile: The guys who want to defend Inner Sphere against the rest of the clans, who they think are a mockery of Kerensky's teachings. Like the Kell Hounds, they got a massive "kill on sight" target painted on their back after the omnicidal Jade Falcon Khan got annoyed with their feisty resistance against her campaign into Lyran Territory. Somehow got convinced to rejoin the Crusaders Wolves in revenge against the Jade Falcons despite the story never addressing the Crusader-Warden divide on treating Inner Sphere nations as subjects to be conquered and ruled from above or charges to be protected and educated from partnership. The “official” motive of seeking payback against the Jade Falcons for razing their civilian population centers and killing their cadet academies can only go so far until the Green Chickens got defeated.
• Clan Wolverine Not-Named Clan: Aggressive and independent minded, these guys pissed off Nicky to such extent that they were annihilated after the vengeful Widowmaker Khan framed them of detonating nukes on civilians and another Clan’s genetic repository after the Wolverines seceded from the Clans. Basically, they did the caste thing but thought "Hey, why not let people do what they're best at?" and that sort of thing. It pissed off crazy pants ilKhan Kerensky because this approach made them more successful than all the other clans, proving his method was actually not the best way. Some survivors were able to flee as the Minnesota Tribe but they've been never heard from publicly since (though there are hints that they're around in the Deep Periphery in some recent novels and short stories). There are many theories about them returning to Inner Sphere and taking over it as shadow masterminds in order to destroy the clans.

Wars of Reaving

Fed up with having to write more stuff about clans nobody cares about, a bunch of clans were wiped out after the Jihad, or driven out of clan territory. While the in-story explanation is that a butthurt ilKhan decided it was time to make a powerplay after not having won anything out of the Inner Sphere Invasion, everyone knows that there were several clans that had no discernable effect on the game.

