Battle Tech / Tropes G To O

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G

• Galactic Superpower: The Star League in the past. Each of the Great Houses and the Clans as a collective have ambitions to recreate it with themselves as its rulers.
• Game Changer: There are multiple examples in the setting, chief amongst which is the battlemech itself. Due to the restrictions on warfare put down by the Ares Conventions, the Inner Sphere needed a new, highly mobile, compact, destructive and very logistics-independent war machine to fight in the kind of structured, skirmish-based warfare that would ensue, and the Battlemech gave them all that and, as an additional bonus on top, functioned as a way to preserve power in a Feudal Future by making it the favoured weapon of war for the noble class.
• Gang Initiation Fight: The Clans military have a very similar principle, where a cadet must participate in live fire battles against several experienced members and win at least once in order to become part of the caste.
• Gargle Blaster: The PPC, so called because it can take your head clean off. It's four shots of grain alcohol diluted with two shots of another liquor associated with one of the great political powers - peppermint schnapps (Steiner), bourbon (Davion), ouzo (Marik), plum wine (Liao), sake (Kurita), and various others for minor powers, regions, and Clans... or just more grain alcohol for the Periphery PPC. It's popular throughout in-universe fiction as a Mechwarrior's drink, when "real" ones usually prefer something that won't make their mouths numb.
  • A drink mentioned in the Jade Phoenix trilogy called the fusionnaire is described as needing to be drunk quickly, lest it dissolve the enamel of the drinker’s teeth. It’s pretty much orange and burning flavored.
• Gatling Good: Rotary Autocannons, and some machinegun models.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: RACs like to jam up if you fire them like machineguns, making them of questionable utility due to their range and accuracy compared to the slower-firing but non-jam-prone autocannons.
  • However, the Clans have eventually, in addition to their own RAC models, developed the Hyper-Assault Gauss Rifle (HAG for short) - they are given a rating of 20, 30, or 40. What does this stand for? How many rounds it fires in a single combat round - bear in mind the above-mentioned RACs fire at most 5/6 times per round depending on the caliber.
  • Depending on the Artist, some Ultra or even LB-X Autocannons take the form of large gatling cannons. From the somewhat reasonable Arm Cannon of the Atlas II◊ to the utterly unrestrained monument to munitions found on the Burrock◊.
• Gender Is No Object: Most of the factions do not discriminate on the basis of gender, and some of the best leaders and warriors in the setting have been female. Marion Marik (about the only leader who didn't maul the Periphery during the formation of the Star League), Katrina Steiner (the political mind behind the Federated Commonwealth) and Sandra Noruff (the mother of the SLDF) are all prominent examples. Even the male dominated Draconis Combine was rebuilt after a civil war by Coordinator Siriwan McAllister. Natasha Kerensky, aka "The Black Widow", is considered one of the three best Mechwarriors (Kai Allard-Liao and Phelan Kell/Ward have their supporters) of the 31st century. The Taurian Concordat and the Magistracy of Canopus were founded by women. The Clans play this totally straight; all castes see a close to even gender ratio at every rank and no one bats an eye at a female Khan.
• General Failure: While they pop up in every faction, the Lyran Commonwealth's "Social Generals", who achieve their positions through money and connections, are responsible for the most economically powerful faction in the setting having one of the weaker armies in the Inner Sphere. Other factions do have have similar cases but have ways of dealing with them that the business minded House Steiner isn't willing to use.
  • Part of the reason why the Clans eventually began to lose to Inner Sphere forces; because of the Clan's Honor Before Reason attitude, the Combat Pragmatist generals of the Inner Sphere began to exploit the tunnel-vision of Clan commanders, with ambushes and various other nefarious tactics. It doesn't help that Clanners are promoted solely on combat prowess, rather than on their ability to actually command people. ^note This was even lampshaded during the formation of the Clans; Operation Klondike quotes a retired SLDF Master Sergeant's thoughts on the Clans' then-new promotion system as, "I think we both can remember some lance and company commanders that were good shots but couldn't lead themselves out of a well-lit parking lot."
  • Both of the above cases started to rectify themselves due to sheer necessity. House Steiner's brief merger with the more military minded Davions purged their officer corps of the worst examples and while Katherine's takeover set things back a little the Lyran Alliance's military isn't the same organization as it was during the Succession Wars. After the Great Refusal many Clan officers simply began disregarding their traditional rules of engagement when fighting Spheroids and one ComStar observer noted that whenever a Clan officer was defeated due to Honor Before Reason his subordinates caught on and weren't fooled the next time round. By the 3070s both the Lyrans and the Invading Clans successfully engaged the Word of Blake in large scale warfare and the ranks of Commanders, Generals, Star Colonels and Galaxy Commanders were more capably staffed; with leaders like Fredrick Steiner and Ulric Kerensky (strong strategic minds as well as capable warriors) having become the norm rather than the exception in their respective factions.
• General Ripper: The Draconis Combine and Capellan Confederation are infamous for these. The Word of Blake was commanded by nothing but these.
  • An infamous historical example was Star League general Amos Forlough, also known as the Baby Killer. His preferred methods were razing cities from orbit and executing a tenth of a planet's population (literally decimation) to quell rebellions.
• Genius Bruiser: Most Clanners fit this trope. Especially Elementals.
  • Some Clan sourcebooks actually point out the stereotype of Dumb Muscle existing even among the Clans, and how many Elementals have proven otherwise. The RPG rules codify this, as their intelligence has the same range as anyone else's. This is all but enforced for Elementals. . . if they want to attain high ranks and Bloodnames, especially competing against MechWarriors or AeroPilots, they need to be cunning and play to their strengths. A Trial of Bloodright randomly gives one warrior the choice of how to fight (hand-to-hand or in 'Mechs/fighters/armor), the other of where. If an Elemental wins the "how" decision against a MechWarrior or AeroPilot, they can pulp them in hand-to-hand combat. If they lose, they'll have to get creative to defeat an opponent in a vehicle that masses at least ten times what their single suit of BattleArmor does.
  • Hanse Davion is this as well. A cultured, erudite, well-educated man, one of the most magnificent of Magnificent Bastards the setting has to offer... and a pilot who has canonically ripped other 'Mechs arms off and beaten them to spare parts with them.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: One of the (more sadistic) options Mechs have for attacking Infantry actually has a point of use in that it saves ammo although generally when one can get away with it one uses a machine gun or a flamer for anti infantry.
  • Actually best employed against battle armor. Even the biggest 'Mech foot will usually only get one or two troopers out of a conventional infantry platoon, there's a significant to-hit penalty for trying to kick things in your own hex, and missing forces a roll to avoid toppling your own machine by accident.
  • This is a valid tactic against enemy 'Mechs that have fallen. A 50 ton 'Mech curb-stomping its downed adversary is every bit as effective as it sounds, and the tabletop game's fluff makes several mentions of cockpits being crushed under giant metal feet.
  • In canon, a disputed use of this caused the bitter feud between Wayne Waco and Jamie Wolf. Waco claimed that a Dragoon 'mech had deliberately crushed his son underfoot, who had ejected from his crippled 'mech. The Dragoons denied it (either denying outright that it happened or denying it was deliberate), but the incident would culminate in the Waco Rangers assaulting Outreach as part of the Word of Blake's attempt to decapitate the Dragoons early in the Jihad.
• Glass Cannon: Many designs that sacrifice armor for firepower. Of the few standard examples there many long-range support mechs who are not expected to fight in close combat, the Hollanders who are basically light mechs built around big guns, the Hunchback IIC, the purposely underarmored Clan mech with the goal of being the last ride of the dishonored or deathseekers past their prime, and the Hellbringer (Loki), a 65-ton Clan mech well known for its significant firepower potential in a highly customizable chassis that does its job well at the expense of being comparatively thin-armored for its weight class.
• Global Currency: While individual states still issue their own currencies, they largely operate secondary to one currency that is accepted equally everywhere—the C-Bill (ComStar Bill). C-Bills have their value backed by the highly important resource of HPG transmission time, and tend to be a lot more stable in value over any given period than the House currencies as a result. Mercenaries are particularly fond of them due to this. The C-Bill wasn't originally meant to be a currency, just a certificate of purchase for HPG transmission time. As HPG transmission time became more and more a commodity, the C-Bill became a de facto currency backed by it. The different prices for purchasing in each realm's national currency became exchange rates. ComStar eventually embraced the evolution, since it helped strengthen their N.G.O. Superpower status.
  • In the Dark Age era the C-Bill value massively dropped when HPG communications were shut down, shifting the economy to the local national currencies, and in some cases barter, particularly with ammunition among the Mercenaries.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: It may be space feudalism but gender equality is nearly a completely dead issue. Three of the most destructive and vindictive leaders shown on-page are female.
  • To wit, there's one Ax-Crazy Dragon Lady (Romano Liao), one ComStar leader who wants to plunge the finally recovering galaxy back to the good old dark ages where they control everything (Myndo Waterly), and Katherine Steiner-Davion, who apparently started out as the Daddy's Little Villain to the Magnificent Bastard of the entire franchise, Hanse Davion. Unfortunately for a lot of people, Hanse died prematurely of natural causes and no one else in Katherine's family had a clue of how to deal with their budding sociopath. It took her all of about 3 years to depose or kill all members of her family that stood between her and absolute power. And that's just the first half of her reign...
• Godwin's Law: Used In-Universe. While Hitler is still occasionally used, the name Stefan Amaris has become synonymous with evil. One of the few things every faction is willing to agree on is that he was a monster and some people in the Periphery even express some concern that they, being descended from Rim Worlds refuges, might be distantly related to House Amaris. The background information has featured cases where the writer's enemy is compared or equated to Amaris.
  • Among the Clans (who idolize the Star League and thus view Amaris as pretty much Satan in human form) a unit declared Dezgra (dishonored due to serious breaches of honor or major defeats), in addition to receiving the worst supplies, recruits, weapons and general treatment, has to replace their traditional insigna with the symbol of House Amaris. In other words, Amaris is considered to embody dishonor and disgrace.
• Godzilla Threshold: The means in which the Draconis Combine warns the Federated Commonwealth about ComStar's "Operation Scorpion": the Combine has reverse-engineered and developed their own secret Black Box hyperspace radios, like the ones the Commonwealth used to bypass the HPG interdiction ComStar imposed on them to interced in the Fourth Succession War. The medium helped infer the dire urgency of the message as well: Theodore Kurita absolutely could not let ComStar know that he was apprised of their subterfuge, and he considered it an acceptable price to pay to reveal to Davion that the Dracs had Black Boxes of their own in order to send the warning.
• Gone Horribly Right: After conquering the Periphery States, the Star League created a system of economic and technological dependance to prevent the new territories from becoming self-sufficient and rebellious again. Advanced terraforming, power, and water generation systems that only the League could provide, and that they could cut off again if a Periphery state didn't play ball. This kept them in line for 2 centuries, until the Star League collapsed. Cut off from the vital trade and technology, countless Periphery worlds withered and died, their populations forced to escape or perish, as planned.
  • ComStar created the Explorer Corps to locate General Kerensky's Exodus fleet. One of their ships, the Outbound Light, succeeded by stumbling upon the Clan Smoke Jaguar homeworld of Huntress. This gave the Crusader Clans an excuse to launch their invasion of the Inner Sphere.
  • ComStar itself is an example of this as of the story at the beginning of the Second Succession War sourcebook. Previous books implied that Blake’s ideals were twisted into the Cargo Cult idea by Toyama. The story in 2SW reveals that Blake practically ordered Toyama to create the religion around him in order to perpetuate the kind of mindset that would protect knowledge into the future. What Blake didn’t consider was the eventual formation of the Word of Blake and their Holy War. Kind of shortsighted when looking at examples such as Fundamentalism, the Crusades et al...
  • This is the general consensus, both in and out of universe, on the Ares Conventions. Sure, they stopped the profligate use of weapons of mass destruction and civilian massacres that typified pre-Star League warfare, but in exchange they legitimized conventional warfare as a means of settling disputes, leading to generstions-long grudges and protracted conflicts that may have ended up costing more lives in the long run. Of the two states that refused to sign the Conventions, one (the United Hindu Collective) refused because of this explicit reason, seeing the Conventions as legitimization of warfare as a political tool.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Any battlemech with arms is capable of throwing a punch, with more articulation in the arm resulting in better punches. For many pilots, it's a last-ditch resort, but some machines, like the 95-ton Banshee "close assault" 'mech, are meant to charge right into a target's face and get personal.
• Goomba Stomp: Death From Above attacks.
• Gratuitous Latin: Present in ComStar and Word of Blake. Lampshaded with the latter's Elite Mooks:
  "Ten years ago, if you had mentioned the words 'Manei Domini' to anyone, you could expect either a confused head-tilt reaction or a correction for your bad Latin."
• The Great Offscreen War: The Age of War, Reunification War, The Star League Civil War and the Succession Wars were this at the game's creation, with the latter in particular serving as a backstory justification for the near-Scavenger World state of the Inner Sphere and the low-scale, raiding-based combat represented by the game's rules. Later technical manuals and lore snippets would expand the setting to the point that playing an era-appropriate game with technology from most of these eras is possible, barring early Age of War as much of the technologies the game is based on (including BattleMechs themselves) had not been invented yet.
  • The War of 3039 was this for a time, as FASA skipped the timeline ahead from 3030 to the eve of the Clan Invasion in 3050 with the 20 Year Update. Later sourcebooks and materials filled in the details.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Everybody thinks they're doing the right thing. Everybody else would disagree. Pretty much any faction can be good or bad based on if you're with them or against them. For the Federated Commonwealth, the Fourth Succession Wat was a masterful military campaign that united two great nations and promised a new age of prosperity for the Inner Sphere. To the other three Successor States, it was two huge powers teaming up to curb-stomp anyone who got in their way. If you're a Crusader, the Clan Invasion is justified as uplifting the Inner Sphere barbarians and restoring the grand dream of the Star League they so carelessly destroyed. To a citizen of the Inner Sphere, it's unbridled aggression by a Proud Warrior Race practicing Blue-and-Orange Morality. Even factions that traditionally get the "villain" treatment in fiction (Capellans and Clan Smoke Jaguar to name but two) are frequently given sympathetic traits and motivations, and the factions traditionally portrayed as heroic (Federated Suns/Commonwealth, Draconis Combine, Warden Clan Wolf) are noted to place more emphasis on achieving their goals than being morally beyond reproach.
  • Black-and-Gray Morality: The Jihad, with the Word of Blake clearly cast as villains in and out of universe, fell into this. The gray factions also tended to get darker. The Back Story involving the fall of the Star League also fell here; the SLDF was pretty ruthless but they were saints compared to Amaris the Usurper's forces.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: BattleMechs can lose limbs due to structural damage or a Critical Hit, but the limbs do not simply 'disappear' from the map. Another 'Mech (or the same one that lost the limb!) can go over to the hex where the limb was lost, pick it up, and proceed to brutally club enemy 'Mechs with the severed arm/leg/head. This is actually surprisingly practical—trees used as clubs will shatter after a single hit, and finding a good girder can be hard if you're not playing in a city map or are trying to avoid collateral damage. The club increases the 'Mech's physical combat damage and in no way inhibits weapons fire from the 'Mech carrying it, and it can't be damaged the way a traditionally carried axe or sword could.
  • Historically, Hanse Davion did exactly this in the Battle for the NAIS research center on New Avalon during the 4th Succession War, using a severed Marauder arm as a weapon after his 'Mech's hand-carried PPC was destroyed in a physical attack.

