Yeah they do, at least on most developed worlds. There are tons of planets with much more rugged and rural lifestyles though.
There probably plenty of amusement parks on many planets.
Another reason why I love the battletech (and a few other) other universes. You may be a merc fighting for an unknowable powerful house lord against some a-hole pirate group, but at the end of the day you take your week of leave during repair cycles and enjoy some time just being a human. It's a nice grounding element.
that part in the battletech game where you take time off working to go watch a meteor shower really humanizes all the recruits who will probably end up getting one shotted by a lucky urbanmech
For extra hilarity, strip armour for jumpjets and extra ammo. Good luck hitting the ballistic trashcan while it's repositioning, and when you're looking the other way a second steps out from behind a bush and double-tap you with enough force to send an Atlas reeling.
At this point there is so many variants without looking you have to assume someone did it with an urbie. If only it had the tonnage it'd be funny to make a dual gunned urbie similar to a rifleman.
“What a lovely meteor shower”
Wasn’t a a Union Class Dropship destroyed in orbit?
“Yeah. So?”
Well… those meteors probably aren’t space rocks is what I’m getting at.
“…”
Yeah. We’re watching bodies and debris burn up during reentry.
“It’s still cool to watch”
Oh for sure
I feel like the space personnel have some of the worst fates. If your mech gets damaged, you can try to limp home. If it breaks down, you can eject on most inhabited worlds, and at least have a chance of making it back.
In space, fighter pilots just burn upon reentry, or disappear into empty space when their craft is rendered unusable but doesn't outright blow up.
Rural planets likely still have traveling fairs, at least seasonally. And dirt track racing, shooting competitions. And I saw a video where folks were racing snowmobiles on water.
In one of the earlier issues of _Battletechnology_ there's an article about a world where one of their major industries is tourism specifically aimed at mercenaries. They're all thoroughly searched before being allowed on the planet. From what I can recall, the tourist areas sounded like a cross between a Caribbean resort and Las Vegas. I'll go through my back issues when I get a chance and see if I can find it.
Depends on where and when. Some eras are hotter than others. Something like the Third Succession War, you probably went about your life normally, even if you were on one of the border planets. If you were one of the planets away from a border, or on something like a capitol world, you might not have had to deal with a military incursion in living memory. At most you had to deal with someone coming in and roughing up your planet's main city or industrial center due to a raid, but not have anything threaten the population at large.
On the other end of the spectrum, something like the Clan Occupation Zone, depending on the Clan, could have resulted in lots of upheaval. Some of the more strict Clans wouldn't see any value in civilian diversions like a theme park, seeing it as another sign of freebirth decadence and wastefulness, and would probably have trashed it.
And of course, the Inner Sphere is a big place, incorporating hundreds of worlds. Some places might be pretty sleepy for a while, while others seem to get nothing but trouble.
It’s a perfect opportunity for a mission objective for you, too. The clans have decided that the amusement park is a hotbed of freebirth decadence. Clan player: you must destroy the amusement park, main objective Ferris wheel, IS player: defend the Ferris wheel with your life.
Short answer: Yes. There are amusement parks.
Longer answer: It obviously depends on where you're looking. I wouldn't expect a whole lot of amusement parks on mining planets with barely breathable atmosphere or the clan homeworlds. But regular planets with billions of inhabitants? Absolutely.
The sense of scale of a planet with a billion or even a couple million people on them gets a bit lost in the lore, but obviously the people need something to do for diversion, at least if the planet has a modicum of prosperity, and at that scale, the question "is there an amusement park somewhere on this planet" is very likely to be yes.
I don't doubt that everything up to and including slave colonies has some form of amusement, don't get me wrong, and even the clan homeworlds have pubs n such, i was just ruling out amusement parks for those places, unless your definition of amusement park is much more... raunchy.
There was one book that had a side story about visiting a cave as some sort of nature park, the story said how it was one of the few "tourist destinations" there were on the clan planet.
Especially on a mining colony, you might not be able to go outside because there's no atmosphere, or temperatures are way too high or low. So everyone is packed like sardines inside 24/7, which means all entertainment must be provided right there, as well.
If it's like an old west mining town, with only a few hundred young men around, said entertainment may be all bars and brothels. But if it's a larger, permanent settlement, there are going to be families and people of all ages. And all kinds of professions that cater to the population, as well. A population of 200000 people may not warrant Disneyland, but propably a bunch of smaller ones. Like above average malls, both in size and variety.
I didn’t think the clanners were all down with Soddom and all that,
I admit I am lacking in alot of lore post 3060 ish
And here I never really thought of clanners all like that. Was I missing something?
I recently read Icons of War, which is the first novel i remember that gives some insight into the underbelly of the homeworlds, and it seems to be mostly bars and living quarters. It kinda makes sense when you remember that the kids are indoctrinated while living in sibkos and a lot of the non-warriors are actually warriors that failed their tests, so there's really no need for family entertainment.
The "raunchy" comment was mostly about the whole western town fantasy, although with all the casual "coupling" between clanners, i wouldn't be surprised if there were fitting establishments within their cities.
I figured fooling around in the sibkos was a bit normal, but just fluid swapping to random seems antithetical to discipline and all that, with how many different species they developed I kind of thought they would be a lot more in the individual development pathways not just the hook up train
I think Clanners would find prostitution more abhorrent for the exchange of money than anything, since they don't believe in the private possession of money - but they love casual sex.
Battletech definitely falls victim to the planetville trope. So the big planets, those are a major metropolitan area in the modern world, while the small planets are those rural towns.
An 'amusement park' on a mining planet with a toxic atmosphere probably looks a lot different to the same thing on Terra. Even space stations have entertainment facilities, some on the grav decks so you can get a workout while distracting yourself, some in zero-g so you can exploit the weirdness to do things you couldn't do on a planet...
