Ascended Fanon: The Deimos Clan Heavy mech was originally a non-canon mech introduced by Mektek's free re-release of MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries. It was later made canonical with the release of Technical Readout 3085
Development Hell: Handbook: House Kurita, and to the lesser extent Interstellar Operations.
Here's a fun drinking game: Go to the official Battletech forums. Search for "ilClan." Take a shot every time a post asking what the progress on it is appears. Since this is a book that's been awaited for years, you may need to stop, either voluntarily or involuntarily after a short while. This may finally be subsiding as Word of God says that the reason for the delay is they're still trying to tie up loose ends and come up with a new, post-ilClan metaplot to avoid the deadly question "And Then What?". Eventually, the delay got so long they decided to split it into two parts, with the first part becoming the Shattered Fortress which was released on August 2018 and the planned second part retaining the ilClan name. Finally, starting from mid-2020, "Recognition Guides" for the ilClan era were published (containing info on new 'Mech designs, as well as new variants of old ones), and on New Year's Day 2021, the book which officially moved the game into the ilClan era (warning: Spoiler Title), Hour of the Wolf was published. And then finally, at long last, on August 6, 2021, The Ilclan was finally published, putting an end to years of waiting.
There's a lot of Fantastic Slurs against members of opposing Great Houses, due to bad blood from atrocities committed during the Succession Wars:
Crappies - a slur against Capellans and in particular House Liao members that are incompetent.
Fedrats - a slur against members of the Federated Suns, most commonly bandied by Capellans, Draconis Combine citizenry, and Taurians.
Bulls - a non-flattering way for Feddies to disparage Taurians due to their stubbornness and aggressive resentment of the Suns.
Snakes - A common insult fired at Draconis Combine citizens for perceived treachery and viciousness, in particular by FedSuns citizens from the Draconis March.
The more fanatical members of Clan Jade Falcon are often made fun of by everyone, commonly referred by such names as "green canaries", "bird-brains", and such. Thanks to their emblem of a purple eagle, members of the Free Worlds League get made fun of with similar bird-themed insults.
Coring - Taking out a mech by destroying the center torso.
Kneecapping - defeating mechs by taking out their legs.
Headcapping / Headchopping - taking a mech by destroying the head/cockpit or scoring a lethal crit on the pilot.
Headcapper / Headchopper - a weapon suited for such hits - most commonly a AC/20, Clan ER PPC, or Gauss weapon, but anything that can one-shot a mech with a lucky head crit may be referred to as such especially if a player is skilled enough to keep landing headshots.
Can Opener - Often used to refer to powerful weapons that can knock off entire sections of armor in a single hit, such as the PPCs, AC/20, and the Gauss Rifles.
Critseeking - a general strategy of using a large volume of burst/volley fire weapons that can roll multiple times for critical hits, such that once you breach enemy armor you have a fairly good chance to hit something vunerable and disable them. Machine guns, LRMs, SRMs, LBX Autocannons (loaded with cluster ammo), and large batteries of Small or Micro Lasers are popular for this sort of thing.
Crit Padding - The practice of loading less-critical subsystems (like extra heat sinks and jumpjets) into a body component that has vital weapons installed, so critical hits have a chance to break them instead of either breaking your guns or torching your ammo.
Seatbelt Check - A dreaded piloting roll when your mech loses its balance and falls over. Failing it can mean pilot wounds and/or even death.
Lawn Darting - A dreaded counterpart to the Seatbelt Check, mostly used for ASF aircraft failing to remain airborne (due to AA fire from Autocannons loaded with Flak rounds or unlucky rolls), but sometimes used for either 'mechs failing to complete Jumpjet operations or LAMs (Land-Air Mechs) failing to stay aloft and faceplanting. More likely to total the unlucky victim due to Gravity being merciless in claiming her pound of flesh and steel.
Peeking - a very common defensive tactic of only exposing just the arm (and/or side torso) of your mech briefly so that you can fire at the enemy with as small an exposed profile as possible to minimise damage from return fire.note Mostly used in the MechWarrior games, as the turn-based tabletop game makes this tactic significantly more difficult.
Torso Twist - An ability mechs have to rotate at the waist in order to bring their weapons to bear on targets that are to the left or right of them. Some mechs have the Extended Torso Twist quirk that (when quirks are allowed in play) lets them turn all the way around to fire at targets behind them, while other mechs are unable to torso twist at all (all quad mechs, and any bipedal mech with the No Torso Twist negative quirk).
Manmade Lightning - A term popularized by the Battletech writer Stackpole, it refers to the electrostatic discharge of the PPC weapon system.
Stackpoling - Due to the writer Stackpole's propensity for making 'mechs in his stories explode (for the Rule of Cool, of course) despite the canonical safety measures in Fusion Engines made to prevent that, this term was applied to the broad category of faults and damages that can result in said safeties failing, resulting in a silvery blast as the 'mech explodes from the engine failure and turning into a shrapnel and steam explosion. There are Critical Hit rolls for crits to the engine that can result in Stackpoling (and even if a 'mech doesn't explode from such crits, they are usually sufficient to trip the safeties and shut the engine down anyway).
Missile Boat - a common term for any mech who's weapon array consists mostly or entirely of missiles of various types.
Flashbulb - a 'mech built with an all-energy setup, with no ammo-using weapons whatsoever. Another one used In-Universe, noted as having been inspired by the Flashman.
Ammo Bomb - a 'mech with torso-mounted ammo bins and few or no other subsystems in the same section to absorb critical hits. When an ammo bin takes a critical, the remaining rounds inside of it explode, causing massive damage to the internals of the 'Mech and injuring the pilot with neural feedback. In addition, a cook-off that destroys the center torso will make the unit unrepairable in a campaign. Infamously vulnerable mechs include the Marauder and Crusaders, which carry nothing but ammo in their side torsos — making any critical hit extremely deadly. CASE technology contains the explosion to only a single section of the 'Mech, but you're still losing a torso section (and potentially severely damaging or losing your engine).
