50 Fun Facts About BattleTech

Which filmmaker's company made the 1984 wargame Battledroids rename itself BattleTech over one trademarked word?

George Lucas and Lucasfilm claimed the rights to the word droid, so the second edition took a new name and its war machines became BattleMechs.

Unlike most space-opera settings, the BattleTech universe almost completely lacks which science-fiction staple?

Alien civilisations never appear: apart from one or two isolated encounters in the novels, humanity is the only intelligent species, so every war is people fighting people.

Which 100-ton BattleMech, the best-known machine in BattleTech, has a head and cockpit shaped like a skull?

Atlas weapons were mounted to be as visible as possible so that the machine would strike fear into enemies, and a full year of development went into its head alone.

Firing too many weapons at once can shut down a BattleMech's reactor through a dangerous build-up of what?

Heat is the resource every pilot has to manage: energy weapons need no ammunition but run hot, so cooling decides how often a machine can safely fire.

BattleTech's future history, first written in 1984, failed to foresee the fall of which real-world state?

Soviet Union politics shape the setting's timeline long after 1991, because the designers treated real history as fixed only up to about the year the game came out.

BattleTech's first BattleMech models reused designs from which Japanese anime, later adapted in America as Robotech?

Macross was one of three anime whose robot art the publisher licensed instead of drawing its own. A 1990s lawsuit later pushed those images out of the rulebooks.

Which company, producer of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, made the 1994 BattleTech animated series?

Saban Entertainment made 13 episodes about Major Adam Steiner, using computer animation for most battle scenes and traditional animation for nearly everything else.

Which nickname did the Inner Sphere give the Clan Timber Wolf after a computer confused it with two older designs?

Mad Cat joins the codes MAD and CAT: a targeting computer kept switching between Marauder and Catapult while it tried to identify the unfamiliar machine.

Which publisher, later famous for Call of Duty, released the first MechWarrior BattleMech simulator in 1989?

Activision's game was the first to put players in the pilot's seat of a BattleMech, with the freedom to choose missions and to buy and sell machines.

Which company, the makers of Magic: The Gathering, developed the BattleTech collectible card game released in 1996?

Wizards of the Coast gave the job to Richard Garfield, the designer of Magic itself, so the two games share a similar style of play and card distribution.

Which trading-card company, best known for baseball cards, acquired the BattleTech universe in a 2003 takeover?

Topps made its first foray into games with the $29.4 million deal, which also brought it the cyberpunk fantasy setting Shadowrun.

BattleTech's tabletop battles are fought on map sheets divided into which shape, a staple of board wargames?

Hexagons cover every BattleTech map sheet, and each turn played across them stands for just ten seconds of battlefield time.

Which company, also the original publisher of the cyberpunk game Shadowrun, launched BattleTech in 1984?

FASA Corporation took its initials from the Freedonian Aeronautics and Space Administration, a joking nod to the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup.

In which US city did the first BattleTech Center open in 1990, with networked cockpit pods in the North Pier mall?

Chicago's centre sat players in fully enclosed, networked cockpits to fight one another, and 26 such sites were eventually built, including sites in Japan.

Which energy source, harnessed by an engine in the torso, powers the limbs and computers of a standard BattleMech?

Fusion engines are so efficient that a BattleMech can usually run for decades on a few kilograms of hydrogen.

BattleMechs are sorted into light, medium, heavy and which fourth weight class, covering machines of 80 to 100 tons?

Assault 'Mechs trade speed for firepower and armour, and they work best spearheading a frontal attack or holding an entrenched position.

Which 30-ton BattleMech, the slowest light 'Mech in existence, has a top speed of only about 32 kilometres an hour?

UrbanMech designers accepted a tiny engine because city streets leave little room to manoeuvre anyway, and its low profile makes it difficult to target.

Which designer co-created BattleTech with L. Ross Babcock III and returned to lead its 2018 strategy video game?

Jordan Weisman has founded five game companies, each in a different corner of the industry, and also built the cockpit simulators of the BattleTech Centers.

Which company bought the studio behind the MechWarrior computer games in 1999 and went on to publish MechAssault?

Microsoft folded the studio into its own games line-up, and MechAssault became one of the first Xbox titles playable online through Xbox Live.

Natasha Kerensky, regarded as the deadliest MechWarrior of the 31st century, fought under which nickname?

The Black Widow forged a company of criminals, misfits and troublemakers into an elite raiding force, and the sight of her jet-black Warhammer alone made many foes flee.

What name do the Clans give BattleMechs that carry their weapons in swappable modular pods, a design they pioneered?

OmniMech technology was developed by Clan Coyote, and it lets one chassis swap out damaged parts or change its battlefield role between missions.

PPC, the heavy energy weapon carried by the Warhammer and Marauder BattleMechs, is short for which full name?

Particle Projector Cannon shots are concentrated streams of protons or ions, and just three of them will vaporise nearly two tons of standard armour.

Which BattleTech weapon uses a series of electromagnets to hurl solid nickel-iron slugs at extremely high velocity?

Gauss rifle ammunition has no propellant or explosive, so its magazines cannot blow up, and in an emergency a 'Mech could even load the weapon with a steel girder.

In BattleTech, which piece of cockpit equipment lets a 'Mech borrow its pilot's own sense of balance to stay upright?

Neurohelmet signals back up a multi-ton gyro: the machine can stand by itself, but its cautious computers need a human to say when leaning off-balance is acceptable.

Which 50-ton BattleMech, a feared street fighter since 2572, carries a huge Autocannon 20 as its signature weapon?

Hunchback owners who swapped the big gun for several smaller weapons created variants nicknamed the Swayback, after the change to the shape of the torso.

Which 100-ton machine, tested against remote-controlled tanks in 2439, was the first true BattleMech ever built?