• Annihilated or Absorbed:
  • Blood Spirit: Got wiped out for using civilian militias which "isn't clan-like" and marked for annihilation for letting people fight for their homes instead of cooperating with their new leaders as Clan honor dictates. As well as using en-mass civilian militias to attack their enemies.
  • Burrock: Tried to re-establish themselves after being absorbed, got defeated.
  • Fire Mandrill: Too fractured to fight back effectively during the Wars of Reaving. What was left of them got absorbed by the Goliath Scorpions and other Homeworld Clans
  • Ice Hellion: Killed themselves by trying to steal Jade Falcon and Hell's Horses territory. The remaining survivors joined Goliath Scorpion.
  • Steel Viper: Took over the Clan Homeworlds and gave everyone free reign to remove the “taint” of the Invader Clans by any means necessary. Forgot that they themselves were an Invader Clan.
  • Nova Cat: The main Clan was destroyed by the Draconis Combine for being on the losing side of a civil war. the majority of the survivors were led by a warrior-mystic who had a vision that the Clan as whole would go extinct if he didn't lead some like minded fellows away elsewhere before they were indeed wiped out and they would travel to a part of the former Free Worlds League to set up shop there as the Spirit Cats.
• Exiled or Abjured: These clans were forced out of the Clan Homeworlds on the pretense of being "corrupted" by Inner Sphere influences. Some later formed the Council of Six Clans, representing the clans that now exist in the Inner Sphere.
  • Ghost Bears: Banished to the Inner Sphere and eventually founded the Rasalhague Dominion. Joined the Council.
  • Goliath Scorpion: Originally sided with the Homeworld Clans to drive the Invader Clans out of the Kerensky Cluster. Then was censured and abjured for absorbing Clan Ice Hellion Warriors and Star League descended mercenaries from Eridani Light Horse in their Clan eugenics program without permission. Ran away and conquered Nueva Castile and Umayyads (Spaniards vs. Arabs IN SPACE) in the Deep Periphery, forming Escorpion Imperio. By the eve of the Dark Age, they had also conquered their neighbors to the south, the Hanseatic League, and founded a new major Periphery power known as the Scorpion Empire that's second only to the Homeworld Clans as a military power in the Periphery.
  • Hell's Horses: Stole some of Clan Wolf's territory in the Inner Sphere, and end up getting banished from the Clan Homeworlds. Developed a taste for experimenting with QuadVee 'Mechs (which can convert from a ground combat vehicle into a Quad 'Mech while also requiring a dedicated gunner). Joined the Council.
  • Jade Falcon: Banished to the Inner Sphere and tried to conquer Terra but failed. Still rules the parts of the Inner Sphere they conquered during the Clan Invasion. Replaced the Smoke Jaguars as the most vicious clan under their latest Khan (who's willing to do anything to kill her enemies). Joined the Council. Later got most of their forces wiped out from omnicidal fighting against the Republic, Dragoons, and Wolves on Terra. Said genocidal Khan got killed off and replaced with a pragmatic reformer who agreed to follow the Wolf IlKhan in exchange for the Turquoise Turkeys becoming the IlKhan's body guards.
  • Sea Fox/Diamond Shark: Ended up in what's left of the Free Worlds League. Split up into semi-independent merchant fleets and are now a collection of nomadic "Khanates" that sail the starlanes of the Inner Sphere. Joined the Council, but also joined the FWL as a member state. In the meantime, managed to bring the Sea Fox back from extinction, and changed back to their old name.
  • Smoke Jaguar: Some of them showed up as super-secret Clanner loyalists called Fidelis to the Republic of the Sphere. More practical minded than their grandparents but just as likely to go berserk when fighting any clan warriors for their perceived betrayal. Still in the Fortress Republic. A scant few are found hiding in the Deep Periphery with the few warships that they still had. Later somehow let go of their grudge to pledge allegiance to the Wolve Khan in exchange for reforming their Clan under the IlKhan's protection.
  • Snow Raven: Ran away and merged with the Outworlds Alliance in the Periphery, forming the Raven Alliance. Joined the Council.
  • Spirit Cat: What's left of Nova Cats, allied with the Free Worlds League and formed an enclave in their territory with sponsorship from House Marik and Clan Sea Fox.
  • Wolf: Splintered into several factions. Basically conquered the central and coreward territories of Lyran Alliance under the Wolf Empire. Making the Steiners have a bigger headache, their Khan, Katrina Steiner's descendant, claimed the mantle of Archon through her bloodline. Wolves-in-Exile refuse to join and are doing their own thing. Clan Wolf-Alliance joined the Council. “Katrina Steiner’s descendant” is in fact a Trueborn Clanner that Katherine Steiner-Davion had made using both her own genetic material and Victor Steiner-Davion’s, because regular incest just wasn’t crazy enough for her. Later became IlKhan once the two halves merged back together naturally.
• Home Clans: Theses clans still hold territory in the Clan Homeworlds and consider themselves "True Clans."
  • Cloud Cobra: Still around.
  • Coyote: Sneaky bastards. Got their hands on the genetic material of one of Clan Wolves's founders. Outside of the universe, unreliable rumors hint that said founder may have been the last known descendant of House Cameron.
  • Star Adder: TOP DOG. Their Khan was the one who stopped the psycho Steel Viper ilKhan by dint of beating his head inside out with the nearest handy blunt object.
  • Stone Lions: Made from the Hell's Horses who were left in the Clan Homeworlds and didn't get exiled.

So basically there are now ten Clans: The six Spheroid Clans, and the four Home Clans. The rest are either dead, formed hybrid societies, or are even more minor than before and thus save the writers from some hard work in upcoming TROs.

