A Corporate Mech World - Battletech inspired

I will said a guideline of combat can exist with a simple reason: mech are expensive, is easy to the corp to simple said the pilot that the robot is more expensive that they are.

I have a question, if I may: I've gathered that warfare in this setting is a matter of trial-by-combat, using champions; if so, what purpose to mercenaries serve?

Are they perhaps like professional sportsmen, hiring themselves out as champions? If so, then I would imagine that they would be somewhat limited in number, as demand would be somewhat limited.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jan 8th 2020 at 3:57:24 PM

Trial by Champion is the best descriptor of it, but how combat works varies but Mechs are by the treaty required. You could have an entire team of Mechs on attack, or do it one on one. Add in 700 years of time, societal change and drift and so on. Everyone just kind of presumes Mechs are the way you are supposed to fight, the Treaty has grown beyond its corporate origins.

Mercenary companies thus act fairly normally compared to elsewhere, as some places may be able to hire some mercs for a short time but not have the money to get their own dedicated Mechs as new ones fresh off the line are pretty expensive.

Again this is something everyone will just have to accept for the story, and I hope to tell a good one.

Edited by EchoingSilence on Jan 8th 2020 at 8:19:26 AM

Historically it was common for expert swordsmen to be hired out as proxy champions. Likewise, there's preceedent for multiple combatants in a trial by combat. The battle between the Horatii and the Curiatii triplets was a three on three.

However, this does imply that these small contests can escalate into full scale battles without someone holding the reigns. Might be a good third act twists.

Edited by Belisaurius on Jan 8th 2020 at 9:52:02 AM

And it provides interesting writing opportunities so I don't have to hold myself back with just a few mechs for everyone. Entire armies of Mechs can be fielded if the buyer has the money.

It seems pretty obvious you’d need a regular military somewhere, though. Mechs can’t do peacekeeping or space lane control or any of the other things militaries do, and you’d need conventional force to back up the results of the mech games or prevent your opponent from “cheating”. I imagine all the corps would also maintain navies and armies and such separate from their gladiators.

Edited by archonspeaks on Jan 8th 2020 at 7:11:23 AM

That could provide a interesting cold war bit to the setting, where everyone more or less just accepts the mechs while maintaining enough force that nobody else wants to be the first one to pull a actual trigger for combat, or at least the major governments (the main corp houses) do.

I'll sort out something, I got my major questions answered as to how to justify other elements of the setting.

Fair enough—although I would then imagine that mech-mercenary companies would be rather smaller than standard mercenary companies: between the expense of mechs and the focus on champion combat, I would expect fewer mercenaries to be desired, and a focus to be placed on quality over quantity.

"Warfare by duel" is an interesting twist on future history. Probably the easiest way to justify it is by inventing an extremely powerful weapon, so destructive that no one dares fight a general war anymore. Relativistic kill vehicles do nicely in that role. So everyone duels because letting the combat spread is sure death to everyone. This would tend to freeze the governing structure in place, so feudalism is a good fit for this. Feudalism works when territory is wealth, so the fast path to riches and power is conquering your neighbor, but large scale combat is very expensive (for whatever reason you care to invent), so the opportunities to conquer large territories are very limited (though not non-existent, just rare). Thus, while a treaty may formalize the arrangement, it really exists for economic reasons. I think this makes for good world-building opportunities.

Within Sci-Fi, the Dune universe is the poster child for this. Planets were wealth, so conquering a planet would set up a noble family as a major player. Because interstellar travel required a rare psychic power, and a merchant guild controlled all the psychics, actually invading another planet was rare. And they had to limit combat to certain low-tech weapons because when the most advanced offensive and defensive weapons were used ("lasguns" and "shields") both exploded. Thus, sword fights.

The particular details will be different for your universe, of course, but the large scale effect should be very similar. Make territory the primary form of wealth (perhaps worlds that can support Earth-derived agriculture are at a premium). Invent a reason that interstellar invasion is very expensive (not hard to do, realistically it probably will be). Introduce a doomsday weapon, and viola! Duels (except with Mecha instead of swords).

The mercenary troops are there as insurance, in case someone gets clever and tries to cheat at a duel (they act as seconds, in fact). Also, to keep the commoners in line. I see nothing especially implausible about this scenario.

As for corporations, that's probably a function of your world's historical backstory. Perhaps in the early years private enterprises took the lead in space development, and left the governments isolated on the surface (where they could be blackmailed). Make most wealth inherited, and you get corporate dynasties. In time, they come to refer to themselves as "nobility" and develop a mythology revolving on how superior they are to everyone else. I don't think verisimilitude will be difficult to achieve.

Good luck with it. I would like to see a sample chapter, when you get that far.

I'm still debating whether or not to actually do a superweapon of sorts, I know I can't do FTL weapons because of the rules I made for driftspace, the speed you have going in is the speed you have coming out, and gravity wells can mess with that by pulling you out prematurely hence the need to calculate distance into a gravity well basically means good luck killing at something at C+ speed at all cause what you've launched has probably just exited and has lost all momentum.

I've got a few ideas but I'm glad you're interested in the setting. And honestly I'm probably not going to cover how things are enforced via the treaty cause, well that's not the point of the story.

Current ideas for enforcing the treaty though as are as follows.

• The idea of a superweapon is just as dangerous as one - A enforcement company entrusted to the treaty (perhaps even the company that originally drafted it before the Federated Alliance vanished) claims to have a weapon never before seen that they can use on any house or corp that dares try to break the treaty, nobody knows if its true or not but the claims of it being made by Kinetic Impulse (the inventors of the FTL drive) is enough to cow them into submission.
• A Federated Alliance Peacekeeping System - A Artificial Intelligence System programmed by the FA before it disappeared has been enforcing the treaty, and the treaty alone, with a army of drone weapons and FTL communications, it cares little for the conflicts of humanity, so long as the treaty is still followed. Whether that be out of following programming or a sense of duty and the treaty making things less lethal (though death still happens in these duels at times) is uncertain.
• Techno-Cultism - The Drift Drive is incredibly complicated and needs dedicated specialists who only come out of the modern Kinetic Impulse company can maintain it and FTL communication. Everyone agrees to A) leave them alone and B) follow the treaty because without them, interstellar civilization falls apart and the corps lose trillions trying to fight with them and their designs.
• Techno-archeology - This is a concept I will be exploring in general, but before they vanished as they were, Olympus Robotics and Kinetic Impulse, practically the reasons for the setting entered a joint business venture and produced many fantastic wonders of science in robotics and ship research, but they vanished and their secrets are locked away in colonized space, on worlds too inhospitable for man, with many wondering what they had made out of both awe and fear. Everyone thus follows the treaty out of a self interest in case their foes somehow get their hands on one of these legendary devices, hoping to placate the other in case of the worst.

Like I said they're just ideas but I'm not certain which one I like the most if at all.