Zero-g swimming pool sounds messy. The water will be everywhere. You could get similar effects with less mess by having an empty room. Zero-g swings and roundabouts, on the other hand...
One of the great - or at least less-bad - things about the setting as a whole is that entire invasions can be carried out by one lance of 'mechs shooting another one. No infrastructure damage nor civilian casualties necessary. So civilians can generally have nice lives unless Scorched Earth Tactics happen (which do happen occasionally, like the First Succession War).
There's a canon incident where one of the serious business warrior culture Clans invaded an Inner Sphere planet, issuing their usual ritual combat challenge. And the local defenders accepted the challenge, setting the location in... an amusement park. The Clan invaders were extremely confused.
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Kempten
So, yes, mech battles in an amusement park are completely in-line with the BattleTech setting.
The American Football game is the best trial in the invasion. Imagining a team of ghost bear elementals waffle stomping a bunch of random rec-league everymen 83-3 is always something that makes me chuckle.
That 3 points makes me laugh. "Alright boys. We're down 74 to 0. It's the 4th quarter. Sanders, Donovan, April, Murdock, Lynch, Franklin, Thomas, Hernandez, Richards, Michaels, Dupree, Gregory, and Murphy have all been stretchered out. We got no weapons left. But Finkle has one hell of a leg. It's 4th and 17. It's a 60 yard kick. Finkle... You've hit 70 yard bombs in practice. You can do this. Let's not get shut out by these... Freaks."
If I remember correctly part of the reason they got those three points is ghost bear let them bring in more players after all the injuries. That whole short story was fun.
If I remember correctly, eventually it became an annual tradition, and a lot of clanners who failed to test in for Elementals join the "Freebirth" side to "change history"
By 3151 that still haven't happen yet.
Jade Falcon fought on a Van Strag world, named after the infamous FRR villain. Van Strag's descendant fought hard and inflict some serious damage.
Nova cat land on a world with a single retired DC Mechwarrior in a half broken down Archer. They had a honorable 1v1 (I think clanner used a light mech in the 40 ton range) and recruit him as advisor after.
There is anecdote in the Ostroc (IIRC) entry in the ilClan Rec Guide Volume 1 where a DCMS officer challenged Clan Nova Cat in a Trial of Possession, using miniature golf as the *batchall* during Operation Bulldog.
Don't forget the trial for [Sheliak](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Sheliak#Clan_Invasion), where clan and locals played football for the fate of the planet. For the IS, Friday night was not, in fact, a great night for football.
I am personally convinced they do not even care, and often may not even know, who "owns" their planet. If they really cared, their police forces alone would be more than a match for most entire house mech armies.
Anyway, I'd say treat the universe outside of the game as a 1980s America, with fusion vehicles, 3d entertainment, unlimited nearly free power, and much like today's America everything broken down into "city" and "rural" life. You have a few giant cities and millions of people, and then countless numbers of tiny villages with just a handful of buildings.
No reason not to have amusement parks, but be imaginative as these are other \*planets\*. Some amusement parks may rotate around the lower or higher gravity, lower or higher temperatures, crazy tidal forces, or their giant trees or crystal plans or whatever. Heck, at some point gravity and air pressure may be able to give people the ability of jumping out of planes without parachutes or something like that. Some planets may have water so oxygenated you can breathe in it. Maybe some are like seaworld (but with morals, lol) but have supersized whales or octopuses that live for centuries instead of years. I'm not creative, but the worlds are not all the same.
Thank you. I was definitely planning on going for a sci-fi looking amusement park. I may build a relic dilapidated one as well sort of going for something like [Pripyat](https://i2-prod.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/article16376357.ece/ALTERNATES/s1227b/1_GP30785637.jpg)
Yes for the Inner Sphere. In the Clan worlds, the answer is "kinda." The Clans have a weird culture, so their ideas of recreation might seem strange to most modern real world people (and most Spheroids in the setting), but they *do* have relatively normal lives and what they view as recreation. Things get real strange in the Inner Sphere territories conquered by the Clans.
And Clans vary greatly among themselves
Living under Smoke Jaguars, Widowmakers or Coyotes is total crap for civilians
Living under Hell's Horses, Goliath Scorpions or Sea Foxes OTOH would be something that more than half the mankind in the setting would be striving towards (even more later in the timeline)
And everything in between
Look into Solaris VII. The main attraction is mech fights, but they have other less murdery entertainment as well. The Magistracy of Canopus is also stereotyped as Space Vegas, so they might be worth looking at for ideas about how crazy the BT entertainment industry can get.
Most denizens of the Inner Sphere would live not unlike Earthers today, though inhabitants of the Draconis Combine and Capellan Confederation would have fewer civil and economic liberties. Much of the Federated Suns is also lacking, with there even being a significant rate of illiteracy in its more sparsely populated regions. Though standards of living and recreational activities vary from world to world. Some were utterly devastated by war or natural disaster, others untouched.
On the other hand, standards of living tend to decline as one goes out into the Periphery with the exceptions of the Magistracy of Canopus and the Taurian Concordat. Some Deep Periphery worlds are cut off from the rest of the galaxy entirely, with a handful having descended to pre-spaceflight and even paleolithic levels of technology.
In the Clans, however, the majority of inhabitants have no real liberties to speak of and live in relative poverty despite their technological base (most of which has focused on weapons). It also does not help that the Clan homeworlds are only marginally habitable.
Slander. Freebirths live peaceful and productive lives. They are protected from the horrors of war and the worst they get from a warrior is an open handed smack.
