More Cleaning

If I ever pick coding back up, I should:

• rebuild my "History of BattleTech" chart to be dynamic and interactive;
• make a widget which scrapes my blog & then graphs my posting activity over time (I guess similar to the visitor activity graph that's already on the back end);
• figure a way to refactor all these labels;
• get the archive widget to highlight relevant entries when a "search:label" page is up [Edit, July 3rd: and maybe show how many comments each has /Edit];
• and make some sort of corkboard viewer for email or message chains, to trace the flow of ideas better. Existing formats (including forum threading, forking and other tricks) aren't totally adequate.

More Blogs Removed:

Housecleaning

Planet Stuff:

• Planet Sizes and Tilts - (graphic) 
• orbital inclinations (graph, lost it)
• Orbital Distances - (charts)
• Solar Barycenter - (animation)
• Asteroid Belt - (animation)
• Colors of the Planets - (chart, inaccurate) 
• NASA Planetary Fact Sheet - (table)
• [July 4 Edit: Entire Universe in Log Scale /Edit]

Podcasts Removed and Stashed Here:

Thematic Map of BattleTech

I don't remember how many years ago I threw this map together. Last week(?) I tried to comment the most important fixes (my full list wasn't handy) onto that 2013 post but blogspot ate the comment. Trying again now after seeing these guys. 

FASAnomics 101

[Crude summary copy-pasted from conversation elsewhere. Still unable to blog properly.]

3025 production at 5 major sites

[Jan 10: edited formatting, clarity, and added the most essential backlinks]

Tikonov should produce about 6800 tons of 'Mechs/yr.

Confirming 385 Regiments & 450 Settled Worlds in 3025 Successor States

BattleDroids describes regiments as containing 108 BattleMechs (in 3 battalions of 36), and the regimental commander as Duke of a whole planet. MechWarrior 1st Edition counts about 450 settled worlds in the five Successor States. 

108 regiments * 450 commanders = 48,600 'Mechs

BattleForce 1st Edition says the Houses reorganized to 128 'Mechs per regiment (in 3 battalions of 40 plus an 8 'Mech regimental command group). If I recall correctly, it also says this new organization was copied from Wolf's Dragoons.

48,600 / 128 = 379 ²/₃ regiments

Wolf's Dragoons add 5 regiments plus Zeta Battalion to that total. 

379 ²/₃ regiments + 5 1/₃ regiments = 385 regiments

Map of FWL Military Organization

Made this ages ago.

The old HM:FWL book doesn't just have a map, and doesn't just list regimental deployments for summer 3025, it also has a list* of which provinces and worlds organize their military the way Marik does, or Oriente does, or Andurien does.

Seems like a pretty reliable way to start picking out smaller provinces.

*I forget which page, sorry. It's a purple(?) box in the bottom right corner of a right-hand page. [Next Day Edit: it's page 84, which also says

Across the Free Worlds, many minor variations of the three primary hierarchies exist, due to local government edicts and traditional grants and dignitaries. Below is the military organization used by each state. However, few states, especially the smaller ones, adopt the exact pattern set by their larger cousins. Note that one world is even listed twice.

Courtesy of Reddit user wycca. /Edit]

[Edit, May 15: somehow missed the Stewart Dragoons' Home Guards regiment on Stewart and Juggernaut regiment on Payvand. Now added. /Edit]

Third look at 3025 Lyran 'Mech Production

[TL;DR: Hesperus builds a heavy 100 'Mechs, Coventry builds a light 139 'Mechs, Furillo builds 39, Carlisle and Sudeten make a combined 55, Tharkad makes 55, Twycross makes a heavy 53, Pandora makes 18, and there's another 41 I have yet to account for.]

Basics: The Lyrans build 500 'Mechs/yr, of which 230 are uncommon, including 109 Commandos, 33 Zeuses and 5 Firestarters.

Defiance Industries and Coventry Metal Works - being the Commonwealth's first (HS:LC p122) and second (p165) biggest manufacturers, and each listing their primary products (p136) first - set a precedent for HS:LC's manufacturing page listing everything from biggest to smallest.

Key insight this time around is that many of HS:LC's manufacturers are new, that P1e's manufacturing pages look like they were cut from an early draft of HS:LC, and that the Periphery states build 167 'Mechs/yr.