Mackie pilot Colonel Charles Kincaid obliterated four heavy tanks in that trial, and the design stayed the pinnacle of military technology until spies stole its plans.

A Clan Star groups five BattleMechs; what do Inner Sphere armies call their own basic formation of four?

Lance types are named for the average weight of their four machines, and with support crew each one comes to roughly ten people.

Which type of spacecraft ferries BattleMechs between a planet's surface and the JumpShips waiting at a jump point?

DropShip crews face a transit to the jump point that can last weeks, and because their vessels cannot jump through hyperspace they then ride docked to a larger ship.

What term do people in the BattleTech universe use for advanced Star League technology that nobody can build any more?

LosTech is short for lost technology, and its workings are so poorly understood that some technicians believe prayers matter as much as the manual.

What do BattleTech players call the risky attack of landing a jumping 'Mech directly on top of an enemy?

Death From Above usually damages the attacker as well as the target, and when a Highlander BattleMech performs it the move is known as a Highlander Burial.

The Warden Clans wanted to shield the Inner Sphere from afar; which rival faction pushed to invade it instead?

Crusaders began as a fringe movement in the 2950s and grew with help from Clan merchants, whose popular children's show cast the Inner Sphere's ruling states as tribes of evil monkeys.

Which Clan, first to formally propose invading the Inner Sphere, supplies the villains of the 1994 BattleTech cartoon?

Clan Jade Falcon put its invasion plan to the Grand Council in 2980, but the Wardens managed to stall any attack for roughly another seven decades.

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat recreates which 3057 conflict, fought between Clan Wolf's Wardens and a rival Clan?

The Refusal War began as a trial over a genocide charge against ilKhan Ulric Kerensky, and unusually it pitted two entire Clans against each other in all-out war.

On which farming planet did the Clans lose a 3052 proxy battle for Terra, binding them to a fifteen-year truce?

Tukayyid was chosen for its mild weather, varied terrain and small population, and each of the seven invading Clans was set two cities to capture.

What do the Clans call their genetically engineered giant infantry, bred over generations to fight in battle armour?

Elementals stand 2 to 2.5 metres tall, and they are so named because both they and their armour are capable of fighting in any element.

What are Clan warriors called if they were conceived artificially in an Iron Womb as part of the eugenics programme?

Trueborn warriors look down on the naturally conceived, yet the rare addition of those outsiders' genes is what keeps the breeding programme from stagnating.

What do Clan warriors call the ritual in which an attacker declares its forces and asks who will defend?

Batchall is a compound of battle and challenge, and once the terms are agreed each side bids among its own warriors for the right to fight.

Which Clan was destroyed in 3060 when the reborn Star League overran its homeworld Huntress in Task Force Serpent?

Clan Smoke Jaguar was declared destroyed by Prince Victor Steiner-Davion, who refused its last leader's challenge to a duel and offered the survivors a place in the Star League.

Which Clan turned Warden in the Free Rasalhague Republic, then secretly moved its entire population to the Inner Sphere?

Clan Ghost Bear hid the migration from rivals who might have attacked, converted mothballed dreadnoughts into ark-ships and renamed its territory a Dominion.

Which of the original twenty Clans was wiped out in a Trial of Annihilation and remembered only as the Not-Named Clan?

Clan Wolverine was accused of detonating nuclear devices and defying the founder of the Clans, and official histories were then rewritten to strike out its name.

Which 80-ton BattleMech, among the most feared ever built, relies on a battery of three PPCs as its main armament?

Awesome crews can fight on for long periods without resupply because the all-energy arsenal needs no ammunition, which makes the design ideal for sieges.

Which 100-ton BattleMech did General Aleksandr Kerensky order to cripple or destroy another 'Mech in a single salvo?

King Crab arms each end in a massive autocannon shielded by simple pincer-like hands, a look that helped to give the machine its name.

Which 20-ton scout, in continuous production since 2499, is one of the smallest and most common BattleMechs ever built?

Locust parts were cheap and widely available, so everyone from pirates to corporate defence forces bought them, though few MechWarriors enjoyed piloting one.

Which BattleMech of 3023, the first new Inner Sphere design in over a century, pioneered a full-head ejection system?

Hatchetman takes its name from the 'Mech-sized axe it carries, another first, and it was designed by the enigmatic Dr B. Banzai of the mercenary Team Banzai.

Which Great House has ruled the Draconis Combine as a hereditary dictatorship since the realm was founded in 2319?

House Kurita's realm takes its culture from Edo-period Japan, and Coordinator Theodore later loosened the grip of bushido on the army so his troops would accept flexible tactics against the Clans.

The C-bill, the Inner Sphere's common currency, takes its initial from which power that runs interstellar messaging?

ComStar first issued the notes as letters of credit for its communication services, so the money's value rested on something every realm needed.

Which planet, nicknamed the Game World, is famous across the Inner Sphere for BattleMech duels fought in its arenas?

Solaris VII has six major arenas in Solaris City alone, and fighters with winning records there are in high demand as mercenaries.

Which Rim Worlds president murdered the Star League's young First Lord and took his throne as the Usurper?

Stefan Amaris spent years posing as the First Lord's friend before the coup, and he was later defeated and executed by General Aleksandr Kerensky.

Which novelist, also known for Star Wars X-wing books, wrote BattleTech's Warrior and Blood of Kerensky trilogies?

Michael Stackpole made his debut as a novelist with the Warrior trilogy, and the 1994 animated series is set during the events of his later Clan invasion books.

Which Seattle studio, makers of Shadowrun Returns, developed the turn-based BattleTech strategy game of 2018?

Harebrained Schemes set aside $1 million of its own and turned to Kickstarter to pay for extras such as a single-player campaign and a multiplayer mode.