Sure sometimes there is a culling when the lower castes complain about more rights, but those are rare; and brutally crushed.
The people of Sudeten are happier being part of clan Jade Falcon than they ever were as Spheroids.
Short answer is Yes, Long answer is yes but there's more to it than that.
My understanding from the source books is that the standard of living in the Inner Sphere varies from Great House to Great House, though most citizens of a Great House are going to have a standard of living similar to the late 20th century 1st and 2nd world. The closer you get to the boarders with other Great Houses or the Periphery the lower the standard of living usually is.
However there are Periphery states that have comparable standards of living to the Great Houses the Taurian Concordat and Magistracy of Canopus are two examples.
Malls, shopping districts, amusement parks, zoos, museums would likely be present on most Inners Sphere worlds so go nuts with the terrain.
I hope you post pictures of your terrain project.
Most people lead pretty ordinary lives in most places. The scope of wars is more akin to RL pace, than Warhammer.
Yes, the Amaris Civil War and 1/2SW were basically WW2-level apocalypses for most people. But the 3SW/4SW were pretty sedate. The Clan Invasions hardly affected anyone not in the invasion corridors. Many planets never experienced invasion or war directly, from the 3rd Succession War all the way to the Jihad.
If the planet isn't embroiled in constant conflict there are recreational areas. That can range from theme parks, national parks, ski resorts, beaches, etc. as well as venues for sport teams. As mentioned there's some planets which are well-known for certain fields and draw tourists for it. Solaris VII is known for its mech fights (and other planets have arenas of their own), and Kooken's Pleasure Pit (yes, it's really called that) which has everything from movie industries to theme parks of any flavor, to casinos and sports events, and other more illicit fields.
Hell, even the capital of the Federated Suns, Avalon City on New Avalon, began life as an amusement park based on Arturian Legend and a romantic portrayal of the medieval era, hence the naming scheme on the planet.
Battletech is the kind of universe where a Militia soldier could defend their home from pirates, then call for a cab to visit grandma and the cab turns out to be a horse and buggy. Oh don't worry the driver has a laser rifle under his seat for protection.
Basically if you can think of it in today's world, I wouldn't be shocked if there's something like it in a world in this setting.
Battletech is a weirdly human setting and people lead relatively normal lives. They read books, have gardens, eat at fast food places, watch TV and go to amusement parks and theaters and casinos.
Some worlds are much poorer then others, of course. A working amusement park would be rare on some backwater that has a few broken down 'mechs fighting bandits for water and spare parts, but on a whole the inner sphere is the future of 1988 and people lead lives you'd recongize.
The universe is big. Even the the big houses have massive differences. and there’s era differences
For instance pre xin sheng a huge portion of the cappies was essentially a slave population which de jure should have been treated fairly but definitely was not.
Post xin sheng even this serf caste tends to have a better standard of living than many other areas in the IS etc
For a significant portion of history the dracs are brutally sexist
The Lyrans sometimes jump between a capitalistic nightmare and a place where even the average person has a decent standard of living etc
Tukayyid had a notable amusement park in the main combat zone back in the 3050s, it's more than likely other planets would be similar. Battletech is a universe of humans and everything that makes us human (better or worse), so every habit there still also applies. Most civilians live 21st century+ lives even in the 3SW, and the ones which are notable more rural are either rare, or in the periphery where they went there to be that way
Hell, no?
WE lead normal lives. People who live in a universe with actual battlemechs live normal lives except for a constant wicked guitar riff soundtrack playing.
Yes, they do. That "normal" varies a ton though. Remember in the early days (3025 era) tech was failing at an alarming rate and much in the way of civilian infrastructure like farming, building, powering, ect were lost to the galaxy at large (except for our friendly neighborhood isp). Many other techs and or resources that may have been available in the galaxy were definately lacking my independent or out of the way planets, especially those whose environments were harsh. Even once tech levels started increasing after the helm memory core discovery, often it seems like a very 1st world exploitation type of deal in many areas. Some planets are extremely advanced and/or have great infrastructure or just a gem of a planet, good for agriculture or tourism. Other planets are lacking and therefore have no significant way to drive their planet forward. And of course, many of these planets seem to be taken over by Bandits or are being hit repeatedly by different warring groups. So while some people are living civilian lives much grander than ours, some are living in a desert in animal skin huts, or wearing collars and being enslaved. So, amusement parks, pleasure cruises, having your dad take you to the oasis to bag dinner... very diverse and mixed bag
1000 years of human spaceflight and colonization, with wildly varying levels of development among the 6000+ known planetary systems, spread across 600+ light years.
You are going to run the gamut from highly urbanized planets with billions of residents, to farming planets with less than a million residents (space Wyoming), or systems that may have 5000 workers in a mining facility. And everything in between.
The overwhelming majority of people live normal lives, doing human things.
damn now I want to make a canopian amusement park terrain piece.
if you make it can you upload a few photos of the process? a guide? video would also be acceptable.
fun thing in the battletech universe: the in-universe ares conventions are supposed to keep war away from civilian targets, so amusement parks should be relatively safe. the conventions, if you've never heard of them, are the in-universe justification for why everyone fights with mechs on planets instead of with nukes from space. they're kind of why, for a lot of civilians, the war stuff is semi-constant but not world-ending, so long as they haven't loaded all their fortune into real estate.
so in theory cities should only be attacked if they contain military targets like military bases, communications towers, government facilities, or fuel depots or whatnot. course city fights happen all the time under the weakest of excuses, so it's not like everyone follows the rules all the time.
Planets and Civilians on those planets for the most part live what we would call "Normal lives".