Second Look at Federated Suns 3025 'Mech Production

[TL;DR?
157 Wolverines and Griffins;
130 Valkyries;
122 Enforcers;
88 Locusts, Phoenix Hawks and Wasps;
64 JagerMechs;
29 Dervishes;
28 Blackjacks;
20 Marauders;
20 Victors;
14 Ostsols;
11 Ostscouts;
7 Javelins;
5 Atlases; and
5 Riflemen.]

This calls up memories and shadows of memories from fourteen or fifteen years ago. I'm sure people were trying to work it out fourteen or fifteen years before that, too.

29 Phoenix Hawks would put the Suns 830 tons shy of a 49 ton national average. That's 17 'Mechs' worth - maybe to make up for saddling Liao and Kurita with 17 Chargers.

Interestingly, when HD:FS (p125) talks about which 'Mechs are most common in lances of different weight, it mentions Shadow Hawks instead of Wolverines. Wonder if that's an error (like the Centurions on Panpour) or deliberate.

JumpShip Class Numbers for 3025

The best candidate I've found is a simple geometric sequence where each class has 27/50ths as many ships as the previous class.

Qty	- Class
920	- Invader (32% are commercial)
497	- Merchant
268	- Scout
145	- Star Lord
78	- Monolith
42	- ??
23	- ??
12	- ?Explorer? (HM:FWL, p127, 152)
7	- luxury liners (HD:FS, p173)
4	- ??
2	- ??
1	- ??
etc	- various

The top five ships add up to 1908. That's how many stars the old 3025 map shows in the Successor States. 

MW1e claims there are 450 "actively settled" worlds, and the House Atlases describe 156 as highly populated, leaving 294 others. There are 294 Invaders in commercial use.

145 worlds have more than a billion people. That's one world for every Star Lord.

The Successor States have 268 Scout vessels for 270 regiments' worth of House 'Mechs. Could be why there's a Suns regiment and a Capellan regiment which replace all their 'Mechs with tanks.

I've been using this sequence for a while as a fast approximation (it's easier than looking up my old MW1e estimates). Wouldn't have considered it seriously if not for conversations with Frabby and a Simulated Knave.

Below Thirty Meters in BattleTech

It's a pity that infantry, battle armor, protomechs and support vehicles don't have a common way to figure engines, control weights and so on. Covering the same small design space four different times seems like a bigger hassle than patching 'Mech and vehicle construction to cover dinoriders, rocketeers, exoskeleton squads, individual missiles and the shopping carts from the Ironhold Safeway.

I mention shopping carts because the cargo and trailer rules aren't great either. Improving them would probably negate the need for "trains" to be constructed as a separate unit type.

Can't fault the writers for having fun devising new systems, nor the fans for having fun exploring and testing them; but... look, the point of "support vehicles" is to have archaic tanks for 'Mechs to shoot at and soft civilian vehicles for RPG characters to shoot at, and... isn't that handled by making armor less effective per ton? Are separate "penetration" and "BAR" values really needed, or can that be handled with range, damage and armor factor?

A Note on Scale and Realism

3025 production of generic lights and heavies

My current worksheet (sorry about the mess). Solved light 'Mechs, am close to solving generic heavies, and am close to figuring out Stalkers and Banshees. Explanations below the cut.

Housekeeping

This past spring I pruned a couple thousand dead or outdated bookmarks from my BattleTech folder. More to go; not yet halfway.  Not to worry! Still working on 3025 production numbers. Light 'Mechs are solved, heavy and assault are trickier. More on that in a week or two.

[Edit, Aug 1: checking my other folders for webrot and it looks like some haven't been cleaned in over a decade. Did you know Real Ultimate Power is still up?! /Edit]

My natural pace is to blog about three times per month. I'd rather post twice a week - BattleTech on Sundays and fantasy RPGs on Thursdays - but every time I try, I end up posting less. Que sera sera.

Would like to rebuild my "archive" widget so it shows more posts at a time. Should probably also shuffle my "labels" a bit, I'm sure some of them are redundant. Today is just housekeeping though - chopping links I don't use from the sidebars (and stashing them below the cut so I can find them again if I need to).

CUT

# 'Mechs Controlled By Local Nobles in 3025

[Three funerals and a wedding in the span of six weeks; that's life, I guess. Sorry for not having this up earlier.]