Discoback - A nickname for the Hunchback 4P, that trades off the signature AC/20 of the baseline 'mech for a battery of medium lasers that hits harder but generates much more heat in turn.
Bugmech - A common moniker applied to a number of light mechs and fast mediums (like the Cicada, Locust, Stinger, Wasp, and Flea), which are all Fragile Speedsters and have insect-themed names. Amusingly, the Grasshopper isn't a bugmech because it's a well-armored Heavy mech (and likewise, the Crab is a Medium zombiemech and the King Crab is a 100 tonner Assault).
PBI - Poor Bloody Infantry, an unfortunately true turn of phrase to describe common infantry in a battlefield full of armored vehicles and huge battlemechs with intimidatingly large weapons.
Zombiemech - Battlemechs designed to keep most of their fighting ability even after taking greiveous damage. Usually done using energy-heavy weapons load-outs (to avoid ammo explosions), stacking the heaviest weapons in the better-armored torsos instead of the more-vulnerable arms, filling out the remainder of the torso with disposable components like Heat Sinks to absorb critical hits, and using Standard or Compact engines instead of Light and Xtra-Light engines (larger, lighter engines are more vulnerable to critical hits, and can mission-kill the 'Mech with enough side torso damage). As with a classical Zombie, the only way to quickly put one down is to shoot it in the head(and if they have a torso-mounted cockpit, even that won't work!). 'Mechs like the Awesome, Kingfisher, and the Archangel are infamous for their durability.
Stick - A battlemech that has lost both arms and side torso sections, leaving just the head, center torso, and legs. Many mech designs will end up devoid of weapons in this state, although 'zombies tend to have some kind of backup weapon in their heads or CTs, allowing them to keep fighting even when reduced to this state. 'Mechs with bulkier Light or Extra Light engines will end up mission-killed when reduced to this state because their engines would have vital parts shorn off when the side torsos get wrecked.
"Solahma Suicide Sled" - The Chippewa ASF, which has a measly 8 tons of armor for a heavy ASF. Similar terms apply to other Inner Sphere mechs and ASF that have dangerously thin armor for their tonnage. This term came about as a way to describe under-armored units native to the Inner Sphere by Clanners (often used in surprise, as solahma are a Clan thing).
"Nicky K" - Nicholas Kerensky, the son of Aleksandr Kerensky and the man who created Clanner culture. Don't actually address him as such in front of a Clanner.
"Tasha K" - a nickname for Natasha Kerensky, one of the famous named mechwarriors in canon and leader of the Black Widows of the Wolf Dragoons. Don't call her that to her face.
"Mad Max" - a nickname for Maximillian Liao, who became increasingly unhinged after Hanse Davion humiliated him and declared war at the same time during his wedding.
Life Imitates Art: People in many developing countries in Africa really do use cellphone minutes as a Practical Currency and for more or less the exact same reasons as the peoples of the war torn Inner Sphere do.
Newbie Boom: With the success of the 2018 turn-based video game Catalyst Game Labs decided to try their luck with Kickstarting a new line of products in 2020 in the hopes that, maybe, there would be more of a market for the tabletop line. The goal? $30,000. The result? $2.5 million dollars.
In 2022, they again decided to Kickstart a new line of products. The goal this time? $50,000. The Result? Almost $4 million dollars- by the second day.
Recursive Import: The game was imported to Japan, which resulted in a Studio Nue redesign of the mechs based on Macross/Dougram designs.
Then came double secret recursion, when the Studio Nue designs were re-imported to the US and used to illustrate different Mechs for the Solaris VII expansion.
Thanks to some very heavy SNAFUs with the licensing, several of the original BattleMechs (based off of 'Mechs from various Japanese anime and manga, most prominently Super Dimension Fortress Macross) are now considered Unseen. Many of the designs made their way back into the canon, now sufficiently redesigned that the lawyers wouldn't pick fights over them... and then Harmony Gold, the original inciters of the litigations, went after them again anyway, resulting in more unsee-ing in some works out of an abundance of caution. Finally stopped in 2017: MechWarrior: Online developer Piranha Games successfully argued in court that Tatsunoko never owned the IP they licensed to Harmony Gold, getting the claim dismissed with prejudice, and BattleTech's Paradox and Harebrained Schemes won a similar judgement in 2018, effectively ending Harmony Gold's vendetta against the franchise for good. See the accompanying page for the full, ugly story.
The second BattleTech novel ever published, The Sword and the Dagger has never been reprinted. This was due to it originally being contracted to Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and the two of them passed it on to Ardath Mayhar, who actually wrote it. As such, FASA and later Catalyst Game Labs were left uncertain of how the legal rights surrounding the book actually shook out. Combined with the fact that it suffered from considerable Early-Installment Weirdness and consequently didn't fit into the larger BattleTech universe particularly well, and it was decided that trying to bring it back was just too much of a headache for anyone to want to deal with, especially after Mayhar's death in 2012.
Word of God: In-universe, speculation that the "Minnesota Tribe" that raided through Combine space near the start of the Second Succession War are remnants of The Not-Named Clan who survived the Trial of Annihilation is popular. There is a fair amount of in-universe evidence to support this, but it's all fairly circumstantial. Out-of-universe, authors and developers in charge of curating BattleTech's history have stated that the Minnesota Tribe is indeed Clan Wolverine, but have so far not revealed anything about where they've been or what they've been doing since the Second Succession War.
of the mechs based on Macross/Dougram designs.