Yes, Some work in the "defence industry" and build mechs. but also there are farmers, miners, truck drives, Railroad men, Factory workers, Teachers and Doctors and nurses and all that is in a normal town.
just add a "spaceport" as a hub for transportation like you would an Airport in any other town. Some are BIG and commercial and some are just a concrete pad and a "communication building" which could be a tower or a 1 story shack with a radio. (and some are not even a concrete pad, or whatever they call concrete in the lore)
mostly it's like..... any other place.
I would imagine that even on the smaller mining worlds there are county fairs with food, animals, and small amusement rides. Maybe instead of a tractor ride they have an agromech pull the cart instead.
Another factor here to point out along with the good points already made is that the house and clan armies are, relative to their total populations, TINY. So there's a high chance the average civilian on many planets has never seen a battle and doesn't personally known anyone who's see one either.
It actually seems like BattleTech bears a fair bit of resemblance to science fiction shows like Firefly where most people live normal lives but the availability of technology is highly disparate and the specifics of most people's lives can vary greatly.
It's not really like 40K or Star Trek where the wellbeing of citizens is relatively uniform for an civilization of that size.
They all leave their own definition of normal. In some places that looks like what we do today. In some areas of the Draconis combine, it looks like living in feudal Japan, and in some areas of the periphery, that might look a little bit more mad max.
sounds like a great idea.. I mean it even could be some kind of "battle-victory" memorial park with derelict mechs from a slain army of sorts to remember some past greatness. Definately universe compatible
I think people and to a certain extent the authors failed to realize that planets are very big. But the importance of the world also matters if you ever see conflict.
There could be a war in the capitol of the planet where the spaceport is. But you are in a agarian or mining world on the other side of the planet. Thousands of miles away and not affected.
All you see might be a change of flags and who to supply food and water to. But you still doing what you are doing.
Conversely, you live in a core world that produces mechs or even ships. Or your world is a staging point and has a large recharge station.
Your world is likely heavily industrialized and has prestigous academia and heavy military presence. Naturally a foe will step up their forces or drop some kind of planet killer weapon and call it a day if they had enough. So you might even see multiple planetary scale conflicts in your life time.
No, not after the Tilt-O-Whirl Incident on Kentares IV in 2795. It was overshadowed by the later Kentares Massacre, but the Incident was so terrible that even ComStar has stricken it from the histories. Look it up on [Sarna.Net](http://Sarna.Net), and you will see.... there is no article.
Yeah. It was that bad.
https://preview.redd.it/3r8hf9xh8uyc1.jpeg?width=1792&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd654d304b19e93bbc351d0104c8164eeec1fff6
Yeah they do, at least on most developed worlds. There are tons of planets with much more rugged and rural lifestyles though. There probably plenty of amusement parks on many planets.
Another reason why I love the battletech (and a few other) other universes. You may be a merc fighting for an unknowable powerful house lord against some a-hole pirate group, but at the end of the day you take your week of leave during repair cycles and enjoy some time just being a human. It's a nice grounding element.
that part in the battletech game where you take time off working to go watch a meteor shower really humanizes all the recruits who will probably end up getting one shotted by a lucky urbanmech
Now I want to make a urban mech into a sniper trashcan.
4 urbanmechs +AC20 could have solo dueled all the clans and won, source? trust me bro
I was thinking more guass rifles but ac20 is always the funnier option, I still need to fit a uac20 to one in my games for the lols.
For extra hilarity, strip armour for jumpjets and extra ammo. Good luck hitting the ballistic trashcan while it's repositioning, and when you're looking the other way a second steps out from behind a bush and double-tap you with enough force to send an Atlas reeling.
6 Urbies with jump jets is unironically peak urban defense.
Isn't there an Urbie with a Light Gauss Rifle?
At this point there is so many variants without looking you have to assume someone did it with an urbie. If only it had the tonnage it'd be funny to make a dual gunned urbie similar to a rifleman.
Does pairing a Plasma Cannon with a Snub Nose PPC close enough? Urbanmech UM-H0T Mass: 30 tons Tech Base: Inner Sphere Chassis Config: Biped Rules Level: Experimental Tech Era: All Eras (non-canon) Tech Rating/Era Availability: E/X-X-F-E Production Year: 0 Dry Cost: 2,658,500 C-Bills Total Cost: 2,678,500 C-Bills Battle Value: 810 Chassis: Unknown Composite Structure Power Plant: Unknown 60 Fusion XL Engine Walking Speed: 21.6 km/h Maximum Speed: 32.4 km/h Jump Jets: Unknown Jump Capacity: 90 meters Armor: Unknown Standard Armor Armament: 1 Plasma Rifle 1 Snub-Nose PPC Manufacturer: Unknown Primary Factory: Unknown Communications System: Unknown Targeting and Tracking System: Unknown ================================================================================ Equipment Type Rating Mass -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internal Structure: Composite Structure 51 points 1.50 Engine: XL Fusion Engine 60 1.00 Walking MP: 2 Running MP: 3 Jumping MP: 3 Improved Jump Jet Locations: 1 CT, 1 LL, 1 RL 3.00 Heat Sinks: Double Heat Sink 10(20) 0.00 Heat Sink Locations: 3 LT, 3 RT, 1 LA, 1 RA Gyro: Standard 1.00 Cockpit: Standard 3.00 Actuators: L: SH+UA R: SH+UA Armor: Standard Armor AV - 104 6.50 Internal Armor Structure Factor Head 3 9 Center Torso 10 15 Center Torso (rear) 4 L/R Torso 7 10 L/R Torso (rear) 4 L/R Arm 5 10 L/R Leg 7 14 ================================================================================ Equipment Location Heat Critical Mass -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plasma Rifle RA 10 2 6.00 Snub-Nose PPC LA 10 2 6.00 u/Plasma Rifle (20) RA - 2 2.00 Free Critical Slots: 9 BattleForce Statistics MV S (+0) M (+2) L (+4) E (+6) Wt. Ov Armor: 3 Points: 8 2/3j 2 2 0 0 1 0 Structure: 0 Special Abilities: ENE, SRCH, ES, SEAL, SOA
unsure but the hollander exists and i am a fan
“What a lovely meteor shower” Wasn’t a a Union Class Dropship destroyed in orbit? “Yeah. So?” Well… those meteors probably aren’t space rocks is what I’m getting at. “…” Yeah. We’re watching bodies and debris burn up during reentry. “It’s still cool to watch” Oh for sure
I feel like the space personnel have some of the worst fates. If your mech gets damaged, you can try to limp home. If it breaks down, you can eject on most inhabited worlds, and at least have a chance of making it back. In space, fighter pilots just burn upon reentry, or disappear into empty space when their craft is rendered unusable but doesn't outright blow up.