The Appeal of BattleTech

First and most obvious, giant stompy BattleMechs bristling with guns duking it out is cool. But despite that, BattleTech is in general a more grounded and human setting. You don't have warp daemons, God Emperors, energy forces or psionic powers in BattleTech or giant Space Cathedrals and machines that work better when people pray to them. Nor does it have artificial gravity, shields, sapient aliens, serious transhumanism, dyson spheres, general AI and other more wild science fiction ideas. While it does go into some suspense of belief in technology such as KF-FTL drive and HPG-FTL communications, most of the technology is still grounded within the realm of plausible belief. Society-wise, it doesn't go into the speculation on how civilization may come into conflict with divergent ideals or extraterrestrial life, instead you have human people like you and me struggling in a hostile universe where the most dangerous thing is often another human being under another flag. Not that the setting lacks for variety; the main factions are very well developed with their own distinct motivations, even if they do sometimes tend to lean into stereotypes. BattleTech is for people who read Dune and find the idea of the Atreides, Harkonnens, Corinos and the other Great Houses of the Landsraad with their conflicts and their power plays to be far more interesting than what happened after Paul took over. Some others also consider it similar to a teen rated version of Game of Thrones in space (but with mechs and sci-fi tactics in place of mythical creatures and gore).

BattleTech is one of the more morally grey settings out there. Moreso than many Grimdark settings where it's a matter of nasty jerks vs literal demons. While there are a few factions which are better or worse than others on the whole (Magistracy of Canopus vs Clan Smoke Jaguar) all of the factions have their share of virtue and vice, heroes and villains. Good people can come up from the Nobility of the Federated Suns, Citizens of the Capellan Confederation or the Iron Wombs of The Clans, as can a lot real nasty bastards. In that regard, this is a rather tragic universe. In BattleTech nobody is corrupted by Chaos or seduced by the Dark Side. Instead humanity took to the stars and flourished, only to be brought low because their leaders were in the end just human with human failings.

On the same note, this means that there are multiple ways of reading things and you actually have to think about motivations when forming your opinion. Is Federated Suns the home of true believers in freedom who sometimes fall short, or an empire of self-righteous hypocrites? Is (pre-WoB) ComStar the defenders of humanity's legacy of knowledge against the apocalyptic power-plays of the Great Houses to bring about a Golden age which was not merely Gilded like the last one, or a cult which feels that it has the right to dictate who gets how much tech and eliminate anyone who stands between them and their distant vision of an ideal future? Ask different people and you'll get different answers. It helps that all sourcebooks are cannonical documents in universe written by and for specific factions. Technical Readouts are written by Comstar as a sort of Jane's guides, Field Manuals are handbooks written for senior officers (e.g. one Federated Suns Field Manual is a readiness report from the commander of the armies to the first prince.) and other books are written as in universe histories. So every splatbook is biased and edited to make someone look good, and absolutely admits it. Any retcons or inconsistencies are therefore the result of in universe lies (and not poor fact checking or writing in our world) and you can choose which lies you want to believe.

As far as mecha design goes, BattleTech designs run the gamut from box-on-legs (Awesome, Dragon, etc), to egg-on-legs (Catapult, Marauder, etc), through to very polished designs (which were mostly stolen from Japanese anime shows). Wrong, they hired a third party artist who sold his designs to them and the other guys. Some of the later work, post-FASA, could be quite smooth, to the point of organic looking. As such, BattleTech is a pastiche of various art styles and design philosophies, covering the range of reactions from "cool-but-impractical", to "eh, practical-and-possible", and well out into the area that will make your engineering professor have a mental fit.

Lastly from a hobbyist perspective, BattleTech tries to make itself as accessable as possible. It's set up more like a board game than a miniatures wargame. The basic rules are free online, and you're allowed to represent a 'Mech with anything you can fit in the hex grid — including paper cutouts, so you can pick up and play with anyone willing to learn the rules with you.

Mechanics

The standard use of hexmaps renders the purchase of miniatures optional, though miniatures rules for the game are available.

Record sheets are one of BattleTechs' greatest blessings and curses.

The basic mechanic is simple. Two six-sided dice are used, with a to-hit (Equal or greater to) system. Initiative is interlaced, with the loser moving first and the winner able to react. All weapons damage is technically done at the same time, and therefore who shoots first is insignificant, although the order in which weapons fire from any given unit resolves is important. Larger weapons can scrub off large quantities of ablative armor, while smaller multi-hit weapons stand a better chance of forcing critical hits once a location is damaged. If you get hit, you mark off the weapons damage rating from your armor. If the shot penetrates your armor, you roll potential criticals. Firing weapons and moving about generates heat, which you must keep down to keep your 'Mech working properly.

