Q 01/05

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

A) Steven Spielberg

B) George Lucas

C) Ridley Scott

D) James Cameron

Answer · why

B) George Lucas

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.

Q 02/05

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

A) Faster-than-light travel

B) Alien civilisations

C) Laser weapons

D) Giant spaceships

Answer · why

B) Alien civilisations

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

Q 03/05

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

A) Banshee

B) Cyclops

C) Atlas

D) Zeus

Answer · why

C) Atlas

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 i...

Q 04/05

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

A) Static

B) Recoil

C) Heat

D) Torque

Answer · why

C) Heat

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.

Q 05/05

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

A) Yugoslavia

B) East Germany

C) Soviet Union

D) Czechoslovakia

Answer · why

C) Soviet Union

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 ...