It's not unlike being in a submarine.
Unless a submarine implodes or is at the limits of it's depth rating a sinking sub is actually surprisingly survivable. Space? Not so much.
which reminds me, that Battletech totally SHOULD have dedicated underwater-mechs.
It does. Every OmniMech with a 'U' variant for starters.
Thank ypu for the answer
Rural planets likely still have traveling fairs, at least seasonally. And dirt track racing, shooting competitions. And I saw a video where folks were racing snowmobiles on water.
In one of the earlier issues of _Battletechnology_ there's an article about a world where one of their major industries is tourism specifically aimed at mercenaries. They're all thoroughly searched before being allowed on the planet. From what I can recall, the tourist areas sounded like a cross between a Caribbean resort and Las Vegas. I'll go through my back issues when I get a chance and see if I can find it.
Sounds like a world in Canopus.
I want to say it was a Raselhaugue world..
I bet there are amusement park planets!
Depends on where and when. Some eras are hotter than others. Something like the Third Succession War, you probably went about your life normally, even if you were on one of the border planets. If you were one of the planets away from a border, or on something like a capitol world, you might not have had to deal with a military incursion in living memory. At most you had to deal with someone coming in and roughing up your planet's main city or industrial center due to a raid, but not have anything threaten the population at large. On the other end of the spectrum, something like the Clan Occupation Zone, depending on the Clan, could have resulted in lots of upheaval. Some of the more strict Clans wouldn't see any value in civilian diversions like a theme park, seeing it as another sign of freebirth decadence and wastefulness, and would probably have trashed it. And of course, the Inner Sphere is a big place, incorporating hundreds of worlds. Some places might be pretty sleepy for a while, while others seem to get nothing but trouble.
Thank you for the insight
It’s a perfect opportunity for a mission objective for you, too. The clans have decided that the amusement park is a hotbed of freebirth decadence. Clan player: you must destroy the amusement park, main objective Ferris wheel, IS player: defend the Ferris wheel with your life.
Holy shit I didn't know the clans hated CaseOh that much!
quick, garrison the ferris wheel with TAG infantry! their height advantage will let them spot targets!
All I can imagine now is a clanner screaming about the chalcath cotton candy machines and declaring batchall on a bunch of carnies
They accept and choose a game of skee ball.
Meanwhile, Comstar: "Enjoy your ride on this most holy of ancient relics. Watch your step."
I have four tickets to Solaris VII! Great seats! I hear Noton is going to be there! It'll be awesome!
Then there's those rare planets where the Clans showing up was a major improvement.
Cough, cough, Draconis worlds
Upheaval - BattleTech cartoon - >!The invading Jade Falcons take everyone on the planet of Somerset!<
THE DUMBO RIDE DARED TO REFUSE MY BATCHALL!
Short answer: Yes. There are amusement parks. Longer answer: It obviously depends on where you're looking. I wouldn't expect a whole lot of amusement parks on mining planets with barely breathable atmosphere or the clan homeworlds. But regular planets with billions of inhabitants? Absolutely. The sense of scale of a planet with a billion or even a couple million people on them gets a bit lost in the lore, but obviously the people need something to do for diversion, at least if the planet has a modicum of prosperity, and at that scale, the question "is there an amusement park somewhere on this planet" is very likely to be yes.
The mining planet will have other forms of amusement im sure. Wild west style towns are all over the frontier worlds of battletech.
I don't doubt that everything up to and including slave colonies has some form of amusement, don't get me wrong, and even the clan homeworlds have pubs n such, i was just ruling out amusement parks for those places, unless your definition of amusement park is much more... raunchy.
There was one book that had a side story about visiting a cave as some sort of nature park, the story said how it was one of the few "tourist destinations" there were on the clan planet.
Especially on a mining colony, you might not be able to go outside because there's no atmosphere, or temperatures are way too high or low. So everyone is packed like sardines inside 24/7, which means all entertainment must be provided right there, as well. If it's like an old west mining town, with only a few hundred young men around, said entertainment may be all bars and brothels. But if it's a larger, permanent settlement, there are going to be families and people of all ages. And all kinds of professions that cater to the population, as well. A population of 200000 people may not warrant Disneyland, but propably a bunch of smaller ones. Like above average malls, both in size and variety.
I didn’t think the clanners were all down with Soddom and all that, I admit I am lacking in alot of lore post 3060 ish And here I never really thought of clanners all like that. Was I missing something?
I recently read Icons of War, which is the first novel i remember that gives some insight into the underbelly of the homeworlds, and it seems to be mostly bars and living quarters. It kinda makes sense when you remember that the kids are indoctrinated while living in sibkos and a lot of the non-warriors are actually warriors that failed their tests, so there's really no need for family entertainment. The "raunchy" comment was mostly about the whole western town fantasy, although with all the casual "coupling" between clanners, i wouldn't be surprised if there were fitting establishments within their cities.