TL;DR? Houses Steiner, Davion and Liao seem to reckon second-line forces as

70 / 5 + 2 = 16 Davion second-line regiments
50 / 5 + 2 = 12 Steiner second-line regiments
40 / 5 + 2 = 10 Liao second-line regiments

and Marik, Davion and Liao count their nominal regiments as

70 *1.1 + 1 = 78 nominal Davion House regiments
50 *1.1 + 1 = 56 nominal Marik House regiments
40 *1.1 + 1 = 45 nominal Liao House regiments
20 *1.1 + 1 = 23 nominal Liao Merc regiments

3025 Heavy Production: FWL vs MW1e

Remember how the Free Worlds League's manufacturing listings only added up to 486 'Mechs per year instead of the 500 claimed in the text? The most popular solution is to add 14 Thunderbolts per year. I eventually came around to that solution too, but now I think it's actually 13 Thunderbolts per year, not 14.

• The manufacturing chart shows the FWL building only 257 universal designs per year. 13 Thunderbolts would raise that to exactly 270. 
• The Earthwerks corporate profile mentions Thunderbolts instead of Phoenix Hawks, and the manufacturing chart lists the Phoenix Hawk at 13 per year.
• When you line the FWL figures up against my figures from the MW1e encounter tables, the Thunderbolt fits perfectly at 13 per year.

From left to right, the Warhammer, Marauder, Archer, Thunderbolt and Rifleman align so perfectly that I have to suspect these values represent their overall, sphere-wide ratios.

Quick note on 3025 production of universal designs

The Inner Sphere and Periphery build a total of 2867 'Mechs per year. Supposing half of those are the the universal designs from the 2nd edition boxed set, then I think their annual production by each House should break down like this:

Total	1433.33 (half of 2867)
Davion	270
Kurita	135 (counting the 270 LAMs at half covers the other 135)
Steiner	270
Marik	270, +51.67 "-M" Variants
Liao	270
Periphery	166.67 (they don't build any other 'Mechs, just the universal designs)

This gives me a few clues about the other Houses. Most notably, it'll help me sort out the weirdness in the Marik production data, and it looks like Aldis Industries of Terra builds something other than Stingers for the Federated Suns.

The Aurigan Trail

From 2800 to 3000, hundreds of nation-states rose and fell in the Periphery, only to be replaced by still other powers, many no larger than a single world or continent (P1e, p125). By the end of the 30th Century, there were more than 60 known small kingdoms and principalities ringing the Inner Sphere (MW1e, p8). Both their numbers and their relative strength are in constant flux (MW1e, p135).

Inner Sphere Population in 3025

Turns out I accidentally hid Le Blanc when I pieced my map together, so I fixed that and did some other cleaning. Full size available here.

I don't think it's a secret that BattleTech's map is based on England's. Probably not a rectilinear projection like the one for 1974-1996 that I colorized below, though... I wish the "warp" tool in my old free version of photoshop would let me anchor points after I've stretched them. My .psd file is here if someone else wants to fool around with it.

House populations are based on those same English regions, too. Didn't find 1980s figures online so I'm using a 1988 World Book Encyclopedia.

Six Weeks of Events-

-if the players do nothing to change them. I kinda like the simple D&D seed better than the longer BattleTech ones.

Started with the event tables in the first edition Mercenary's Handbook and MechWarrior RPG. Not really satisfied with the results (my ultimate goal is to enable domain building in a randomly generated war front), but I think they're good enough to hang a short campaign off if I need to.

(Events below the cut.)

So You Want to Be King of Some God-Forsaken Space Rock (Bandit Kings part 4)

A simple kingdom generator that I'd like to eventually flesh out into generating full sci-fi and fantasy campaigns. Posting this draft version early because... well, I'd rather clean it up some (individual reroll buttons, formatting, grammar, better code, proper weight, proper attribution) first, but it's usable as-is. 

[Edit, Feb 14: you can now reroll sections without reloading the whole page. /Edit]

I fully expected Blogspot to make it extra rough to add javascript to a post, but kudos to them for keeping it surprisingly painless. (If your needs are simple, this guy makes it even easier - just put a list into his widget and it spits the code out!)

Random Kingdom below the cut.