High Tech Game

Why BattleMaster is a tech game

(an explanation of some of the game's little quirks)

Ever noticed how an attacker trying to take over a region can't make use of the walls? Clearly something more is required to make use of the walls than to simply stand on them. Obviously, only the region's local civil servants have the security codes necessary to gain access to the wall's central command center and it's control systems. Central command center? Control systems? Well, yea, and did I mention the embedded forcefield generators, multi-node laser projectors, and of course, the ever important plasma rifle vending machines(for when the defenders run out of homing missiles)?

And, speaking of defenses, ever noticed that when you dig in, you can change your line settings and move your men around all you like, without having to spend time digging more trenches. Did I say trenches? I meant portable shield generators, perimiter sensors, and self-targeting autocannon. Unfortunately, the system has a few bugs, so, to leave the safety of the forcefield bubble requires that the system be totally shut down (You really wouldn't want to be shot down by your own autocannon). Powering it up again and performing all the necessary maintenance of course requires another 6 hours.

And for that matter, what kind of sword and armor will cause a fatal injury to the bearer just from walking around for a week or two? I mean really, what's a suit of platemail going to do? Rust on you? The answer of course is some sort of mech/mobile suit/powered armor, armed of course with a beam saber or similar high tech laser sword. As you may be aware, such items are somewhat finicky and have a tendancy to leave rather nasty blast craters if not subjected to frequent maintenance by a trained technician in a properly equipped maintanance shop.

This of course also offers a logical explanation as to why your average BattleMaster infantryman can march at 10 mph for 16 hours a day. A good brisk walking speed for a human is closer to 3 mph and if you're really fit and not carrying around too much gear, you might manage 5 mph. On the other hand, if you're driving a 30 foot high mechanical monstrosity, 10 mph is a piece of cake. You'll even have time to stop at that lovely mountain lake for a bit of fishing--with your shoulder mounted nuclear depth charge rack of course.

I bet you've encountered the following situation: You are busily making off with the possessions of the local peasantry. They get ticked off because you are stealing their autographed Tom Vogt photos and so they come at you with plasma welders, flechette pistols, and of course fusion powered pitchforks (peasants have got to have pitchforks, it's a requirement). You of course slaughter them (flechette pistols are great against wild game, but not really good against 13cm gundanium alloy armor). Then you check the region stats. Even though you just killed 10% of the region's population, there are still 9000 of them durned peasants, just waiting to stick their pitchforks in you. What happened? Well, you see, the clonemaster fired up a vat and cranked out 900 more peasants in less than an hour and voila, they're baaaaacckk. #sidenotes

And, speaking of rapid growth, check out the local food crops. I mean really, the wheat grows and is harvested on a weekly basis. Clearly, this is not your ordinary wheat. This is your scary bio-engineered food crop that you would not want to let your kids near, at least not until they've been bugging you for at least 3 weeks to buy them the latest Dragonball DVD (2 weeks if they are begging for anything related to Barney the lovable purple dinosaur).

Of course, eating this stuff gets interesting too. Ponder this: It takes at least 1 kg of food to feed an earth person for a day. A BM person eats 1/700th of a bushel, which is about 50 cubic centimeters. Put 1000 grams of food in 50 cc and you get about 20 grams per cubic centimeter. That is approximately the density of plutonium (or some other radioactive heavy metal). So, perhaps our peasants are eating something with a fairly short half-life (man, and you thought that well done, blackened hamburger was carcinogenic). Either that or they are all very small, say, about the size of those annoying singing munchkins from the Wizard of Oz, the though of which makes me want to go and burn down a few of their homes. Of course, I've never been able to get my squire to tell me what those unidentifiable lumps that he feeds me are, so the actual nature of BM food is still anybody's guess.

My squire has also always been quite vague about how he manages to instantly transport messages over hundreds of miles. Personally, I suspect him of having a laptop and cellular modem stashed somewhere. If messages are being transported over the BM world's version of the Internet, the infiltrator option 'hack the router' makes perfect sense.

Anyway, enough of that, I'm off to try to convince my scribe to use a non-Microsoft product to sort my 'sent messages' list. Maybe I'll threaten to feed him to one of those cybernetically enhanced beluaterran trolls (the ones with the salad-shooter attachments).

-Paul Dickinson aka Orano, Larco, and Sentauru Helvatori

Sidenotes

• Variable population has since been introduced, so when you slaughter peasants, the number of inhabitants in the region actually drops.
• The actual food usage is 1/500th of a bushel, not 1/700th.