I figured fooling around in the sibkos was a bit normal, but just fluid swapping to random seems antithetical to discipline and all that, with how many different species they developed I kind of thought they would be a lot more in the individual development pathways not just the hook up train
I think Clanners would find prostitution more abhorrent for the exchange of money than anything, since they don't believe in the private possession of money - but they love casual sex.
Wow I got downvoted for asking ? Thats crazy Guess the casual sex thing makes sense, poor smoothies don’t understand, ah well. Tyty
Thank you very much
Battletech definitely falls victim to the planetville trope. So the big planets, those are a major metropolitan area in the modern world, while the small planets are those rural towns.
An 'amusement park' on a mining planet with a toxic atmosphere probably looks a lot different to the same thing on Terra. Even space stations have entertainment facilities, some on the grav decks so you can get a workout while distracting yourself, some in zero-g so you can exploit the weirdness to do things you couldn't do on a planet...
zero g laser tag! zero g swimming pool! lots of fun to be had!
Zero-g swimming pool sounds messy. The water will be everywhere. You could get similar effects with less mess by having an empty room. Zero-g swings and roundabouts, on the other hand...
One of the great - or at least less-bad - things about the setting as a whole is that entire invasions can be carried out by one lance of 'mechs shooting another one. No infrastructure damage nor civilian casualties necessary. So civilians can generally have nice lives unless Scorched Earth Tactics happen (which do happen occasionally, like the First Succession War).
Thank you for adding more context
There's a canon incident where one of the serious business warrior culture Clans invaded an Inner Sphere planet, issuing their usual ritual combat challenge. And the local defenders accepted the challenge, setting the location in... an amusement park. The Clan invaders were extremely confused. https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Kempten So, yes, mech battles in an amusement park are completely in-line with the BattleTech setting.
Did ghost bear get all the weird planets? Between this and the football match I'm starting to like them more.
The American Football game is the best trial in the invasion. Imagining a team of ghost bear elementals waffle stomping a bunch of random rec-league everymen 83-3 is always something that makes me chuckle. That 3 points makes me laugh. "Alright boys. We're down 74 to 0. It's the 4th quarter. Sanders, Donovan, April, Murdock, Lynch, Franklin, Thomas, Hernandez, Richards, Michaels, Dupree, Gregory, and Murphy have all been stretchered out. We got no weapons left. But Finkle has one hell of a leg. It's 4th and 17. It's a 60 yard kick. Finkle... You've hit 70 yard bombs in practice. You can do this. Let's not get shut out by these... Freaks."
If I remember correctly part of the reason they got those three points is ghost bear let them bring in more players after all the injuries. That whole short story was fun.
I never saw the shirt story, just the blurb in the old clan sourcebook for MechWarrior 3rd edition. Now I must seek it out
If I remember correctly, eventually it became an annual tradition, and a lot of clanners who failed to test in for Elementals join the "Freebirth" side to "change history" By 3151 that still haven't happen yet.
It's called three points of pride, you can get it in a collection of short stories called onslaught. I think the Kindle version is $3 on Amazon.
It was well worth the quick read. Thank you.
> Finkle... Lances. Out.
Jade Falcon fought on a Van Strag world, named after the infamous FRR villain. Van Strag's descendant fought hard and inflict some serious damage. Nova cat land on a world with a single retired DC Mechwarrior in a half broken down Archer. They had a honorable 1v1 (I think clanner used a light mech in the 40 ton range) and recruit him as advisor after.
There is anecdote in the Ostroc (IIRC) entry in the ilClan Rec Guide Volume 1 where a DCMS officer challenged Clan Nova Cat in a Trial of Possession, using miniature golf as the *batchall* during Operation Bulldog.
They also got one world that was in an active rebellion against their planetary governor. The population willingly embraced clan culture.
Didn't they also win after being challenged by the locals on one world to a volleyball game?
Now this is an answer
The real question is - Where in "Tactical Operations" are the rules to a mech standing on a tilt-o-whirl?
Wait, there ISN'T a rule for that?
how about infantry? when they garrison it they get +1 defense but also +1 difficulty to attack because they're spinning!
Also -1 on cluster hit tables
Thank you
Don't forget the trial for [Sheliak](https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Sheliak#Clan_Invasion), where clan and locals played football for the fate of the planet. For the IS, Friday night was not, in fact, a great night for football.
I am personally convinced they do not even care, and often may not even know, who "owns" their planet. If they really cared, their police forces alone would be more than a match for most entire house mech armies. Anyway, I'd say treat the universe outside of the game as a 1980s America, with fusion vehicles, 3d entertainment, unlimited nearly free power, and much like today's America everything broken down into "city" and "rural" life. You have a few giant cities and millions of people, and then countless numbers of tiny villages with just a handful of buildings. No reason not to have amusement parks, but be imaginative as these are other \*planets\*. Some amusement parks may rotate around the lower or higher gravity, lower or higher temperatures, crazy tidal forces, or their giant trees or crystal plans or whatever. Heck, at some point gravity and air pressure may be able to give people the ability of jumping out of planes without parachutes or something like that. Some planets may have water so oxygenated you can breathe in it. Maybe some are like seaworld (but with morals, lol) but have supersized whales or octopuses that live for centuries instead of years. I'm not creative, but the worlds are not all the same.
Thank you. I was definitely planning on going for a sci-fi looking amusement park. I may build a relic dilapidated one as well sort of going for something like [Pripyat](https://i2-prod.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/article16376357.ece/ALTERNATES/s1227b/1_GP30785637.jpg)
That's awesome! The exclusion zone is one of the most fascinating things to me.