H

• Hellish Horse: The iconography of Clan Hell's Horses, whose name was based on a genetically altered equine species that happened to be carnivorous.
• Hereditary Republic: About half of the states in the Inner Sphere and Periphery are nominally republics but consistently have a member of the same family as their head of state (most of the rest being explicit hereditary monarchies, with true republics being scarce). Particularly notable examples include:
  • The Terran Hegemony, which was nominally a democratic republic with an elected Director-General, but after being founded by James McKenna, every subsequent Director-General was a member of the Cameron family and a succession reform in 2392 made it nearly impossible for anyone who wasn't a Cameron to become Director-General. Even when Stefan Amaris usurped control of the Hegemony, he paid lip service to its democratic process with a sham election to try to establish his legitimacy.
  • The Free Worlds League, which has an elected parliament whose power can be ignored more-or-less at will by the Captain-General, an office that is almost always held by a member of the Marik family.
  • The Capellan Confederation, where the Chancellor is virtually always a member of the Liao family, and which has also become a People's Republic of Tyranny.
  • The Outworlds Alliance, which has an elected parliament and a president but their society is so conservative that the presidency is always held by the Avellar family. Unlike most examples of this trope the Alliance is still quite democratic and a leader in human rights (along with the Magistracy of Canopus) in a setting dominated by monarchies and juntas.
  • The Magistracy of Canopus executive officer is elected Autocrat who serves for life or until removal. This has almost always been a Woman from House Centrella as the only two times they elected someone from outside the family, they made such a mess of things that there isn't any political will to elect someone else. That being said, each planet elects a representative to the Central Committee which has powers and responsibilities in line with most Legislative branches, if slanted in favor of the Magestrix. Not the most democratic of republics, but still a republic.
  • In the Free Rasalhague Republic, all positions are either directly or indirectly elected by the people, and there are express limits on term length and number of terms anyone can hold. People elect World Leaders (Valdherres) and Dukes (Hertigs) to the Parliament (Riksdag), and Parliament elects one of their number to Prince (Riksforestandare), who serves for a term of ten years and cannot hold more than two terms. The people don't directly elect the Prince, but can show their support or disfavor in a nonbinding referrendum that takes place before the final Parliamentary vote.
  • The Republic of the Sphere, which is trying to avert this as per their "No More Nobles" ideology, but has already been forced to place nobles to the important administrative posts since they were the only ones who knew how to run planetary governments.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: From a ‘Mech standpoint, the Blackjack suffered from this until the 3rd Succession War due to issues with the initial production run that were solved quickly but ruined its reputation. It was only when a Federated Suns officer used them to excellent effect against a Kurita officer who was obsessed with light ‘Mech Zerg rushes that the Blackjack finally started to recover... when the Omni version dumped its reputation in the toilet by the initial export manufacturing run requiring proprietary parts instead of allowing the use of Clan salvage without expensive adapters.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The Principality of Regulus, one of the major regions of the Free Worlds League, who suffered greatly at the hands of the Word of Blake's nuclear attacks eventually got sick of it. Their response was nuclear bombardment of Blakist strongholds without any regard for collateral damage to civilians or biospheres. Unfortunately they got a bit trigger happy and basically ended up committing genocide on unaligned targets just to be sure. The other factions, particularly the Confederation (who had to battle the Blakists alone), did this as well to a lesser extent.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Attempted in-universe and defied. One historian from what used to be the Rim Worlds Republic was desperate to find something, anything that would prove that Stefan Amaris wasn't as big of a monster as he was portrayed as. However he lamented in the book he published that not only was Stefan Armaris as much of a monster as popular history protrayed him, he uncovered a few more atrocities Amaris committed that went unrecorded.
  As a citizen of the Outworlds Alliance and a descendant of the Rim Worlders, I had hoped that in the course of our research on this volume I might find some mitigating factor to modify history's judgement of my most famous countryman. I regret to say that I have found none. As far as Amaris is concerned, the ancient slogan applies: Ig fallou blaos, dem ressensu glottuo. ("What you see is what you get," or, literally, "if you catch this, you will have to eat it.") Amaris may have been worse than even past historians have claimed.
• Historical In-Joke: The Reagan Defenses that were invented during the Star League era were named after "an obscure Terran leader who had dreamed of a similar system.”
  • The drone warships that were part of the Reagan Defense system were known as "Caspar" drones, after Caspar Weinberger, Reagan's Secretary of Defense. And the term Space Defense System itself is commonly abbreviated SDS, which recalls the SDI, or "Strategic Defense Initiative", better known as "Star Wars".
• Hit Points: Generally split between armor and internal structure points. Incoming damage eliminates armor first (it's ablative); once that's gone, further damage to the relatively 'soft' internals forces rolls for possible critical hits, and enough of it will of course take out the location struck (and possibly the unit with it).
  • Certain components also have hit points, but don't have Critical Existence Failure like armor (and to a lesser extent structure). Engines, gyros, sensors, and even pilots all gradually degrade from damage. For instance, the first critical hit on the engine damages the shielding, inflicting a permanent waste heat penalty. A second hit worsens the penalty. The third hit makes it so the reactor can no longer contain its heat to sustain the reaction and the mech is down for the count. Gyro damage causes piloting skill penalties for one hit and then permanently floors the mech on the second. Sensor damage causes to-hit penalties when targeting, and pilot injury causes a chance for the pilot to get KO'd and makes it gradually harder to resist getting KO'd or wake back up, eventually to the point where the pilot is killed.
• Hollywood Genetics: Surprisingly averted with the Clan eugenics program. While they carefully control genetic pairings, they prefer to let nature determine the outcome and refuse to do any tinkering of their own (aside from the realistic purpose of correcting obvious random defects). Played more straight with some of the "modified" flora and fauna they introduced to many of their homeworlds, though the results are more reasonable than in most sci-fi.
• Hollywood Science: Supposedly the constant war and strife has nearly "beaten humanity back to the stone age", but not only can people deal with the existence of future tech, but they can handle and repair it, what would be impossible for today. It was eventually retconned that "back to the Stone Age" was hyperbole and while some planets did see widespread technological collapse, most did not and the Inner Sphere's average tech level never fell below the 25th Century's.
• Hollywood Tactics: The Clans were infamous for this, thanks to their Honor Before Reason habits and cultural emphasis on single-combat prowess. Centuries of fighting highly structured trials for combat had left them rigid and inflexible and unable to easily cope with a foe that refused to fight fair. For the first year or so of the invasion, this didn't matter because their vastly superior technology let them curb stomp ever opponent anyway. It finally came to a head in the Battle of Tukayyid, when the seven invading Clans fought ComStar for control of Terra. All the Clans fought separately, none of them made even a pretense of working together. Despite the warnings of ilKhan Ulric Kerensky that they needed to prepare for a long campaign and should therefore stockpile extra ammo and replacement parts and configure their omnimechs with mostly energy weapons, most of the Clans came in expecting a brief, short battle and configured their mechs to run heavy on ammunition based weapons without deep supplies. When faced with ComStar traps or entrenched positions, too many Clan commanders chose to attempt to charge straight up the middle and suffered heavy casualties as a result. The end result was that Clan Wolf was the only one to achieve both of its objectives, while Clans Ghost Bear and Jade Falcon both achieved one objective (and the Falcons were promptly forced back off theirs again) and the other four Clans all failed utterly.
• Honor Before Reason: The Clans, all the way into Idiot Ball territory.
  • Inverted by the Black Angus Boys mercenary group; their motto is "Dishonor before death!"
  • The Kuritans got in on this at times too. This may have something to do with their fascination with all things feudal Japanese, and it occasionally got them their collective butts handed to them, such as when they tried to challenge the Clans to the sort of straight dueling that both parties favored, but for which the Draconians were woefully underequipped and initially under-skilled.
• Honorable Warrior's Death: The Clans zig-zag this trope: They are a warrior culture developed from centuries in isolation from the rest of human space, where honour is everything and the Warrior Caste are in charge. Clan warriors are taught from decanting both that the way they gain honour is to fight and win for their Clan, but also that all waste is abhorrent. This leads to the paradoxical situation of a warrior culture whose warriors don't mind dying in battle, but will be shamed post-mortem if they're found to have wasted their lives (or their precious BattleMechs) in a non-productive matter; Clan Warriors are expected to accept hegira once a battle turns against them. However, warriors have a shelf-life: If they don't get a Bloodname by their early thirties they are designated Solahma and considered 'wasted' by default, becoming either garrison soldiers, frontline Cannon Fodder or live-fire target practice for Clan cadets. Solahma warriors, because their lives cannot be 'wasted' by default, are therefore driven to obtain as glorious a death as possible because that's the only way left for their life to have any value at all to their Clan.
• Hover Tank: The science behind them is based off of real life science. There's no antigravity or other stuff like that here. Instead, BattleTech's hovercraft operate on the same principle as modern hovercraft, riding on a cushion of air, usually contained in some manner of rubber or similar skirt. Hovercraft and hovertanks are among the fastest ground vehicles and are capable of amphibious operations as they can skim over water just as well as land, but they're comparatively fragile and even the heaviest hovertanks prior to the introduction of the superheavy class (which is not permitted in most official gameplay formats) are only 50 tons while wheeled vehicles can go up to 80 tons and tracked vehicles and 'Mechs can go up to 100 tons before being considered superheavy vehicles of their respective types.
• Hufflepuff House: The Free Worlds League kinda just.. sat around, for the majority of the universe's history.^note  Being at war constantly with yourself has a tendency to cause that... The FWL became much more important during the Clan Invasion and the Jihad, but it is still rarely featured in the novels.
  • The Periphery states and the Homeworld Clans also count, though exceptions occur when they get their own sourcebooks.
• Humans Are White: One of the more notable settings to completely avert this.
• Humongous Mecha: The main feature of the setting and the core gameplay focus is BattleMechs, 20-100 ton walking war machines that dominate the battlefield. BattleMechs or simply just 'Mechs come in many forms from humanoid to Chicken Walker to Walking Tank and bipedal, tripedal, and quadrupedal. A small handful are even Transforming Mecha. 'Mechs are divided into four main weight classes - light (20-35 tons), medium (40-55 tons), heavy (60-75 tons), and assault (80-100 tons), as well as two far less common classes - ultralight (under 20 tons) and superheavy (over 100 tons). There are also non-military IndustialMechs and police and private security SecurityMechs. The series even has a trademark on the word "Mech".
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Both Victor Davion-Steiner and Hohiro Kurita have one for them, Galen Cox and Shin Yodama, respectively. Both the two Great House heirs owe their lives to their perrennial aides more than once over. The two even teamed up once, being the only two amongst all the Great House heirs that passed a Secret Test of Character at the Outreach Summit during the Clan Invasion.

