![]() ![]() The level of technology evident in BattleTech is an unusual blend of the highly futuristic and the nearly modern. Interstellar and civil wars, planetary battles, factionalization and infighting, as well as institutionalized combat in the shape of arena contests and duelling, form the grist of both novelized fiction and game backstories. ![]() Despite one or two isolated encounters in novels, mankind is the only sentient species.Ībove all, the central theme of BattleTech is conflict, consistent with the franchise's wargaming core. Cultural, political and social conventions vary considerably between worlds, but feudalism is widespread, with many states ruled by hereditary lords and other nobility, below which are numerous social classes.Ī key feature of the BattleTech universe is the absence of non-human intelligent life. ![]() Individual lifestyles remain largely unchanged from those of modern times, due in part to stretches of protracted interplanetary warfare during which technological progress slowed or even reversed. Generally, BattleTech assumes that its history is identical to real-world history up until approximately 1984, when the reported histories begin to diverge in particular, the game designers did not foresee the fall of the Soviet Union, which plays a major role past 1990 in the fictional BattleTech history. Ī detailed timeline stretching from the late 20th century to the mid-32nd describes humanity's technological, social and political development and spread through space both in broad historical terms and through accounts of the lives of individuals who experienced and shaped that history, with an emphasis on (initially) the year 3025 and creating an ongoing storyline from there. MechWarrior: Dark Ages and its related novels take place in the mid 3100s. Most works in the series are set during the early to middle decades of the 31st century, though a few publications concern earlier ages. The game is played in turns, each of which represents 10 seconds of real time, with each turn composed of multiple phases.īattleTech's fictional history covers the approximately 1,150 years from the end of the 20th century to the middle of the 32nd. ![]() Typically, these are represented on the game board by two-inch-tall miniature figurines that the players can paint to their own specifications, although older publications such as the 1st edition included small scale plastic models originally created for the Macross TV series, and the 2nd edition boxed set included small cardboard pictures (front and back images) that were set in rubber bases to represent the units. The combat units are roughly 12-metre-tall (39 ft) humanoid armored combat units called BattleMechs, powered by fusion reactors and armed with a variety of weapons. The further it moves, the harder it hits, which could give fast-moving light mechs a real leg up when things get hairy.At its most basic, the boardgames of BattleTech are played on a map sheet composed of hexagonal terrain tiles. The new weapons include a Mortar, the first area-of-effect weapon in the game, and the COIL Beam, with an energy output that increases based on the distance traveled by the attacking mech before firing. The eighth and final mech is unknown for now, but it's a brand-new design created exclusively for Battletech and it promises to be a beast: The trailer indicates that it's a 90-ton unit, putting it squarely in the middle of the massive Assault class. RFL-3N Rifleman (60 tons, and now I'm excited-the Rifleman was my first main mech when I got into Battletech).Given that, I think it's safe to say that these are the new units we can look forward to: The new fighting machines aren't listed in the announcement, but a list of eight mechs appears on a readout in the trailer and that's probably not a coincidence. ![]()
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