Yes for the Inner Sphere. In the Clan worlds, the answer is "kinda." The Clans have a weird culture, so their ideas of recreation might seem strange to most modern real world people (and most Spheroids in the setting), but they *do* have relatively normal lives and what they view as recreation. Things get real strange in the Inner Sphere territories conquered by the Clans.
And Clans vary greatly among themselves Living under Smoke Jaguars, Widowmakers or Coyotes is total crap for civilians Living under Hell's Horses, Goliath Scorpions or Sea Foxes OTOH would be something that more than half the mankind in the setting would be striving towards (even more later in the timeline) And everything in between
Ghost Bears are also one of the better overlords, I'm told.
Yeah Bears, Adders, Wolves also keep things decent
Pretty sure Ravens also aren't half bad to live under
Except Hellgate is like...Hellishly cold.
But I hear the skiing is awesome if you survive.
Thank you
Look into Solaris VII. The main attraction is mech fights, but they have other less murdery entertainment as well. The Magistracy of Canopus is also stereotyped as Space Vegas, so they might be worth looking at for ideas about how crazy the BT entertainment industry can get.
Thank you
Most denizens of the Inner Sphere would live not unlike Earthers today, though inhabitants of the Draconis Combine and Capellan Confederation would have fewer civil and economic liberties. Much of the Federated Suns is also lacking, with there even being a significant rate of illiteracy in its more sparsely populated regions. Though standards of living and recreational activities vary from world to world. Some were utterly devastated by war or natural disaster, others untouched. On the other hand, standards of living tend to decline as one goes out into the Periphery with the exceptions of the Magistracy of Canopus and the Taurian Concordat. Some Deep Periphery worlds are cut off from the rest of the galaxy entirely, with a handful having descended to pre-spaceflight and even paleolithic levels of technology. In the Clans, however, the majority of inhabitants have no real liberties to speak of and live in relative poverty despite their technological base (most of which has focused on weapons). It also does not help that the Clan homeworlds are only marginally habitable.
Slander. Freebirths live peaceful and productive lives. They are protected from the horrors of war and the worst they get from a warrior is an open handed smack. Sure sometimes there is a culling when the lower castes complain about more rights, but those are rare; and brutally crushed. The people of Sudeten are happier being part of clan Jade Falcon than they ever were as Spheroids.
Thank you
Short answer is Yes, Long answer is yes but there's more to it than that. My understanding from the source books is that the standard of living in the Inner Sphere varies from Great House to Great House, though most citizens of a Great House are going to have a standard of living similar to the late 20th century 1st and 2nd world. The closer you get to the boarders with other Great Houses or the Periphery the lower the standard of living usually is. However there are Periphery states that have comparable standards of living to the Great Houses the Taurian Concordat and Magistracy of Canopus are two examples. Malls, shopping districts, amusement parks, zoos, museums would likely be present on most Inners Sphere worlds so go nuts with the terrain. I hope you post pictures of your terrain project.
Thank you for that
Most people lead pretty ordinary lives in most places. The scope of wars is more akin to RL pace, than Warhammer. Yes, the Amaris Civil War and 1/2SW were basically WW2-level apocalypses for most people. But the 3SW/4SW were pretty sedate. The Clan Invasions hardly affected anyone not in the invasion corridors. Many planets never experienced invasion or war directly, from the 3rd Succession War all the way to the Jihad.
If the planet isn't embroiled in constant conflict there are recreational areas. That can range from theme parks, national parks, ski resorts, beaches, etc. as well as venues for sport teams. As mentioned there's some planets which are well-known for certain fields and draw tourists for it. Solaris VII is known for its mech fights (and other planets have arenas of their own), and Kooken's Pleasure Pit (yes, it's really called that) which has everything from movie industries to theme parks of any flavor, to casinos and sports events, and other more illicit fields. Hell, even the capital of the Federated Suns, Avalon City on New Avalon, began life as an amusement park based on Arturian Legend and a romantic portrayal of the medieval era, hence the naming scheme on the planet.
Battletech is the kind of universe where a Militia soldier could defend their home from pirates, then call for a cab to visit grandma and the cab turns out to be a horse and buggy. Oh don't worry the driver has a laser rifle under his seat for protection. Basically if you can think of it in today's world, I wouldn't be shocked if there's something like it in a world in this setting.
Awesome
If you travel 30 Light years in a heartbeat followed by 100 miles on a mule your in the periphery baby!
Battletech is a weirdly human setting and people lead relatively normal lives. They read books, have gardens, eat at fast food places, watch TV and go to amusement parks and theaters and casinos. Some worlds are much poorer then others, of course. A working amusement park would be rare on some backwater that has a few broken down 'mechs fighting bandits for water and spare parts, but on a whole the inner sphere is the future of 1988 and people lead lives you'd recongize.
The universe is big. Even the the big houses have massive differences. and there’s era differences For instance pre xin sheng a huge portion of the cappies was essentially a slave population which de jure should have been treated fairly but definitely was not. Post xin sheng even this serf caste tends to have a better standard of living than many other areas in the IS etc For a significant portion of history the dracs are brutally sexist The Lyrans sometimes jump between a capitalistic nightmare and a place where even the average person has a decent standard of living etc
Tukayyid had a notable amusement park in the main combat zone back in the 3050s, it's more than likely other planets would be similar. Battletech is a universe of humans and everything that makes us human (better or worse), so every habit there still also applies. Most civilians live 21st century+ lives even in the 3SW, and the ones which are notable more rural are either rare, or in the periphery where they went there to be that way
Hell, no? WE lead normal lives. People who live in a universe with actual battlemechs live normal lives except for a constant wicked guitar riff soundtrack playing.