I

• Iconic Sequel Character: A lot of mechs after Mechwarrior 3 and the Clan Invasion got this. The Bushwacker, Mad Cat, Shadow Cat, Vulture, Thor, and Daishi all got his treatment. The Mad Cat and Bushwacker the most.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Quite a few planets have less than pleasant names. A few of these include The Rack, Pain, Bad News, Badlands, Tellman's Mistake, Botany Bay, Desolate Plains, Don't, Goetterdaemmerung, Hell's Paradise, Last Chance, No Return, Necromo, Sisyphus' Lament and Vulture's Nest.
• Implacable Man: Some 'Mechs can take a tremendous amount of punishment and keep on going. The most notable is probably the Atlas, but any 'Mech with heavy armour, no or few explosive ammo bins (Or CASE/CASE II to protect them) and a normal or compact engine can happily lose its arms and side torsos and still be capable of fighting. Such 'Mechs are generally nicknamed 'Zombie' units since only decapitation or engine destruction can kill them quickly.
  • Oddly enough, the light scout Spider SDR-5V 'Mech fits this description perfectly: it only has two medium lasers as weapons, and mounts 8 jump jets with no heat sinks. However, the two lasers are mounted in the center torso, with the majority of the jump jets mounted in the legs and center torso as well. Taking off the Spider''s arms, or even the left and right torso sections, doesn't slow down the 'Mech at all (though the pilot might be a little worse for wear): it can still dish out the exact same amount of damage and have the same impressive mobility until the head or the center torso is destroyed.
• Impossibly Graceful Giant: Averted. 'Mechs are basically tanks with legs. With a trained pilot and properly calibrated systems, they become agile runners, can negotiate rugged ground, and throw solid punches, but precise hand coordination is difficult. It's possible to use waldos to directly control the hands and arms on 'Mechs, but it's nearly impossible to use them for any sort of graceful action - you could not for example, use both arms to operate a giant 'Mech-sized shovel, without repeatedly jabbing the ten ton shovel into your mech.
  • Which is as realistic as anything else in the game gets, but raises the question again, why use the humanoid form at all?
    • The answer is that they often don't. A lot of 'Mechs, particularly Clan 'Mechs, can't be said to resemble humanoids at all. Bipedal and two-armed, yes. Even the freaky ones tend to have two legs and what could charitably be called arms (Or more accurately side-mounted gun turrets). Humanoid? Not quite.
    • Some, like one of the most Humanoid ones, the Atlas are humanoid because of one thing: fear. That's the entire point of the Atlas in general, that it's so big, so strong, and looks so fricking terrifying with its Skull for a Head, that the other guy would crap his pants and start running.
    • Others are designed to "look cool" in-universe, and tend to succeed among the fans. The Centurion, with it's slender lines, Arm Cannon, and head crest (holding the 'Mech's sensor equipment and designed to be reminiscent of a plumed helmet) invokes the romantic image of the armored soldiers of days past. Making your 'Mech design attractive as well as functional is just good business.
  • It is possible to play this straight in the RPG, though it requires a highly skilled pilot and thousands of hours of computer programming to pull off. Then the pilot can do anything from moving through rough terrain more easily to Flipping the Bird with a 100 ton bipedal warmachine.
• Inappropriate Pride: After the Kentares Massacre during the First Succession War, most of the DCMS units that took part were either demoralized or outright disgusted by what they had been ordered to do. Not so the Second Sword of Light. Ever since the massacre, every Second Sword BattleMech has Kentares V's flag painted on its back. Not as penance, but as a sign of pride that the unit did their duty, no matter what.
• Informed Obscenity: The Clans consider all words that are connected to birth or pregnancy extremely obscene, and to call someone a Freebirth (a human who has been conceived and born the natural way and not grown from the Clan's artificial "Iron Wombs") is among the worst of insults.
  • They also view contractions this way, as they see them as a corruption of the pure, perfect language of the Star League.
• Insert Grenade Here: Infantry with jet packs or grappel rods can conduct "swarm" attacks on 'Mechs, which essentially means "climbing onto the 'Mech and stuffing demo charges into the leg joints". While not likely to destroy a 'Mech alone, swarm attacks are much-feared because of their ability to cripple them and leave them vulnerable to heavier units, or worse, knock them down. It's much easier to reach the cockpit of 'Mech that's flat on it's face, and then blow in the canopy...
  • In the fluff there are recorded instances of single people on foot taking down BattleMechs via creative use of this trope to either kill the pilot or get inside the cockpit and hijack the 'Mech.
• Interface Spoiler: A subtle one in the Wars Of Reaving sourcebook. Each page in the book is framed by stone tablets with the emblems of the original twenty Clans on them, but as the book progresses, these tablets change to depict a rough chronology of Clan history, with drastic changes over the last third of the book. Clans that are Absorbed into other clans have their tablets turned blank, Clans that are Abjured (considered exiled from Clan society) are covered in pyramids, and Clans that are Annihilated have their tablets shattered or bloodstained. Of special note are two Clans that change names, and the Not-Named Clan's tablet being covered with rubble.
  • There are also lines of text beneath some of the tablets. The final line is between the Clan Wolf and Clan Wolverine tablet. Wolverine's tablet gains its rubble covering on Page 7, so unless you're paying close attention, you'll miss the final line, Foreshadowing the entire theme of the book: the Clans have forgotten their past, and thus are condemned to repeat it.:
    HARK CHILDREN OF THE CLANS,
    TO THE WISDOM OF KERENSKY
    AND YOUR FOREBEARS,
    REMEMBER IT AS YOU STRIVE
    TOWARD THE FUTURE.
    WISDOM IS THE POWER
    UNBROKEN BY THE FUTURE,
    STAINED BY THE PAST.
    IT IS THE WAY TO HEED;
    THOSE WHO FAIL FIND
    THEIR FLAME EXTINGUISHED.
• In-Universe Nickname: Hunchback variants that replace the 'Mech's signature shoulder-mounted AC/20 with anything else are collectively referred to as "Swaybacks" in-universe due to the dramatic change in their profile. Note however that despite the nickname implying that Swayback Hunchbacks are hobbled by the replacing their main gun, many variants are still extremely dangerous, sometimes even arguably moreso than the original. In particular, the HBK-4P replaces the AC/20 with six Medium Lasers in addition to retaining the two arm-mounted medium lasers from the standard HBK-4G model, freeing it from the ammo limitations of the original and doing 33% more damage when performing an Alpha Strike.
• It's All About Me: Not an uncommon attitude among less admirable characters in particular, but Vladimir Ward may just take the cake, shown once to privately but in all seriousness believe that all of human history up to that point had to turn out exactly the way it did just so that he could return to the Inner Sphere and conquer it.