Unlike games such as Warhammer, where many units are either killed on the first shot or left unscathed, and little information is recorded, BattleTech uses record sheets to mark off each 'Mech's cumulative damage, ammunition, pilot status, and heat. Also, there are hit locations, so limbs can be blown off. The record sheets allow for effects that are more detailed, but this also increases the overall playtime. Although expert players can get through matches just as fast as players of other games of more or less equal size, new players often find that the game plays slowly. This is usually due to the time spent referencing hit-location tables, critical effects, etc. For new players, 2V2 matches are best, with 4V4 matches being the "cap", in order to have games that do not take excessively long. More experienced players can run games of 12v12 or larger in an afternoon, though these will often be multi-player games in which each player controls only a handful of 'Mechs.

One of the biggest appeals of BattleTech is that all of its units are made with a predefined set of rules. Custom designs are fully possible, though they are not likely to be welcome in tournament matches or pick-up games.

BattleTech uses a build system based on 'Mech tonnage. You start with a Chassis limit, from 20-100 tons. You then determine engine size based on how fast you want your 'Mech to be (how many hexes you want it to be able to move per turn) you then allocate the remaining tonnage to control systems, weapons, ammo and armor. This method varies slightly depending on the technology of the chassis, but not overmuch. Though the system has recently been removed, there were previously three levels of technology.

Level 1 (Now called "Introductory Tech") referred to early-era gameplay. Only the more rudimentary weapons and technologies are available, though the critical rules remain the same. This is the preferred level at which to learn, and is synonymous with the equipment available during the Succession Wars era. It is also the level of play made possible with starter boxes.

Level 2 was Tournament-level gameplay. This introduced new equipment and electronics, as well as Clan technology (A more technologically advanced, but militant people). Though the rules are generally the same as those in level 1 gameplay, more-complicated equipment such as ECM, anti-missile systems, cluster munitions, etc. were better suited to more experienced players. It is the level of play made possible with separately-purchased rulebooks. Note that as the in-universe timeline advances, some more-advanced technology is designated "tournament-level", and several items that were Level 3 before the switch are also now "Tournament-Level".

Level 3 referred to all advanced gameplay and equipment, including specialized gear from Historical manuals and the Solaris VII boxed sets/adventures. This has since been split out into "advanced", "experimental", and "era-specific" technology. This also included all equipment that was not listed in the core rulebooks. More complex rules were inserted in order to increase the realism and flexibility of the game. These include new weapons, new or altered terrain rules, artillery, alternate rules for major mechanics such as line-of-sight, etc. Though Level 3 rules included "prototype" equipment not printed in the core rulebooks, the standard rulebook in regards to Level 3 play was called Maxtech. This has now been replaced by the Catalyst Games release of Tactical Operations and its sequels.

Advanced technology (not to be confused with "advanced rules" is covered largely in Tactical Operations, and may be common but incorporates additional rules or restrictions that make it difficult to use without preparation.

Experimental tech is not mass-produced in-universe. The items are used in one-offs, prototype designs, and other weirdness. The Experimental Technical Readout series showcases this tech level, and most of the rules are in Tactical Operations or Strategic Operations.

Era-specific technology incorporates advancements that were later abandoned in-verse. Usually these items were displaced by a superior version of the same technology, although there are some like the Listen-Kill missiles (which exploited a weakness in standard ECM protocols, later patched out) which are simply active for a few years and then abandoned once changing circumstances make them ineffective. Era-specific tech is the province of Historical sourcebooks, the Interstellar Operations rulebook, and a few campaign books.

Spinoff Games

Due to its popularity through the late 80s and early 90s, BattleTech spawned a multitude of spinoffs and expansion games.

Lost Worlds dueling books. NOVA adapted their melee dueling system to make four books for BattleTech mecha. Each book has the opponent's view of the 'Mech on each page, and a character sheet listing possible maneuvers. Since it used the same system as the rest of their books, you could have "20-ton Locust vs. skeleton with scimitar" duels.