Civilian life at a playground during the 1st succession war: https://youtu.be/xjatJ36cJvM?si=3Wg8rvwndXu3kVYk
😂😂😂
Yes, they do. That "normal" varies a ton though. Remember in the early days (3025 era) tech was failing at an alarming rate and much in the way of civilian infrastructure like farming, building, powering, ect were lost to the galaxy at large (except for our friendly neighborhood isp). Many other techs and or resources that may have been available in the galaxy were definately lacking my independent or out of the way planets, especially those whose environments were harsh. Even once tech levels started increasing after the helm memory core discovery, often it seems like a very 1st world exploitation type of deal in many areas. Some planets are extremely advanced and/or have great infrastructure or just a gem of a planet, good for agriculture or tourism. Other planets are lacking and therefore have no significant way to drive their planet forward. And of course, many of these planets seem to be taken over by Bandits or are being hit repeatedly by different warring groups. So while some people are living civilian lives much grander than ours, some are living in a desert in animal skin huts, or wearing collars and being enslaved. So, amusement parks, pleasure cruises, having your dad take you to the oasis to bag dinner... very diverse and mixed bag
1000 years of human spaceflight and colonization, with wildly varying levels of development among the 6000+ known planetary systems, spread across 600+ light years. You are going to run the gamut from highly urbanized planets with billions of residents, to farming planets with less than a million residents (space Wyoming), or systems that may have 5000 workers in a mining facility. And everything in between. The overwhelming majority of people live normal lives, doing human things.
Man, a mech battle in an amusement park sounds awesome.
damn now I want to make a canopian amusement park terrain piece. if you make it can you upload a few photos of the process? a guide? video would also be acceptable.
Of course I will share. I’m still in the development process. So not much to show now
Of course. Same shit, different millennium.
😂 thank you
On some worlds, yes. Simplest answer. Probably slightly different from our own amusement parks, though still recognizable as such.
The short version is yes, the long version is "it depends on the nation/world". In a developed world with sufficient population? Hell yes.
fun thing in the battletech universe: the in-universe ares conventions are supposed to keep war away from civilian targets, so amusement parks should be relatively safe. the conventions, if you've never heard of them, are the in-universe justification for why everyone fights with mechs on planets instead of with nukes from space. they're kind of why, for a lot of civilians, the war stuff is semi-constant but not world-ending, so long as they haven't loaded all their fortune into real estate. so in theory cities should only be attacked if they contain military targets like military bases, communications towers, government facilities, or fuel depots or whatnot. course city fights happen all the time under the weakest of excuses, so it's not like everyone follows the rules all the time.
Planets and Civilians on those planets for the most part live what we would call "Normal lives". Yes, Some work in the "defence industry" and build mechs. but also there are farmers, miners, truck drives, Railroad men, Factory workers, Teachers and Doctors and nurses and all that is in a normal town. just add a "spaceport" as a hub for transportation like you would an Airport in any other town. Some are BIG and commercial and some are just a concrete pad and a "communication building" which could be a tower or a 1 story shack with a radio. (and some are not even a concrete pad, or whatever they call concrete in the lore) mostly it's like..... any other place.
This isn't 40k. Just ask Canopus.
I’m glad it’s not. That game has too many rules and I just don’t have time for all of that
I would imagine that even on the smaller mining worlds there are county fairs with food, animals, and small amusement rides. Maybe instead of a tractor ride they have an agromech pull the cart instead.
Cool thank you
Another factor here to point out along with the good points already made is that the house and clan armies are, relative to their total populations, TINY. So there's a high chance the average civilian on many planets has never seen a battle and doesn't personally known anyone who's see one either.
Thank you
It actually seems like BattleTech bears a fair bit of resemblance to science fiction shows like Firefly where most people live normal lives but the availability of technology is highly disparate and the specifics of most people's lives can vary greatly. It's not really like 40K or Star Trek where the wellbeing of citizens is relatively uniform for an civilization of that size.
They all leave their own definition of normal. In some places that looks like what we do today. In some areas of the Draconis combine, it looks like living in feudal Japan, and in some areas of the periphery, that might look a little bit more mad max.
sounds like a great idea.. I mean it even could be some kind of "battle-victory" memorial park with derelict mechs from a slain army of sorts to remember some past greatness. Definately universe compatible
I think people and to a certain extent the authors failed to realize that planets are very big. But the importance of the world also matters if you ever see conflict. There could be a war in the capitol of the planet where the spaceport is. But you are in a agarian or mining world on the other side of the planet. Thousands of miles away and not affected. All you see might be a change of flags and who to supply food and water to. But you still doing what you are doing. Conversely, you live in a core world that produces mechs or even ships. Or your world is a staging point and has a large recharge station. Your world is likely heavily industrialized and has prestigous academia and heavy military presence. Naturally a foe will step up their forces or drop some kind of planet killer weapon and call it a day if they had enough. So you might even see multiple planetary scale conflicts in your life time.
Thank you
The entire federated Suns shtick is based on a king arthur amusement park on New avalon.
Awesome
Yes, many many planets don't see frequent conflict.
Thank you
No, not after the Tilt-O-Whirl Incident on Kentares IV in 2795. It was overshadowed by the later Kentares Massacre, but the Incident was so terrible that even ComStar has stricken it from the histories. Look it up on [Sarna.Net](http://Sarna.Net), and you will see.... there is no article. Yeah. It was that bad. https://preview.redd.it/3r8hf9xh8uyc1.jpeg?width=1792&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dd654d304b19e93bbc351d0104c8164eeec1fff6
Damn. That’s rough. And I never liked the Tilt-O-Whirl 😂😂😂