J

• Jack of All Stats: Most of 40-55 ton Medium and 60-75 ton Heavy 'Mechs. The workhorses of most armies. Medium and heavy 'Mechs generally have a balance of speed, armor, and armament and can fill many roles, while light 'Mechs are usually limited to being either scouting forces or Glass Cannons and assault 'Mechs are generally limited to being nearly-immobile walls of armor and armament.
  • In particular, the Inner Sphere Bushwhacker is legendary for being purpose-built as a do-anything machine. It's a 55-ton slugger that can keep pace with Light mechs, has decent armor and packs a balanced loadout of missiles, autocannons and lasers that lets it punch well above its weight class.
• Japan Takes Over the World: Well, kind of. The Draconis Combine has one of the strongest militaries in the Inner Sphere, but it isn't actually Japan. Also, the power comes from their martial might and not their economy, and they're based more on romanticized vision of feudal Japan, and some of the worst aspects of 1930s Imperial Japan, than modern day Japan.
• Jetpack: Infantry can wear light jetpacks, which allow them to jump long distances. Some mechs mount Jump Jets, which is basically an integrated jetpack that runs on the 'Mechs fusion reactor. There are also single-use jump jets for mechs, which are used once then jettisoned; they're most often used for air-dropping 'mechs that don't have integral jump jets.
• The Jinx: The Dark Age-era Draconic Combine Fourth Dieron Regulars have a "cursed" White Zou, a heavy infanty battle armor. The Fourth lost every battle in which the White Zou participated, often with heavy casualties while the White Zou survived, even when it was deliberately placed in the unwinnable situations, since the Fourth believes that the "curse" will be broken if the White Zou is destroyed.
  • Gets even funnier when you realize that zou ^note 象, "zō" is in fact the Japanese word for "elephant".

K

• Karma Houdini: Katherine Steiner-Davion, who was responsible for fracturing the Federated Commonwealth to satisfy her lust for power, not only survived the Civil War, but even lived to the age of at least 100 as a warrior for Clan Wolf. Karma did catch up to her in a way: her "son" created from genetics of her and her brother Victor and born from an Iron Womb killed her when her megalomania reared its ugly head again and threatened his Clan.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Averted in the RPG, a katana isn't that different from any other sword; its a bit more accurate but also about eight times more expensive. However in the Draconis Combine earning the right to carry a katana and a wakizashi (by being inducted into the equivalent of their knightly order) is a requirement to advance beyond the rank of company commander in the DCMS.
• Kill It with Fire: Inferno rounds, which can overheat mechs and force them to shut down (making them a sitting duck), or trigger internal ammo explosions inside them. Of course, you can also imagine the effect that these weapons would have on exposed infantry.
  • Flamers, true to their name, vent superheated core plasma at targets and will crisp an infantry squad in no time. The Plasma Rifle and Plasma Cannon does the same, but even quicker, and from further away.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Averted. In terms of raw damage per ton, compactness, and ammunition independence, energy weapons rule the roost. . . at least, right up to where they overload their carrying platform's ability to handle their usually-copious waste heat too badly to actually use them all. This is why the vast majority of 'Mechs carry at least some energy armament, whether as primary weapons or just convenient backup. Ballistic and missile weapons find their niche where they either underbid the energy competition enough in the heat department (this is especially true on conventional vehicles, which can only carry single heat sinks and aren't allowed to field more energy weapons than those can handle but in exchange don't have to count ballistic/missile weapon heat at all) or where they offer capabilities that energy weapons just plain don't — like special-purpose munitions, indirect fire, or just the right unique combination of range and damage.
  • Kinetic weapons do have higher potential damages than energy weapons. The Autocannon/20 deals 20 damage per shot, the LRM-20 can deal 20 damage if all the missiles it, the SRM-6 can deal twelve (higher than most energy weapons, but edged out by some), and the Gauss Rifle deals 15, the same as the Clan ERPPC, but with 14 less heat. However, just about any weapon that gets much above ten damage starts to stray into Awesome, but Impractical territory, either through too much heat to effectively sink or prohibitively high costs in tons, crits, and ammo requirements (progressively heavier weapons have progressively fewer shots per ton allocated to ammo). Kinetic weapons also deal about half-to-a-quarter as much heat as they do damage; most energy weapons at best generate as much heat as they do damage. Units that can't spare the space or weight for extra heat sinks, but can spare it for ammunition, can get a lot of mileage out of ballistic and missile weapons.
• Klingon Scientists Get No Respect: Despite Clan dogma which emphasizes the virtues of all five castes, the warrior caste in most Clans only very grudgingly respect scientists and technicians, and have no respect for merchants and laborers. Even the most open-minded Clans see the civilians as a support system for the warriors, with the only notable exception being the Diamond Sharks (who consider their merchants to be a more subtle form of warrior), the Hell's Horses (who place more emphasis on combined arms strategies and less on politics that interfere with their own castes), and the Ghost Bears (whose emphasis on the strength of family results in higher regard for all the castes).
  • Justified and also deconstructed after the Wars of Reaving. The other castes distrust the Scientists (those that weren't executed, imprisoned or sterilized anyway); because a good number of them turned out to be traitors and murderers. However, when the current ilKhan at the time later decided to abuse his authority over who should be free from the "taint" of freeborns, it ultimately ended with the demise of both himself and his Clan's (the Steel Vipers), with the former being bludgeoned to death by the saKhan of the Star Adders for violating Clan law and the latter being subjected to a Trial of Annihilation for their Khan's grievously dishonorable conduct.
  • Clanners hold little regard for the lives of the technicians on their JumpShips and WarShips. A captured Clanner technician on an Inner Sphere ship is surprised at the advanced life support and protection suits that all of the workers are given when working in dangerous conditions.
  • This trope is also Deconstructed with Clan Smoke Jaguar. Turns out that being a Clan of mostly warriors and little to no scientist, engineers, and even basic workers, means that you have to raid other people for basic supplies. This lead to them having no allies during the Clan Invasion, Mechs and weapons that could not be replaced anywhere near fast enough, and lower caste members defecting to the Inner Sphere. There is a good reason Clan Smoke Jaguar no longer exists; their over-emphasis on the Warrior caste and completely ignorant eschewal of their other castes resulted in both Crippling Overspecialization and being Too Dumb to Live. This served as a begrudging lesson to be learned for the Clans as a whole and that is 'never undervalue the potential of your other castes besides your Warriors'. Even the Jade Falcons, one of the strictest clans when it comes to enforcing the caste system, value and honour their civilian castes per Nicholas Kerensky's vision and understand that their clan would be nothing with them. Interestingly, the first Khan of the Jaguars, Franklin Osis, sought to avert this trope during his reign while still keeping a heavy emphasis of martial prowess within his Clan. Unfortunately for him, after his reign ended, the less charismatic successors of him focused only on building the strength of the Warrior caste, and did little to nothing to improve their civilian castes to the point that they outright scorned their very existence within the Clan; thus, the Clan's self-destruction would slowly but eventually be ensured until it ultimately reached its breaking point after the Battle of Tukkayid.
  • As a whole the Clans are hypocrites. They consider themselves the most powerful warriors... because they have the most advanced equipment developed by the Scientist caste and maintained by the Technician caste. Clans that acknowledge the contributions of more than just the Warrior Caste (specifically the Battlemech Pilots) have the greatest stability. A point of pride is that most Clanners are genetically engineered by the Scientist caste, so they would literally not exist without them!

