Battletech Lore - What are Warships?

[@georgesulea]

Awesome! I am waiting for a new weight class; The THUNDERBUGGER class. Those ones are so big that they don't need weapons...they just knock planets out of the way...which is why they're shaped like massive pool queues. :)

[@gregdomenico1891]

After the recovery of the Helm memory core, all of the Great Houses started clandestine work on Warships. However, they all came to a agreement not to build any, due to what the damned things did during the Succession Wars. Ironically, it was the Clan Invasion that made the IS start Warship construction. As for ComStars 'small fleet', they had close to 20 Warships, including a Cameron class Battle Cruiser!

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

That's great info.

[@weldonwin]

Oh, they remembered far further back than the Succession Wars. They remembered the Age of War, they remembered Tintavel and other worlds burned to ashes

[@J0hnnieP]

A very and concise explanation of the different large ships sizes. No 'two-hour boredom' fest to have to snore through.

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

Thanks.

[@WolfHreda]

"I saw some white ships off New Vandenberg..." *silenced gunshot*

[@weldonwin]

"This has been a public service by ComStar. ComStar, you literally have No Choice..."

[@HalIOfFamer]

Weird. Irl the frigates are usually considered on par or smaller than destroyers. In ww2 British navy a frigate was a roughly destroyer sized vessel but slower and geared to protect transport ships from submarines. In usa they called those types of ships destroyer escorts, but were functionality the same as British frigates. In age of sail a there was no such term as a destroyer, but a frigate was often on the smaller side of rated ships. Today frigates and destroyers are mostly comparable in capabilities. With us navy sticking to the destroyer classification and the royal navy keeping with their frigates. Kinda weird to see battletech flip this around and make frigates the bigger and stronger ones.

[@exoterric]

I do love the variety of lore videos. Anyone can blab about things they don't care about but it shows. Just like your passionate nerdacity (yeah, I said that) shows when you carefully unbox the next category for us. Hope you haven't run out of gas, cuz these are frickin' gems.

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

I appreciate that!

[@inquisitorgarza312]

Studying the Battletech Universe has been extremely interesting, and the Warships were in their universe overpowered compared to other facets of the Battletech world. These things are so overpowered that not even the Great Houses want to make them after the Succession Wars for how destructive they were. The sad thing is that the Clans pretty much had the only real advantage during their invasion, and instead of using that real advantage they had, they fought with HOUNOR and fell to COMSTAR trap.

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

Well someone has to remain honourable in a treacherous galaxy :)

[@WolfHreda]

And good riddance to the tube born trash.

[@mariobadia4553]

How powerful are the ships compared to the unsc ships?

[@toddkes5890]

@@mariobadia4553 Battletech ships are horribly underpowered to almost any other science fiction franchise. No artificial gravity, 45.25% of the mass taken up by the KF Core, and it requires 13% of its mass for an engine capable of 1 G thrust. Expanse is likely the only sci-fi franchise where Battletech would be able to win against

[@Inignot12]

Great stuff GDN, can't wait to see some specific models

[@calvindeckert2740]

Awesome as always! Keep the Battletech lore coming!!!

[@Mecha82]

It was heavy use and destructive power that those have that resulted Ares Convention during Terran Hegemony that in turn resulted eventual creation of Battlemech. After all no one would be left alive if Great Houses would had kept using warships to wipe out populaces of entire planets just because of some skirmishes. Something that they forgot when Succession Wars began resulting all death and destruction during first two Succession Wars.

[@johntaylor8095]

Really enjoyed it and hope you did or will put out more in the future.

[@Ben_of_Langley]

Really interesting lore grim. You know what I think would be cool there was a star wars game empire at war I believe were you could play a game mode called galaxy conquest so like that going from planet to planet but in the mech warrior universe so you would have fleet battles in space and then land your mechs on the planet and fight a ground war to fully control that world it worked really well in that star wars game and was really enjoyable but again I think it would be cool if we had a mech warrior game like that. Anyway thanks for the upload grim as always another great video and look forward to the next.

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

Any kind of good strategy game in the Battletech universe would be nice. There's the newer Battletech game but that's more like real time tactics. I think the setting has much more depth on ground based warfare though. Space combat, outside of aerospace fighters seems kinda clunky in it.

[@toddkes5890]

The Battlegame universe has developed a game like that, but it is limited to existing colonies, rather than creating new colonies. The data for this is in the book called Interstellar Operations

[@godzilladestroyscities1757]

I like the ambiance in your videos.

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

Thanks.

[@alexandarvoncarsteinzarovi3723]

When the enemy has more mech then you keep in mind that even the mighties of the assault class mech such as the Atlas can be brought down my orbital strikes, guide missiles, or strife runs by capable pilots,

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

True.

[@weldonwin]

Or just go full Age of War and glass the whole planet like the Free Worlds League and Capellans did at Tintavel

[@alluringming]

Me and brother love watching your videos along with black pants legion. But we thought let you know there is one other ship class you haven’t discussed. They are known as yardships and they know to be mobile repair ships along other key function. Thought just let you know, keep up work, we do enjoy your vids

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

Thanks. I read about them actually, but I thought I'd put them in a separate video someday with other such "utility" ships.