MechWarrior was a traditional pen-and-paper RPG set in the BattleTech universe, using a ruleset similar to FASA's other hit RPG Shadowrun. It got second(1991) and third(1999) editions, then was later rebooted by Fanpro and Catalyst Games under the respective titles Classic BattleTech RPG and BattleTech: A Time of War, likely to avoid conflation with WhizKids' MechWarrior: Dark Age. Also because by then the "MechWarrior" title was fully associated with the video games.

AeroTech and BattleSpace were both games featuring Aerospace Fighters and DropShips/WarShips respectively, fighting in orbit before any of the action in the BattleTech game itself could begin. Both games eventually got absorbed into BattleTech's rules in the Total Warfare edition.

Battletroops was an infantry-scale game about the PBI who fight it out it in the shadow of BattleMechs. It later gained Clantroops, an expansion pack that incorporated clan equipment as well as Battle Armor on both sides, but the game did not sell as well and the rules have since been abandoned.

Battleforce was a revision of BattleTech, made in recognition of the fact that large-scale combat could not be effectively played out using the current system. Battleforce simplified each 'Mech into a simple set of numbers, so that they could be clustered into units and fight over a much larger area. Battleforce 2, released about a decade later, also introduced planetary invasion maps and rules to go along with them. Although the maps are available in Map Compilation 2, the rules will be reprinted in the Strategic Operations and Interstellar Operations sourcebooks.

The Solaris VII Boxed set was made to simulate the fast-paced gladiatorial combat on the game's world of Solaris VII. It included new rules, new maps with special rules, new 'Mechs, and supplements for roleplaying. Little known fact: some of the designs used in the original Solaris VII set were redesigns of the BattleTech 'Mechs which were themselves copies of Japanese mechs! When the product tried to sell in Japan, half of the designs were already copyrighted by other well known anime companies, and the in-house designs were simply not "Japanese" enough for their tastes. Though the product itself flopped, its maps were reprinted and rereleased in 2004, as well as a complimentary up-to-date rulebook. Rules have since been standardized to match those of Classic BattleTech, but "Special Map rules" have been included.

The BattleTech Collectible Cardgame was produced by Wizards of the Coast in 1996, and ran until 1998. Though its popularity had begun to wane after the first core set, the release of the Pokemon card game was the nail in the coffin. The BattleTech CCG hosted some very impressive artwork, though the game favored swarm-decks filled with plenty of weak, cheap 'Mechs, and it's non-"Creature" cards were too weak to have an effective deck based around them. After five editions (BattleTech Limited/Unlimited, Counterstrike, Mercenaries, MechWarrior, Arsenal) BattleTech CCG came out with Commander's Edition, which picked some of the best cards of the last few editions (though it abandoned or revised some cards for inaccuracies or "brokenness") It had one final expansion, Crusade, which introduced the Steel Viper clan, though there were some prior cards that did reference the clan.

In July, 2013, Catalyst Game Labs released Alpha Strike, a miniatures combat ruleset designed specifically to appeal to fans of Warhammer and Flames of War. It combined BattleForce statistics with improved miniatures rules. It's generally scoffed at by grognards but the only feasible way to play a regiment-sized battle in less than one lifetime.