L

• Lady Land: The Magistracy of Canopus. It's mellowed out over time, though. To the point that the only big restriction on men is that they can't sit on the throne.
• Large and in Charge: Most command 'Mechs are in the heavy and assault weight classes; mostly because they can accommodate extra electronics, communications equipment and consoles.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Some say the Star League was hit by this, given their poor treatment of the Periphery States (and house Amaris in particular) during the Reunification War.
  • ilKhan Brett Andrews, the "Bloody Khan" of the Steel Vipers got hit hard with this at the end of the Wars of Reaving. After overseeing the Annihilation, Abjuration, and Absorption of several Clans during the war, Star Adder Khan Stanislov N'Buta turned around and declared a Trial of Reaving against Andrews and the Steel Vipers, using the exact same language and rhetoric he'd been using to label his enemies as "tainted". Andrew's response was to kill N'Buta with a laser when the challenge was earlier determined that they would fight each other Unaugmented. This serious breach of Clan conduct immediately came back to bite Andrews as he quickly got killed by N'Buta's saKhan and the charges of Reaving eventually got upgraded to Annihilation against the Steel Vipers.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Averted with the Unseen. Turned out exactly how you'd expect. But some of them have been given some design changes making them Reseens.
• Legacy Character The Bounty Hunter is an alias passed down between several different people, though this is not necessarily common knowledge in-universe. Still, given the length of time the Bounty Hunter has been active, most should at least suspect this trope is in play.
• Legally Ousted Leader: Normally in the Clans, a leader is removed from power when a dissatisfied underling challenges them to a Trial and wins. However, they do have some other options based on the situation. For example, after the Battle of Tukayyid, which the Clans lost largely due to failing follow the advice that IlKhan Ulric Kerensky gave them about how to prepare for the battle, the Crusader Clans orchestrated a vote in the Clan Grand Council to remove him from the position of IlKhan. The charges they used were blatantly false (genocide, claiming that the truce they were forced to agree to after losing the battle would result in "the pointless deaths of countless Clan warriors" over the 15 year period that they weren't allowed to advance toward Terra), but it was just a transparent excuse to remove him from power with a vote strictly along the Crusader/Warden political division within the Clans.
• Lensman Arms Race: The period from the start of Clan Invasion to the end of Jihad was the constant drive to research better weapons than the opposition had. The post-Jihad peace pretty much slowed it down to the crawl.
• Lethal Joke Item: Sure, laugh at that UrbanMech all you want, light mech pilots... until it gently reminds you that it's packing an AC/10.
  • Or the Capellan variant, which mounts an AC/20. Who's Laughing Now??
  • How about the Clan variant, the UrbanMech IIC, with its Ultra AC/10 and majorly improved speed of [a still slow but decent] 54 km/h?
  • The joke is officially now on everyone else◊, because there's a variant of UrbanMech that is now canonically armed with tactical nukes.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Common in the War-heavy setting like this. The first year of the Wars of Reaving for example was almost all about various Clans using the apparent "taint" as an excuse to attack other Clans.
  • The Great Houses pretty much owe their existence to this trope; as they were formed when the Terran Alliance left all of its colonies isolated and defenseless. The only option was to band together and swear fealty to a new authority.
  • The Word of Blake was only able to expand when the machinations of Katherine Steiner-Davion and Sun-Tzu Liao left many worlds (which came to be known as the Chaos March) in a state of almost total anarchy.
  • Katherine was notorious for using the threat of the Jade Falcons to expand her power base; she would leave border worlds undefended if they wouldn't swear fealty despite her illegal actions. This backfired when the Kell Hounds, Clan Wolf (in Exile) and a ton of mercenaries companies declared independence and formed the Arc Royal Defense Cordon to protect the Lyran Alliance when its own Archon wouldn't.
  • Primus Myndo Waterly of ComStar attempted to use the chaos of the Clan Invasion to take over the entire Inner Sphere. It backfired because three of the five Great Houses knew it was coming and even second line Clan units were capable of beating her forces in open combat. For her efforts Waterly got a bullet in the back of the head courtesy of Precentor Martial Focht.
  • The Clan Invasion only occurred because a ComStar exploration vessel accidentally jumped into the territory of the fervently Crusader Smoke Jaguars. Capitalizing on the fear that the Clans would be discovered by the Inner Sphere, the Jaguars convinced the Grand Council, which had previously been about evenly split on the issue, to attack first. Only the Wolves dissented and they could not win a Trial of Refusal as the odds were set at 4 to 1 against them.
• Lightning Bruiser: 'Mechs themselves. While in specific situations other types of battlefield units can hold an advantage over them, in general they are better armored, swifter, more maneuverable, and more heavily armed than anything else on the battlefield, barring an even bigger 'Mech cresting the hill in front of it.
  • For the Inner Sphere, the Charger is a prime example of this, being the fastest Assault 'Mech in existence. Sadly, due to being built as a scout 'Mech, the base variant carries almost no weapons at all.
  • Cavalry Heavies such as the Flashman and Kuma have this as their niche. Excellent speed and maneuverability, heavy armour and enough weapons to put the hurt on anything they encounter, but tend to require vulnerable components like XL Engines in order to function.
  • Clan 'Mechs tended to fit this trope better originally, due to their better technology. Then the Inner Sphere caught up...
  • Among 'Mechs themselves the more advanced heavy mechs and select few assault mechs are this, one of them being the Timber Wolf/Mad Cat.
  • The most triumphant example is probably the experimental Devastator MUSE EARTH, a 100-ton assault mech equipped with MASC and a Supercharger. Combined with its massive XXL Engine this allows it to achieve speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour for short periods.
  • Many heavy and assault Aerospace fighters are quite capable of engaging in dogfights with other heavy and medium weight craft as well as assaulting larger targets. Provided they avoid Interceptors that is.
  • Some models of Battlearmor are this compared to ordinary infantry; they shrug off small arms fire and can survive a few hits from medium grade support and vehicular weapons, can run over 30 kilometers per hour, and a squad numbering less than half a dozen can still bring down a Mech or slaughter an entire regular infantry platoon if left unchecked.
    • Most Battle Armor infantrymen out of their suits also fit here; as the physical requirements are stiff. Most of them are over 6 feet in height and very strong but they are also quite fast; having a few hundred pounds of muscle hitting you like a freight train makes them a threat outside their suits. Clan Elementals are a Clan eugenics phenotype that goes even further through breeding programs.
• Lightning Gun: The Particle Projection Cannon (PPC) looks like this when it fires but actually fires a supercharged stream of particles that melts the extremely advanced armor on BattleMechs.
• Light Is Not Good:
  • The Word Of Blake uses angelic motifs and names for their exclusive aerospace fighters, omnimechs and battlearmor. They're also one of the very few unambiguously evil factions in the whole setting.
  • Katherine Steiner-Davion attempts to invoke Light Is Good by wearing predominantly white clothing, but she is anything but; she is principally responsible for the dissolution of the Federated Commonwealth through murderous subterfuge (even so far as of the matricidal kind), character assassination, and general tyrannical misrule.
• Limit Break: Triple Strength Myomers will triple a mech's melee strength and greatly increase the mech's speed, but only when the mech is running very hot. Going above or below the recommended heat will reduce the benefits. A TSM mech needs to constantly fire its weapons in a careful manner in order to maintain its heat level - but good luck doing that when your targeting computer is malfunctioning from heat. A TSM boosted mech can curb-stomp fallen mechs and quite literally kick the legs off of lighter mechs.
• Lineage Comes from the Father: Averted. Clan warriors only have a claim to the bloodname of their genetic mother.
• Lingering Social Tensions: The Republic of the Sphere was rife with this issue. Created by worlds that were ceded from the Successor States' territories near Terra, the efforts to actually turn worlds that had belonged to five different nations were not great — Devlin Stone came up with the brilliant idea of simply ordering big chunks of the populations of each world to move to different Republic worlds. The idea was that this would force a melting pot that would cause everyone to abandon their previous national identities. The effect was that a lot of people were resentful of the fact that they'd been forced to leave their homes, many of which had been their family homes for centuries, and forced to go to other planets where the people already living there resented them for forcing out the other people who'd previously lived there. The end result was that the Republic of the Sphere had a significant amount of underlying social tension that was never dealt with and was part of the contributing factors in its eventual collapse after the HPG network stopped functioning.
• Loads and Loads of Rules: The basic boardgame is essentially designed to provide for reasonably colorful and detailed 'Mech-vs.-'Mech duels and does in fact do that pretty well. It increasingly slows down as the forces involved on both sides grow larger, however...and that's before you add additional unit types like "conventional" combat vehicles, infantry, or aerospace assets, all of which have their own additional special-case rules (with the last in particular being basically on their own wholly new rules level), let alone go past the "standard" ruleset into the "advanced" and "experimental" optional add-on material that takes up at least two full hardcover tomes of its own (Tactical Operations and Strategic Operations) plus whatever updates are needed to keep up with in-universe development.
  • Once all was said and done, the complete rules for Battletech take up six books: Total Warfare (the base combat rules), TechManual (construction rules), Tactical Operations (advanced technology and optional rules), Strategic Operations (rules for playing strategic-scale, battalion-to-regiment-sized battles, the very first draft of the Alpha Strike quick-play rules debuted in this book as well), Interstellar Operations (devoted to grand-strategic-level warfare at the corps, army and national level) and Campaign Operations (Exactly What It Says on the Tin — rules for playing linked campaigns at any of the above play levels).
• Logical Weakness: Battlemechs are incredibly powerful machines of destruction: a typical planetary invasion in the setting tends to have only a couple hundred of them involved plus some supporting units. However, while they're great at taking territory, 'Mechs aren't quite as good at holding it, since due to their limited numbers they can only control/defend a tiny fraction of a planet's surface. Several times in the franchise, it's shown that a hostile civilian population is a near-insurmountable obstacle for an occupying 'Mech force, as even a modest guerilla movement would outnumber their occupiers to an absurd degree and make the vast majority of the planet completely uncontrollable. The Clans in particular ran into this problem during their invasion of the Inner Sphere, with some planetary rebellions getting so out of hand that they required extreme measures to put them down.
• Long-Runners: Over 30 years of heavy metal mayhem for the franchise that codified western-style mecha.
• Lost Colony: These show up from time to time, usually because the maps of the Inner Sphere only show currently inhabited systems. Plenty of planets were rendered uninhabitable or abandoned for some reason or another over centuries of warfare.
  • One of the more famous examples in New Dallas, which is actually situated right next to the Chaos March, one of the most heavily contested areas in the Inner Sphere. The planet was nuked during the Succession Wars.
  • The Periphery follows a different rule; planets are only marked on the map if they have a HPG or otherwise significant connections to the rest of the universe. There may be hundreds of unmarked, inhabited worlds out there.
  • Another infamous lost planet was Dunkelwaelderdunkelrfluessenschattenwelt, on the Combine's border with the Outworlds Alliance. Both citizenry and government had gotten sick and tired of their jawbreaker of a name, and voted to rename the planet simply "Bob." However, the relevant paperwork got lost in the Combine's logistics department, holding up shipments, for as far as the Draconis Combine was concerned, the planet Bob didn't exist. The state of affairs dragged on long enough for the terraforming equipment to give out, destroying the colony.
• Lost Technology: Lots of stuff from the Star League era; it is collectively known as "LosTech". Pulse lasers, LB-X Autocannons, Gauss Rifles, Jump Ships, Warships, and Extra Light reactors were all eventually rediscovered, though some technology has never been recovered, like the Star League Defense Force's adaptive body armor. Conversely, some advancements beyond Star League tech has occurred; for example, extended range lasers now cover the whole range; Small and Medium-sized lasers, instead of just large. Ultra and LBX autocannon types now cover the whole gamut of bore sizes as well, instead of just 5 and 10, respectively. The Clans, naturally, never had Lost Technology issues, and have more advanced tech in general as a result.
  • And thanks to many worlds experiencing a combination of poor support in the early colonial days and the setbacks of war, most can't produce a full range of modern technologies on-planet, and imports can get pricey. There are more than a few worlds where businessmen talk on sattelite phones while riding their horses (or possibly some other alien beast) to work, and almost everyone has access to holo technology which look like high tech i-pads.
• Low-Tier Letdown: BattleTech is one of those rare tabletop wargames that, rather than trying to bring under-performing units up to par with balance passes and retcons, instead chooses to acknowledge them as being crappy machines in-universe. Such units tend to receive the "Bad Reputation" Quirk in addition to whatever other mechanical deficiencies they might possess. However, underperforming mech designs are frequently given upgrades or new loadouts to create a new configuration that may turns its reputation around, perhaps most famously the Banshee, which went from a bizarrely fast but laughably under-armed assault mech in its original form (the BNC-1E) to one of the few Inner Sphere mechs that could stand up to the Clans when they arrived (the BNC-5S).
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: BattleTech: A Time of War gives characters an edge attribute, which may be burned to reroll or adjust a result.