[@alluringming]

@@GrimDarkNarrator Okay, we weren't sure if you knew about them. Even I kind of forgot about them as both me and my brother haven't read any BattleTech books or played any of their games in long time. Still hoping some games coming to console one day. ^^ We appreciate your hard work you put in your video and often listen to them on way to work or afterwards. Kind of getting us back into BattleTech universe. Were kind of glad this franchise isn't too popular, as were afraid it became too popular it would follow examples of other games or sci-fi genre like star wars, star trek, halo, or even wing commander. Anyways thanks for these videos, we love them and to be honest, we love the lore better than the actual battletmechs themselves at times.

[@pbr-streetgang]

Thanks for the vid sir.👍🏼👍🏼

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

You're welcome.

[@alluringming]

Where's the yardships and space stations? ^^

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

To be honest, I haven't looked into it, but i don't think space stations are a big thing in battletech. I could be wrong though.

[@tyreecebaker6600]

👍

[@desolation2438]

But how long are they tho?

[@gregdomenico1891]

The smallest is the Vincent class corvette, at 405 meters. The largest is the Leviathan class Dreadnaught, at 1,700 meters. Sizes are comparable to Star Wars and Halo. ( a Imperial Star Destroyer is 1600 meters, for comparison). Armaments and Armor are more in line With the Halo universe ( minus the MAC Cannons).

[@StonedDragons]

@@gregdomenico1891 A naval gauss is probably comparable to a MAC. Remembering that the MAC cannons do fire very big rounds but, by the standard of hypervelocity weapons, painfully slow rounds.

[@toddkes5890]

@@gregdomenico1891 The fun part is when you calculate densities for the mass and lengths listed. As an example, the Vincent is ~400 meters long, and about 80 meters wide and tall (assuming 1:5 ratios). It is not a rectangular block, and it narrows from the center to the front and rear. To me this says you should use a pyramid to calculate volume, and the cross-section is a diamond rather than a square. Cross section is the width times height, for 6400 square meters. Using a diamond instead of a square reduces that to half (3200 square meters). Pyramids have a volume of 1/3 * height * (area of the base). In this case it is 1/3 * ~400 meters * 3200 square meters, or about 426,666 cubic meters. Considering the mass is ~412,000 tons, the Vincent is about the same density as water. Compare that to the Leviathan: 1700 meters long, and 340 meters wide and tall (making the same assumptions bout L:W and L:H ratios). Volume based on those assumptions with the pyramid and diamond shapes is 32,753,333 cubic meters. Since the Leviathan II is 2.4 million tons, that puts its density at roughly 74 kilograms per cubic meter, or about 1/13 that of water. Basically, the original designers based the length of the ship solely on the mass, instead of remembering that length should be based on the cube root of the mass. If Ship B is 8* as heavy as Ship A, and as much else identical, then Ship B should only be 2* as long as Ship A.

[@jamesricker3997]

Warships are overpriced space taxis of limited usefulness The Amaris coup proved they were very vulnerable to assault dropship and fighter attacks

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

amen to that.

[@toddkes5890]

It helps that the first part of the Amaris coup was the Rim World military forces being invited into Star League military bases, and the coup was performed by surprise. However, the main defense that the Star League Navy had to fight through was the Caspar combat drones. Pocket Warships (i.e. heavy armed Dropships) have the advantage that they can be moved to a contested system rapidly by connecting through Jumpshps that were hopefully going in the right direction. ASF are the real fun, as enough ASF to equal the mass of a single Naval Particle cannon is enough to take out a Warship. This means most Warships try to carry as many ASF as they can practically launch

[@urquanseven2332]

Other than the Leviathan class and one other that I can't remember the name of, B-tech warships are hideous looking lol. They are some of the ugliest space ships in sci fi that I've seen. Also some of the weakest. They follow the WW2 pattern of making them vulnerable to space fighters for some reason. Which is actually... completely nonsensical. There's a good website called Project Rho/Atomic Rocket that goes in depth on why space fighters make no practical sense, and wouldn't actually be used in real life.

[@GrimDarkNarrator]

Guess they were focused on the battlemechs :)

[@nerowulfee9210]

Don`t bully space bricks, they are amazing. We need more of those and less space pizza slices and space cucumbers.

[@mariobadia4553]

@@nerowulfee9210 what about the Halo ships?

[@WardenWolf]

Honestly, it depends on how technology stands in the ECM vs. targeting sensors race. Whereas, for several decades now, radar and other sensors have largely outclassed the ability to jam or spoof, what if this were reversed? What if weapon ranges were again made very short because of outright stealth or the ability to functionally jam sensors beyond a relatively limited range? You could easily have a situation where a target has to be fairly close in order to be accurately targeted. Whereas right now the US has a pretty solid monopoly on stealth aircraft, imagine a situation where everyone was in the same boat, so every single engagement was at point-blank ranges. We are heading to that point, unless someone actually manages to get a quantum radar system working.

[@namefinder]

Nonsense. They are, with a few exceptions, not vulnerable to fighters. When a warship arrives and you're in a ASF you better stay clear, since anything but the weakest warships will destroy you from half a system away. Most Battletech warships have enough fire power as "point defense" to wreck small fighters if they try to get closer and very few ASF do any significant damage to warships. There is a reason why there are hardly any "carrier" ships in BT, since they are useless in practice. Fighters are mainly there to protect slower dropships heading to a planet surface, not to attack a warship. You need a warship to kill a warship (outside of plot armour events in novels that could not happen in the game). Battletech has some of the more realistic space fights, including the second law of motion taken into account.