History Headscratchers / Battletech

** It's been heavily implied Katherine played politics to have his genetic record tampered with, in order to avoid giving away his true origins. Even among the Clans, politicking has an effect.

** purely rule of cool for the cases of fusion reactors going off like that in the novels and while standard rules do indeed don't have reactors going off like bombs their exists optional rules to have them.

** It's also possible that Alaric simply acted as though Vlad Ward was his genefather, as [[spoiler: his actual genefather being Victor]] is not widely known.

*** Playing off of that, most games depict the pulse lasers as a rave-worthy series of beams, but ''[=MechWarrior=] 3'' depicts it as a longer-lasting single beam that visibly pulses. Is there clarification on ''that?''

** Probably through training and just getting used to it; not everyone in real life suffers from motion sickness and it is possible to get over it. Even the most rudimentary Mechwarrior training programs last about 2 years, if you can't get over it by than you will probably have to wash out or switch your branch of service. According to Wiki/TheOtherWiki motion sickness is triggered by the ears telling the brain one thing (you are moving) and your eyes tell it another (you are not moving). You get sick because the brain assumes that one of them is hallucinating and vomiting gets induced to remove any toxins that might be affecting your sensory organs. Now keep in mind that Mechwarriors have to have (at least) above average motor control and reflexes (making it easier to compensate for the fact that they can't "see" the Mech walking) and that they use neurohelmets to do all fine motor skills like walking. Between all these things it probably isn't that much of a problem.

* I've always asked myself this : why are the pilot not better protected? I mean, all it needs is a cockpit included in the torso and some video sensors in place of the head. But no, they feel obligated to expose an exceptionally skilled and specialized warrior to heavy weapon shooting.

** The Inner Sphere is also mostly surrounded by the Periphery States, who are more trouble than they're worth to conquer and use for expansion. Plus, in many cases it's not worth it to colonize an entire new planet - with as heavily as the franchise relies on {{Planetville}} and LandOfOneCity, overcrowding often isn't a problem considering that the Capellan Confederation, the smallest of the Successor States, controls over two hundred systems (most of which have at least one habitable planet in them). The early Succession Wars killed billions with the unrestrained use of nukes and destruction of terraforming equipment, and Lostech kept them from expanding into less-habitable worlds.
** The Inner Sphere also did expand into and claim the Periphery during the time of the Star League, which was around the time that they were in the best position to expand further outward. However, Aramis and his fuckery happened, and the Periphery rebelled, and since then no one has been able to reconquer the Periphery and expand outward due to nonstop internal conflicts followed by the Clan invasions.

* How exactly does Alaric have a claim on the Ward bloodname, being [[spoiler: the Iron Womb child of two Steiner-Davions?]] They're ''distantly'' related to the Kells and thus the Wards, but not by DNA.

** This is actually how LosTech works IN REAL LIFE. One of the primary examples is, in fact, Battletech pods. They use such specialized equipment to make, nobody knows how to repair it, back-ups were in a factory that didn't work, etc. There's also a very specific Star Trek TOS thing that's impossible to make. A very specific pink ornament.

** Lostech wasn't rendered Lostech in one fell swoop. It was a gradual grind through the First and Second Succession Wars, during which not only research facilities, but factories and repair stations where obliterated to deny them as assets to the enemy, or to attempt to cripple the enemy's ability to make war. Lostech, more or less, comes in two forms: what most people think of is "We know this thing exists but have no idea how it works," which is actually the minority of Lostech in ''[=BattleTech=]''; and the more common "we understand what this does and how it works, we just don't have the ability to build it anymore." You can't just build a Gauss Rifle in your garage, it requires a specialized factory to produce it to tolerances sufficient for use in [=BattleMech=] combat, and that factory requires specific equipment to function and specific supplies to keep functioning, that equipment and those supplies require other specialized equipment and supplies to be made to usable standard, and so on. The systems that survived to see use in the Succession Wars era were the ones that were easy to reproduce and didn't require a lot in the way of specialized components in manufacture, maintenance, or infrastructure to support their manufacture and maintenance. Backups were kept (the [=UrbanMech=], for instance, wouldn't exist if not for backups of everything that went into making it, picked up by other manufacturers when the company who made it got bombed into oblivion) but for a lot of things, the primary factories and research facilities making those advanced pieces were destroyed, then the backups were destroyed, then all existing examples were destroyed while trying to destroy something else.

* Lostech. All right, Operation Holy Shroud eliminated a lot of scientists and engineers, the Succession Wars killed billions and destroyed factories and research facilities. [[NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup And nobody ever backed up their work?]] Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but on hundreds of planets across the Inner Sphere, ''nobody'' saved a backup copy of any advanced technology until the Grey Death Legion found the Helm Memory Core?

** Yes. The daisy-chain system includes a way to transfer mechs.