M

• MacGyvering: Would-be revolutionaries and other miscreants who either can't afford or lack access to proper BattleMechs will sometimes build substitutes from whatever is on hand; either by cobbling together spare parts into often barely functional "FrankenMechs" or by bolting whatever weapons they can find onto the war machines' Work-, Utility-, and/or IndustrialMech cousins.
• Macross Missile Massacre: In various densities and ranges. The biggest single volley from a 'Mech-mounted weapon currently comes from the MRM-40. Which, yes, does mean it shoots forty missiles at a time...and it reloads in under ten seconds, too.
  • Most fire-support 'Mechs are basically walking examples of this Trope waiting to happen. A couple of the more extreme examples include the Salamander and the Yeoman.
  • Rocket launchers rate a special mention. Yes, they're one-shot, they fire only unguided rockets with no fancy special ammo options, and their salvo sizes 'only' range from ten to twenty; but they're lightweight enough that it's easy to carry a bunch of them on a suitably dedicated unit, which can then potentially fire them all off at once.
  • Medium-Range Missiles can come in truly enormous launcher sizes. They're not quite as accurate as LRMs, but moreso than Rockets.
  • In general, carrying two or more LRM launchers in the 10, 15, or 20 rack is a great way to wreck someone's face from across the map, and carrying three or more SRM launchers in the 4 or 6 rack is great way to make them pay for getting close. Multiple designs and variants of 'Mechs focus on rack upon rack of missiles in various sizes. One of the more notable is the Summoner B configuration, carrying two LRM20s and two SRM4s (and a NARC missile beacon) letting it loose 48 missiles at a time at the right distance.
• Made of Explodium: Ammunition, while capable of reducing a 'Mech to scrap if a reasonably full bin is hit, arguably doesn't count because it's supposed to explode or burn in the right circumstances, either to project the projectile, or to damage the target. However, the game features non-ammo explosive components as well, most famously every model of the Gauss rifle.
  • There are optional (as well as physically impossible in-universe) rules for the Fusion reactor that powers the 'mechs, allowing them to explode messily when damaged, which is often easier than the amount of armor would indicate. The rules explicitly call out that such explosions would be impossible both in universe and in real life by the way fusion reactors normally work and that they wrote the entry solely for Rule of Cool (even all but saying "this is not how this works, but hey, who doesn't like to see Stuff Blowing Up?").
  • Game rules have combustion-powered VTOL vehicles like helicopters explode spectacularly if they're destroyed in a crash - which many of them are. Officially, it's because they use more volatile fuels than other combat vehicles.
• Magnetic Weapons: The iconic Gauss rifle and its descendants — the only weapons in the game where the ammunition is inert but the gun explodes if hit. The classic model, dating all the way back to the glory days of the Star League, is highly lethal to any armored target on the battlefield over long distances (especially enemy 'Mechs, whose head it can remove in one shot regardless of how heavily the rest may be armored) and remains the standard against which the generally more specialized rest of the family is measured.
• The Magnificent Seven Samurai: The Grey Death Legion mercenaries performed this way, especially in their early years. They started as an ad hoc militia unit that was thrown together by their founder Greyson Death Carlyle in order to defend the planet from attacking raiders. They did the same thing on a few other planets during their early years, then more or less evolved out of the trope as they recruited more people and became a larger, more powerful force.
• Mama Bear: The aptly named Clan Ghost Bear (the actual animal is also known to display this type of behavior) is fiercely protective of its civilian castes, as well as the citizens of Rasalhague, whom they consider distant kin. When the Word of Blake decided to drop neutron bombs on a few of their cities and introduced a virus that killed hundreds of thousands, they dumped the usual Clan restrictions on mass battles and orbital bombardment. They proceeded to savage several elite Word units and almost single handily turned the Combine front of the Jihad around.
• Meaningful Name: As is to be expected with military vehicles.
  • Consider 'Mechs such as the Catapult, Trebuchet, Longbow, and Archer. All names with implications of arrows and projectiles flung at quite a range. It should probably come as little surprise these designs focus on long range missile barrages as their primary offensive tactic.
  • Quite a few other 'Mechs fall into this by virtue of resembling their namesake. The Raven is the most obvious candidate, being the most avian of the reverse-joint 'Mechs, but you can make a good argument for designs like the Shrike, the Fire Scorpion, and the Kodiak.
  • 3 guesses what the Atlas is.
  • The JagerMech, built as a replacement to the Rifleman mech, is a walking AA turret/long range fire support mounting a variety of Autocannons. Now consider that Jager (or alternatively, Jäger) is the Dutch/German word for "Hunter", that means the name can be translated as "Hunting/Hunter Mech" or "Mech Hunter/Hunter of Mechs".
  • Clan Ghost Bear, whose name symbolizes three things.
    • Invoked with the Clans generally, as they were named after animals whose qualities they seek to emulate.
  • For conventional vehicles, the Demolisher epitomizes what tanks should be.
  • For a rather different sort of meaning, the Clans like to give 'Mechs names intended as insults to particularly hated foes.
    • Smoke Jaguar named their Heavy 'Mech designed to be a slightly less powerful but much more affordable version of Clan Wolf's iconic Timber Wolf as the Mad Dog for no reason other than to mock the Wolves beloved National Weapon.
    • After improving upon Star Adder's own Adder chassis as the basis for their new fire support Light 'Mech, Jade Falcon spitefully chose to base the new designs name upon its Spheroid Reporting Name of Puma rather than its proper Clan name, giving us the Cougar.
• Meaningful Rename: Clan trueborns fight Trials to earn the right to use the surname of the Founding warrior they are matrilineally related to. This is a great honor, allows a warrior to serve in combat until they are unable (most warriors end up in rear line units by the age of 35) to, grants one a vote and a voice in the Clan Council, and, most importantly, ensures that your genes will be passed on in the form of new warriors.
• Mecha-Enabling Phlebotinum : Myomer makes up for a lot of the mechanical issues of anthropomorphic giant robots, but it still has issues with overheating. Neurohelmets allow a 'mech's motion control software use the pilot's own proprioception to determine intent of the mech's state of balance, and project information into the pilot's own kinesthetic senses to aid in such determinations.
• Medieval Stasis: Though technology has been advancing throughout the setting, progression was relatively slow, thanks to the constant periods of war and civil strife in the Inner Sphere impacting production and technological advancement. The Age of War, the Amaris Civil War, and the Wars of Succession were so brutally destructive (even with the Ares Conventions) that many highly advanced technologies and the know-how to make them were lost, and the Inner Sphere is still using 'Mech designs and even 'Mechs themselves from hundreds of years previously. The main reason why the Clans had such a leg up in their weaponry was because the infighting between Clans was very rigidly controlled to minimize damage. Intact SLDF tech and 'Mech caches were considered priceless treasure troves prior to the Clan invasions.
• MegaCorp: Plenty of these exist in the Inner Sphere and are especially strong in the Lyran Commonwealth, where the aristocracy is largely comprised of successful executives. ComStar pretended to be one of these but due to their control of the HPG network and their significant political influence and aspirations they were better described as an N.G.O. Superpower with corporate and mystical trappings. Eventually the Word of Blake stopped pretending when they started ruling worlds directly.
• The Metric System Is Here to Stay: Used both lorewise and in the game rules themselves. Sizes are measured in metres and tonnes/metric tons, and speed and distances using metres/kilometres (with light-years/light-minutes being used in space). Rules-wise distances are usually kept abstract and measured in hexes, with the latest edition rules specifically mentioned that one hex does not correlate directly to any specific size (except that units one hex apart are essentially within melee range) and the reason why all the ranged weapons are so short-ranged is purely Rule of Fun. The trope is averted for the Alpha Strike variant, where measurements are in inches (though the rules do have conversions to metric for those so inclined).
• Mighty Glacier:
  • The 80-100 ton Assault class of mechs, designed to deal and take massive amounts of punishment, but except for the few exceptions they are the slowest assets on the battlefield. The 150 ton Word of Blake Omega takes it to Crippling Overspecialization levels.
  • The infamous Urbanmech is an interesting example. It's a light mech but is armed with a powerful autocannon and enough armor to rival most medium mechs. However, fitting all that on a 30-ton frame (the AC/10 itself weighs over half that) means putting in an undersized engine, which makes it one of the slowest mechs in the game. Yes, even slower than the Atlas.
• Mini-Mecha: Protomechs, which were designed to fill the gap between battlearmor and light Mechs. They stand at about half the height of the shortest mech and massing at just a tenth of a battlemech they were intended to allow the resource starved Smoke Jaguars to deploy a lot of firepower in smaller packages.
• Misplaced Retribution: During the Jihad the Word of Blake's regular armies and its elite Shadow Divisions committed brutal actions against almost every faction in human space, understandably resulting in equally brutal acts by their opponents once the Word went on the defensive. However this also extended to the WoB Protectorate Militia, purely defensive formations that were not involved in a decade of nerve gas strikes, saturation nuclear attacks and populations being wiped out by biological weapons. Many found themselves faced with premier mercenary commands, elite House regiments and front line Clan clusters and were shown no mercy as the Word's enemies took the opportunity to get some payback for the horrors of the Jihad.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Nova Cats' alliance with the Draconis Combine was not that stable to begin with, and after the Second Combine-Dominion War the former were painted as the scapegoats of the war on top of the increased anti-Clan sentiments, resulting in their doomed rebellion decades later.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Happens in-universe when the Word of Blake starts using WMDs indiscriminately on civilian populations. This is considered such a heinous act that every other faction in the Inner Sphere unite and ignore the Honours in order to nuke them into oblivion.
  • If the events that gave them their name, not to mention being at the forefront of operations during the Amaris Coup wasn't the Greenhaven Gestapo crossing this, then sacking the Vatican, executing the Pope and several hundred monks, along with graffitiing the Sistine Chapel certainly was.
• More Dakka: The Rotary Autocannons fall under this, but a few mechs also mount enough normal machine guns to turn normal infantry into puree, like the base version of the Piranha Mech which has 12 of them.
  • The original poster child for More Dakka was the Ultra Autocannon class of weapons, which would literally double their rate of fire (and go through ammo twice as fast). This meant that an Ultra AC 20 would spit out 40 damage in a single turn... The Hunchback IIC was therefore the poster boy for this trope, as it could ostensibly deal nearly 100(!) points of damage in a game where the average ton of armor had 16.
    • Three Words: Bear Hunter SuperHeavy Autocannon. A Clan Hell's Horses invention (hence the name "Bearhunter"), it was designed to provide conventional infantry with. . . well, precisely this trope. Clan Hell's Horses being not only the only Clan who recognizes the value of conventional vehicles and infantry in a setting otherwise dominated by Humongous Mecha and Powered Armor but having a massive hate-on for Clan Ghost Bear, the Bearhunter is a massive gatling autocannon. Ironically, the failed attacks by Clan Hell's Horses against Clan Ghost Bear would see the weapon fall into the hands of the very people it had been designed to splatter across the landscape.
  • Several assault 'Mechs get in on this by carrying multiple autocannons. Examples include the Annihilator with its quadruple LBX guns, the Jagermech and its dual double barreled autocannon arms, and some variants of the Dire Wolf, which carried what can only be described as a shoulder mounted AA gun.
• Morton's Fork: The Mercenaries are stuck in this situation in the Dark Age era, where wars are a lot more Status Quo breaking compared to the pre-Jihad eras. The losing sides lose so comprehensively that expecting any kind of payment is a fool's erand, while the winning sides win so overwhelmingly that they will have no use for mercs after the contracts expire, and there are no more "safe" low-level skirmish/garrison contracts for downtime jobs. And this is on top of their weakened post-Jihad positions, no reliable and recognized merc arbitration authority like Outreach, and the devaluation of the Merc favorite C-Bill.
• Motion-Capture Mecha: Partially. The pilot's neurohelmet reads his instinctive motor implulses and uses those to coordinate simple details like balance, foot placement, and arm movements. Four-legged 'Mechs are less agile because a human doesn't naturally "think" like a crawler, and a 'Mech operating without the helmet is every bit the clumsy, lumbering giant that it appears.
  • Mechs with hands may have waldoes in the cockpit that the pilot inserts his meaty arm into to control the giant mech arm with, for use in situations requiring delicate work that the computer will probably botch up.
  • Elementals use hand signs to trigger their weapons - folding their ring finger and pinky, and laying their thumb over it to fire their arm mounted laser.
• Multinational Team: ComStar and the Word of Blake are generally staffed by individuals who are adopted from other factions rather than born into the orders; all the better to use them as spies and sleeper agents. More mobile mercenary groups tend to pick up recruits as they travel, often from enemy defectors or prisoners, resulting in this trope once the command becomes established. The armies of the Republic of the Sphere are from the forces of Inner Sphere houses. And going back some further, the Star League Defense Forces were made up not only of warriors from the late Terran Hegemony, but from the other Great Houses, as well.
• Multiple-Choice Past: The official explanation for any contradictions in the BattleTech Expanded Universe - ComStar deliberately altering or hiding historical records.
• Mundane Utility: The BattleMechs. Mechs equipped with hands are very effective for light construction and combat engineering, high-power 6 ton lasers can be toned down for welding, Long ranged missiles are used like dynamite. Then ten seconds later they can pick up and crush a car, slice another BattleMech's torso in half with said high power laser, and user the LRMs to shower an area with a minefield.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Vlad may have vehemently opposed Ulric Kerensky's politics, but the man was still his Khan. He would not let such underhanded treachery perpetrated by the Jade Falcon saKhan Vandervahn Chistu that killed Ulric go unanswered. He eventually killed Khan Elias Crichell too.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Pretty much said word for word, complete with Tears of Remorse, by Khan Lincoln Osis of the Smoke Jaguars after he realizes that the Crusader ideology was only harming the Inner Sphere. He immediately commits Suicide by First Prince.
  • The entire Draconis Combine Mustered Soldiery was hit by this after the Kentares Massacre; where they put 50 million civilians to death with katanas or small arms. Many of them committed Seppeku or were demoralized to the point that they could not fight effectively. This, combined with the fact that the Federated Suns was out for revenge, cost the Combine the First Succession War when it had previously been on the verge of actually winning it.