Video Games

Official Games

• Crescent Hawk's Inception (Infocom, 1988)
• MechWarrior (Activision, 1989)
• Crescent Hawks' Revenge (Infocom, 1990)
• MechWarrior II (Activision, 1995)
• MechWarrior II: Mercernaries (Activision 1995)
  • MechCommander (FASA, 1998)
• MechWarrior III (Microprose, 1999)
• MechWarrior IV: Vengeance (FASA/Microsoft, 2000), Black Knight (Microsoft, 2001), Mercenaries (Microsoft, 2002)
  • These games had two expansions that gave more 'Mechs, the Inner Sphere 'Mech Pack and Clan 'Mech Pack.
  • MekTek released a legal port of Mercenaries, with both 'Mech Packs, new 'Mechs, and battlesuits all inside, plus multiplayer support. Grab it from ModDB, abandonware sites, or your tracker of choice.
• MechAssault 1 (Day 1/Microsoft, 2002 for Xbox)
• MechAssault 2: Lone Wolf (Day 1/Microsoft, 2004 for Xbox)
• MechCommander II (FASA/Microsoft, 2001. The full game is offered by Microsoft for free here.)
• MechWarrior Online MMO (Smith & Tinker/Piranha Games, A F2P game first released on 2012 and currently out as a full product on Steam.)
• MechWarrior Tactical Command (Personae Studios, 2012?, for iPhone/iPad. After some uncertainty, MTC was fully released in the iTunes store. Too bad it sucks.)
• BattleTech (Harebrained Schemes, 2018) - funded through Kickstarter and headed up by Jordan Weisman)
  • Turn-based strategy game, similar to the original tabletop game. Takes place during the Succession Wars, in a formerly empty area of the Periphery.
• MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries: (Piranha Games, 2019). Also takes place during the Succession Wars. Because nobody wants to take the time to portray the cluster fuck that is the Blake Jihad properly.

Unlicensed Games

• MechWarrior Living Legends (Wandering Samurai/Clan Jade Wolf, 2011)

The following are free, homemade versions of BattleTech:

• MechWar v1.12 (MS-DOS)
• MegaMek (Java)
• BTMUX - ASCII-only MMO (anyone old enough to remember what a MUD is?) (any OS)
  You could play it in pure ASCII, or get a graphical helper
  Most of the existing ones are gone, but FrontierMUX seems to still be alive.
• Neveron (web-based mmo) [Taken offline on July 31st 2014]
• Titans of Steel (MS-Windows)

Current State

Little Urbie, the greatest of us all.

As of early 2022, BattleTech is in the best state it's been in a long time. After sitting on the property for close to a decade without doing anything, Catalyst has used Kickstarter to fund a series of plastic 'Mech sculpts. Lots of this was enabled by finally resolving the legal dispute with Harmony Gold on the Unseen, but the end result is that, for the first time ever, a wide range of high quality plastic 'Mech miniatures are legitimately available. There's a "dip your toe" style starter kit with the Beginner Box, the true starter kit in BattleTech: A Game of Armored Combat, and another for the clans with Clan Invasion. Beyond those, there's a total of twenty different "Force Packs" available, each having a randomized set of 4-6 'Mechs centered on a theme of some sort. Since you only need about one Force Pack's worth of 'Mechs to play at all, ease of starting the game is definitely one of BattleTech's major virtues now.

However, the year 2022 has seen some controversies. Some are mundane such as new novels, rule books, and promised miniatures being delayed repeatedly (it didn’t help that Catalyst Games Labs is mainly a publishing company that needs to outsource miniature manufacturing to barely keep up with demand). Others are more awkward such as CGL’s game developers being caught up with picking sides between angry activist fans and normies on one hand and decades-old IP developers with alternate takes on history on the other. Another includes cracking down on forums and groups seeking to raise money under the BattleTech label on Patreon. That, and deciding to roll up the Rommel tank into the related Patton tank before TPTB locked up the forum comments on the BG BattleTech website has left fans with uncomfortable mixed opinions. For all people’s meming of jumping ship to BattleTech from 40k over GW’s antics, the grass now seems to be just as patchy on the other side of the fence.

MechWarrior Online

MechWarrior Online has, as of this writing, been running for a decade and is still receiving new content. A competitive sim-shooter, MechWarrior Online has probably been a commercial success and helped get at least some people into the hobby, but its main virtue was as a source of redesigned 'Mechs. 3D prints of models from MWO are easily found on Etsy, providing modern looks for 'Mechs that CGL hasn't gotten around to resculpting yet.