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• Named After Somebody Famous: Aleksandr Kerensky?
  • The Kerensky in BattleTech is supposed to be one of the real Kerensky's descendants. Real-life ancestors to the setting's fictional characters are quite common.
  • Also, apparently a Marshall in the Free Worlds League Military once played Sherlock Homes in the UK for ITV. Probably not deliberately, though.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Several 'Mechs and vehicles will have these, frequently overlapping with Meaningful Name:
  • For 'Mechs, we have examples like Battlemaster, Marauder, and Daishi (meaning "Great Death," the Reporting Name for the Clan 100-ton Dire Wolf). Speaking of the Clans, they have examples in the Nova (a medium 'Mech mounting a stupid array of medium lasers) and its bigger, meaner cousin with a prison record, the Supernova.
  • Among vehicles, we have things like the Demolisher. If you know your BT weapons, the LRM and SRM Carriers and Schreck PPC Carrier are this, too. The old SLDF mainstay tank, the Alacorn, with its trio of gauss rifles is enough to soil the pants of even assault 'mech pilots once it had its resurgence.
• Nemean Skinning: Clan Ghost Bear's Clawing Ritual.
  • Also done by Bloodnamed warriors of Clan Jade Falcon - within a year of winning his bloodname, the warrior must capture and kill a full-grown jade falcon by himself and make a cape using the feathers of his kill.
• Never Mess with Granny: Natasha Kerensky is ancient by the standards of the Clans and well into her 70's even as far as the Inner Sphere is concerned (excellent medical technology that makes her older than she looks notwithstanding). She is still far and away the absolute last person you want to get into a 'Mech fight with. She isn't called the Black Widow for nothin'.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The Ares Conventions, while fulfilling their objectives of protecting civilians and entire planets from the horrors of scorched earth warfare, effectively legalized warfare when it came to resolving diplomatic disputes. Combat became sufficiently sterile (to the average citizen and ruler, soldiers in this period were honored, few in number, and relatively safe so they didn't mind either) that Forever War wasn't that bad of a prospect. And since every power has accepted constant conflict things got really ugly when this situation kept going after the positive aspects of the Conventions, such as the restrictions on attacking key technology or using weapons of mass destruction, fell out of practice and the constant warfare evolved into the near apocalyptic Succession Wars.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Clans invaded the Inner Sphere to try and establish a second Star League by force. The Inner Sphere's strategy to stop the invasion once and for all? Establish a second Star League and eliminate an entire Clan by force.
• Night-Vision Goggles: By 3050, most Clan mechs are equipped with Enhanced Imaging Displays that give Mechwarriors sensor readouts of the terrain and surrounding units. Among its other uses, Enhanced Imaging can serve as night vision for Mechwarriors, letting them ignore combat penalties for fighting in darkness. In some Mechwarrior games, Enhanced Imaging is an alternate visual mode the player can activate when normal vision is limited, particularly during night missions.
• No Knees: Some early mech designs had legs that would be flat-out impossible to control due to tiny ranges of motion on knees, or in the case of the Stalker assault mech, crazy bendy-legs that bend in both directions◊
• Nonindicative Name: Some names just plain don't give any indication what the Mech is meant for, the Stalker is a mech meant for charging the enemy headlong while firing any guns in it's optimal range, the Hauptmann is a standard combat Mech with no command capability.
• Nostalgia Filter: Both the Clans and the Great Houses view the Star League as the height of human civilization, despite the many conflicts that were simmering just under the surface. Comes with a hefty dose of Written by the Winners as well - having been on the receiving end of the Star League's attempts to unite all of humanity under its banner (read: numerous wars of conquest) the peoples of the various Periphery states do not remember the Star League with any sort of fondness. The Great Houses weren’t trading WMDs like Halloween candy when the Star League maintained its fragile peace, so it all depends on whether it was all worth the price in rampant imperialism.
• No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture: While there are no aliens as such, the Clans as the next best thing play this straight enough that being 'infiltrated' by Inner Sphere pop culture is actually something of a concern for them.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • Clan Hell's Horses scientists realized that the complex gyros on OmniMechs, designed to adapt to their variable equipment loads, would make them perfect for transporting the recently-developed Battle Armor infantry units. Nowadays, handholds, power outlets, and communications ports are a mainstay on any Omni.
  • Inner Sphere "Re-Engineered" Lasers were an attempt to combine a Clan Heavy Laser with a Pulse Laser. They failed at that, but the result still had a surprising use: the twin beams fired were capable of punching through heavier armor with ease: in game terms, this allows them to ignore the damage reduction that would normally apply from certain types of armor.
• No True Scotsman: The Wars of Reaving were basically this in a nutshell. All the "home clans", those that didn't qualify for the original Clan Invasion in the 3050s, declared that the invader clans were "tainted" by contact with the Inner Sphere. As a result, the Wars of Reaving happened, where the Invader Clans' assets still in the Kerensky Cluster were savaged. Meanwhile, the Invader Clans themselves were too busy fighting in the Jihad, dealing with a monster that made Stefan Amaris look like a mere schoolyard bully in comparison. The "Home Clans" eventually beat each other bloody and cut off from the Inner Sphere, and the Invader Clans all followed Clan Ghost Bear's example by moving wholesale to the Inner Sphere, forming their own separate Clan social structure, some of them hybridizing their societies with their new Inner Sphere neighborhood.
• "Not So Different" Remark: In the Clans sourcebook, framed as a document written by Phelan Kell, he notes that the Clan propaganda cartoon "The Adventures of Clan Spaniel" is quite similar to such shows in the Inner Sphere (i.e. the in-universe version of the cartoon).
• Nuclear Option: The only accepted use of nuclear weapons under limited warfare is the killing of Warships, which tend to be Made of Iron. Even the Ares Conventions inserted a caveat allowing atomic detonations tens thousands of kilometers above the surface of populated worlds for this reason.
• Nuclear Weapons Taboo: In-universe. The massive indiscriminate slaughter of civilians from nuclear bombardment from orbit during the Succession Wars caused all the Successor States to stop using nukes and bombardment entirely. Until the Word of Blake showed up and started killing everything with nukes and bioweapons, that is.
  • Breaking the WMD taboo tends to get you killed as the other factions stop fighting amongst themselves to eliminate the more serious threat. The most clear examples being Clan Smoke Jaguar, who were destroyed by a reformed Star League and abandoned to their fate by their fellow Clans after the bombardment of Turtle Bay, and the Word of Blake, who were destroyed by the rest of the human species after they got too nuke happy. The Taurian Concordat (historically the most WMD happy faction in the setting) was absolutely gutted in the post-Jihad era for using nukes against the Inner Sphere while aligned with the Blakists. Part of this was caused by Spheroid retaliation but most of it was due to a large number of Taurian worlds breaking off and forming their own state to escape the insanity.
• Nuclear Torch Rocket: Jumpships use fusion rockets to move to and from a star system's Jump Point, and use a solar sail to keep them stationary in-orbit until the jump-drive fires.