BattleTech 2018

Harebrained Schemes announced their return to Kickstarter in fall 2015 in order to fund BattleTech, a turn based tactics game featuring RPG mechanics for 'Mechs and MechWarriors. The final result was a very respectable strategy game - you play as a mercenary company commander in the year 3025, starting with a patchy collection of low grade 'Mechs and keeping your aging DropShip from falling apart around you. Gameplay is fairly close to the tabletop but not an exact recreation. The campaign follows a power struggle for control of the Aurigan Reach, a region of mostly unimportant space at the rimward end of the map, between the Magistracy of Canopus and the Taurian Concordat. The game was followed up by three DLCs - Flashpoint, which added a series of mini-campaigns of 2-3 missions each, most of them tying into BattleTech canon, Urban Warfare, which naturally added urban environments, and Heavy Metal, which added more 'Mechs and a series of flashpoint campaigns surrounding the crash-site of a lost Star League era JumpShip with obscured origins. Overall, BattleTech 2018 is probably the standout BattleTech game of the 2010s and a great strategy game in its own right. Even cooler, the events, planets, characters, etc. of the game (though not the game itself exactly) were canonized by Catalyst Games Lab in a tabletop rulebook/sourcebook, called House Arano (The Aurigan Coalition), which was written by HBS's Andrew McIntosh and Kiva Maginn.

Several fan-made mod packs (notably RogueTech and BattleTech Advanced 3062) have been produced which significantly extend the life of the vanilla game. These mods introduce many new factions, dozens of new 'Mechs and tanks, hundreds of new pieces of 'Mech equipment, a far larger star-map sandbox to play in, and far more depth to the 'Mech customization system as well as many quality of life changes. RogueTech in particular attempts to bring the game more in line with the tabletop experience and offers a much higher degree of gameplay complexity compared to vanilla BattleTech.

Mercenaries 5

Oof. Well, they gave it a shot. After over a decade since the last MechWarrior game, MechWarrior 5 was released and it was...kind of a flop. Repetitive missions and buggy AI were the primary issues, and the post-launch DLCs and bug fixes only did so much to help. As of this writing, mod support has been added, so the fans might make MW5 worth it at some point...but for now, don't bother.

As of 2022, the game is now playable with all of the DLC. Notably, MW5 has incorporated melee combat in free updates, and is adding melee weapons with the next DLC. In hindsight, it's rather jarring realizing that we have been playing giant robot games without the ability to rock 'em and sock 'em. Melee better fucking get added to MWO to balance the all-powerful lights against the heavies and assaults they so often hard-counter.

Also has a ridiculously awesome main menu theme.

Alien Life

As previously mentioned BattleTech is unusual among sci fi wargames in having humans as the only notable sapient species. Alien life exists aplenty - but it consists entirely of plants and dumb animals. Some sources have hinted at questionably sapient cavemen, but humans are the only species in BattleTech canon to master agriculture, much less space travel. There is one possibly canon exception, however.

The Tetatae are tribal bird people armed with spears who inhabit a Jungle World. They show up in a far-off world in uncharted space populated with some stranded humans from the Draconis Combine. The inclusion of sapient species was such a controversial action that the novel introducing them, Far Country, was promptly ignored by both the lore developers and fans ever since it came out. The Tetatae are only even reached through a hyperspace engine failure that can't be reliably reproduced. It's unclear whether their planet is in some far off section of the galaxy or another, but characters in the novel speculate that they may be in a different universe entirely. Opinion differs on how canon Far Country and the Tetatae are, with some saying they're canon but unreachable and can't affect the rest of BattleTech, while others claim Far Country exists as an in-universe TV show.

External links

• Play through the tubes with MegaMek
• BattleTech Wiki that holds much information about the universe
• Blue Gunner Booru, a /btg/-maintained taggable gallery of BT and related art. Perpetually in-progress.

Gallery

• 

  Glorious 3d terrain

• 

  More glorious 3d terrain

• 

  Infantry strike from behind as the Kuritan lance takes on 4 Steiner 'Mechs and 6 tanks

• 

  Kuritans advancing

• 

  Kick party

• 

  Bad mofo

• 
• 

  The original anime mecha Dougram (left) compared to the original "unseen" Shadowhawk (center) and the modern Shadowhawk (right), a robot so badass it transcends cultures and 4chan boards

/tg/ BattleTech Creations

• Velatine Federal Republic
• /tg/ Homebrew Mech Designs
• Sunbats mercenary company
• /btg/ Harebrained Battalion II