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• Obfuscating Insanity: Sun-Tzu Liao was a master of this before his mother's death. He painted himself as just as bat-guano as his mother and maternal grandfather, making his hidden machinations all the more effective. He's a Sociopath, to be sure, but he is far more lucid than either of his two most recent predecessors as Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation.
• Obstructive Code of Conduct: The Ares Conventions. Along with reasonable restrictions (captive abuse, no detonating nuclear weapons on populated worlds, no chemical weapons, avoid urban damage) it also included things like timeouts for refueling and rearming and armies often surrendered simply because they were "checkmated". War was turned into such a gentleman's game that the Age of War (which lasted over a century) killed far less people than the 20 year Reunification War and the 2 year Fourth Succession War.
  • The Clans' Zellbrigen dueling rules and the Inner Sphere's informal pact of limited warfare subvert this. While you are not allowed to unleash all the weapons and force at your disposal these (as proven by the Pentagon Civil War and the First and Second Succession Wars) restrictions are necessary to prevent the end of space faring civilization.
• Odd Friendship:
  • The Outworlds Alliance and Clan Snow Raven formed an alliance and eventually merged outright. The only things they have in common are a focus on space combat and some serious issues with the Draconis Combine. The Ravens consider the Alliance to be backwards barbarians and the Alliance thinks the Clanners are insane but the Outworld's need for defense and the Ravens' need for a home after they were expelled from the homeworlds and lost a large portion of their population during the Wars of Reaving cemented the partnership. By the Dark Age the Raven Alliance is relatively functional, with the Ravens defending the realm and allowed to keep their warrior traditions and the Outworlders free to control their own affairs.
  • The Free Rashalhague Republic was largely swallowed by the Clan Invasion, mostly by Clan Ghost Bear, which later became the champion of the Warden cause in the wake of the War of Refusal that sundered Clan Wolf. Clan Ghost Bear eventually moved the entire clan almost wholesale from the faraway Clan worlds to their Inner Sphere holdings. Due to somewhat similar cultures, the former Rashalhague citizens and the Ghost Bear citizens merged quite well, and the nation eventually became the Rashahlague Dominion. It was cemented by the elevation of the son of Haakon Magnusson (the first Elected Prince of Rashalhague) to a bloodnamed warrior in Clan Ghost Bear and creation of the Magnusson bloodname.
  • The Escórpion Imperio, formed by the fusion of Clan Goliath Scorpion and the two Deep Periphery states of Nueva Castile and the Umayyad Caliphate. They specifically followed a method of integration based off of the Ghost Bear-Rasalhague method due to its success, and were eventually able to conquer the Hanseatic League, leaving them as by far the most powerful Deep Periphery state (then removing the Gratuitous Spanish from their name to become the Scorpion Empire).
• Oh, Crap!: From the trailer for an unused version of a game: "My God!" "New target, designation Atlas." Any surprise Assault 'Mech is likely to elicit this reaction, as are a few Assault-weight vehicles. The rules include the ability for some units to deploy hidden to invoke this effect upon your enemies.
• Old Master: Pretty much a standard of the setting. The constant and often brutal warfare of the Inner Sphere creates veterans who've survived protracted conflict in hellish conditions, while the Clan emphasis on physical ideals forces warriors over the age of thirty to work harder than ever to retain their status. In either case, anyone past middle age who still pilots a 'mech into battle is almost guaranteed to humiliate any fresh-faced young upstarts they happen across. Natasha Kerensky, the "Black Widow" was still whupping upstarts well into her eighties.
  • This trope was invoked by the newly-formed Escórpion Imperio when they created the reKhan position, allowing solahma warriors to serve in an advisory role to their main military forces.
• Older Is Better: Those old mechs who cannot be built anymore are treasured over weaker, more recent models.
  • Recent sourcebooks have created new weapons (i.e. plasma weapons) and technology (i.e. compact engines) which simply did not exist during the Star League era (previously the sole source of advanced equipment). So the while the trope applied during the greater portion of the Succession Wars, it starts to become subverted during the Fed Com Civil War and Jihad eras.
• Old-School Dogfight: Aerospace fighters behave this way when fighting in atmospheres, and normally are the same way in space. However, AeroTech includes a set of advanced movement rules that allow for more realistic combat in a vacuum, among other things.
• Old Soldier: There are examples of truly exceptional MechWarriors remaining active well into their 80's.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: A downplayed example with the Word of Blake during the Jihad. Their reputation for flinging the nukes got started by a completely unrelated accident during their attack on Tharkad. A nuclear power plant had exploded due to some damage and went up, and the Lyran forces mistook it for an actual nuclear weapon. The WoBblies ended up living down to it, however.
• One-Hit Kill: Nearly every unit is in danger of these in some way. Vehicles have these as one of their serious disadvantages; 'Mechs are more resilient and harder to destroy in one hit. 'Mechs themselves can be removed from combat in one shot through blowing off their heads; even the largest mech is limited in how much armor can go on the head (nine points, specifically, combined with three internal structure for the head, and it can take no more than twelve damage before being destroyed), which leaves the cockpit vulnerable. Weapons that can reliably focus more damage in a single hit location than the heads can absorb get the epithet "headchoppers". After all, 20 damage on an Atlas's chest is almost laughable, but 20 damage on it's head has instantly removed a terrifying opponent from combat.
  • Then there's a type of Critical Hit commonly called the "through-armor critical", which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin - each hit, no matter how minor, has at least a small chance of getting lucky on the hit location table and being allowed to check for critical hits to the location struck even if the latter still has plenty of armor points remaining. (Under the stock tournament rules, this can only affect torso locations on 'Mechs, but there's a popular optional "floating critical" rule that allows this kind of hit to land anywhere — including the head.) When you score a critical hit, either through-armor or regularly, you get to roll on a table that might let you score between zero and three critical hits, rolling for each one which slot in the location the crit hits. This can potentially result in an otherwise-intact BattleMech getting its first hit from a small-caliber weapon like an AC/2 (the canonical "golden BB" example due to its combination of low damage and long range), having it turn out to be a TAC to the center torso, and get its engine or gyro shot out before the fight has even properly started; the chance of all factors aligning just right for this to happen is very, very small, but it's there. (It should be plainly obvious what happens if a lucky TAC actually manages to hit a proper ammo bin...)
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. In the fiction, there are many common first names that pop up again and again.
  • A notable example is Morgan Kell and Morgan Hassek-Davion. Both have similar physiques and appearances (Kell has dark hair while Hassek-Davion has red hair, but both wear it long), both are older warriors during the time of the Clan Invasion, both are powerful and influential leaders (Morgan Kell of the Kell Hounds mercenary unit, Morgan Hassek-Davion the Marshall of Armies for the Federated Commonwealth), both are on the same side (The Kells have historically been fanatically loyal to House Steiner, despite being mercenaries, Morgan Hassek-Davion is personally loyal to Hanse Davion, who's married to Melissa Steiner, and transfers that loyalty to their son Victor), and they tend to crop up in stories together. A character simply talking about "Morgan" may cause the reader to pause while they figure out which "Morgan".
  • Generally played straight with 'Mech Reporting Names, which are rarely recycled for use with newer designs. In cases where a new design is a direct development of an existing one, Roman numerals are typically used to distinguish them, occasionally with a "C" suffix to denote a 'Mech redesigned with Clan technology. "Super-(name of 'Mech)" is also occasionally used.
  • Purposefully averted by Katherine Steiner-Davion, who began calling herself "Katrina Steiner" specifically to invoke memories of her universally beloved grandmother.
• One World Order: Averted. One World Order arose on Earth, then expanded, then the space colonies rebelled. It was repeated with the Star League, but that fell apart too.
• Only Sane Man: The United Hindu Collective, a minor state that peacefully merged with the Federated Suns during the Age of War, was the only nation to point out that the Ares Conventions would effectively legalize warfare.
  • During the Reunification War, when the rest of the Inner Sphere got very brutal in their attempts to force the Periphery into the Star League, the Free Worlds League was the only power to obey the Ares Conventions (despite Ian Cameron having rescinded them) during the conflict. This is the primary reason why the Magistracy of Canopus, the state conquered by the League, has positive relations with the Inner Sphere compared to the centuries long legacy of hatred and mistrust you find in the Concordat and Outworlds.
  • Andrey Kerensky was pretty much The Conscience to his brother and kept Nicholas in check while the Clans were being formed. When he was killed his brother had no restraint and his more radical and brutal ideals came into force.
• Operation: [Blank]: Between the emphasis on warfare and the sheer length of history in the BattleTech universe, these pop up frequently. Some particularly notable ones:
  • Operation EXODUS - the mass exodus of SLDF units from the Inner Sphere after the Amaris Civil War.
  • Operation KLONDIKE - the retaking of the Pentagon Worlds by the newly formed Clans.
  • Operation SWITCHBACK - the mass evacuation of Clan Wolverine from Clan Space and (planned) return to the Inner Sphere.
  • Operation REVIVAL - the Clan invasion of the Inner Sphere.
  • Operation BIRD DOG - guerrilla campaigns/armed reconnaissance on Clan Smoke Jaguar worlds in the Inner Sphere, in preparation for...
  • Operation BULLDOG - the retaking of all Smoke Jaguar worlds in the Inner Sphere.
  • Task Force Serpent - the follow-up to Operation BULLDOG to eradicate Clan Smoke Jaguar in Clan Homeworlds space in the deep periphery.
• Orbital Bombardment: Features frequently in the game's lore, being a major reason for the destructiveness of the pre-Ares Conventions Age of War, the Reunification War, the Star League Civil War and the First Succession War. Use of WarShips as the primary weapon of war led to the nuclear bombing of entire worlds and claimed billions of civilian lives until the mutual destructiveness (and the mutual destruction of all WarShip fleets) caused a mutual agreement not to engage in it any more under the Honours of War (the Clans, although they were never privy to that agreement, quickly bid away their own WarShips and put orbital bombardment off the table after Turtle Bay). This serves as a lorewise explanation as to why it tends not to be an available asset in actual gameplay.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Completely averted. All of the major religions have survived and thrived throughout human space and many new branches and faiths have popped up over the centuries.
• Overheating: Of equal threat to a player's forces as the enemy is the perennial problem of heat. Weapons generate heat, which is dissipated by heat-sinks. If you fire faster than your heat sinks can remove the heat, your 'Mech first slows down, then the accuracy of your weapon attacks suffers, then the reactor tries to shut down barring the pilot managing to override the safeties, and at the extreme end there's a real risk of any explosive ammo you may be carrying starting to cook off, or the pilot dying within seconds to heat exposure since the life support systems can't keep up. For extra fun, some weapons that can help raise a 'Mech's heat level from outside also exist...
  • Just see Kill It with Fire for examples of weapons that artificially increase a mech's heat level.