BattleTech

by on April 30, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

So there’s a new game out there, called BattleTech. It’s a PC game based on the 1984 tabletop wargame of the same name. It’s guys in big robots blowing up other guys in big robots. Knights of the Fallen Roman Empire in a Successor States kind of a universe scattered across a couple thousand star systems spread across a thousand lightyears of space. That’s the matchbox background.

There’s dozens of novels, dozens of sourcebooks, hundreds of playing pieces, and a dozen different computer games in the universe, making it one of the more published gaming universes in existence. Unfortunately, it suffers from a virulent strain of IP-distribution similar to Star Trek and Robotech. Basically, different companies own different parts of the IP. Microsoft owns computer programs while Topps owns the tabletop game and other physical products. This has caused some issues of late.

But BattleTech, the computer game, just came out, and it is awesome. It places you out on the Periphery of known space in the classic era of the game, at the lowest ebb of technology as the universe has been falling for centuries after the Star League collapsed into civil war. You end up commanding a mercenary unit trying to survive in the hardscrabble existence of paying wages, repairs, ammo, and keeping one step ahead of the banks that want to repossess your spaceship if you miss a single payment.

Oh. And you get to go on missions where can stomp on enemy vehicles, punch enemy BattleMechs, or just shoot them all full of holes with your missiles, lasers, and particle cannons. It’s turn based rather real-time, so you can carefully pick your moves and targets, right down to called shots on particular limbs. And it is beautiful. You get to see cinematics of your mechs walking through swaying trees or swirling dust storms on their way to punching or shooting the enemy. Sometimes they even zoom the view in so you can see the missiles tracking in for final attack. And watching your BattleMech tearing the arm off an enemy and dropping them on their back is always a thing of beauty.

This is not MechWarrior, MechAssault, or the BattleTech Virtual World Arcade Pods, where you play a single BattleMech in real time. This is not a twitch game like Halo or Call of Duty. This is a turn-based strategy game, closer to MechCommander or the Crescent Hawk games. And of course the tabletop game it takes its genesis from. It glories in being a faithful computer representation of the spirit of the tabletop game. And a fun game in its own right.

If you have even a passing affinity for strategy games, I’d like to suggest that you try this game out. It is fun. I love it. I hope you will too.

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The Second Great Depression

by on April 29, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Whether it existed as a Constitutional Republic or an effective Democracy, many began foretelling the Third American Republic’s downfall as early as 2000 or 2010. While the elections of 2008 and 2016 certainly proved to be clarion calls when it comes to the health of the Republic, most historians agree that the government limped along for the next quarter century without observable historical change. There was great cultural and rhetorical outrage, but true political or cultural change was slow and minimal. The cities went one way, while the rural areas went another, and as time passed they had less in common with each other. The end years of the Third Republic were times of division, and it became common to call people on any side un-American if they did not agree with a chosen slate of values. Gridlock and savage rhetoric ruled the era, and political violence of a kind not seen in decades, or centuries, rose to become almost commonplace. But for all the news and thunder of this violence and rhetoric, little actually changed in how the country worked. The Second Great Depression became that change.

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The Second Great Depression

by on April 28, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

The people I’ve talked to who lived through the Second Great Depression remember a time of plenty and opportunity. And a time of horrible division. They could buy anything they wanted from food to electronics. They could move from coast to coast on a whim, or play in virtual worlds better than the real one. And at the same time, the political and cultural divisions were beyond anything a people can survive for long. Political parties taught their members to hate people based on their race, their heritage, and their religion. They called their political foes mentally deficient, crazy, or hypocrites. They attacked political rivals with demonstrations and riots. Political assassinations, both virtual and real, became commonplace. Homes of opposition supporters were vandalized, and businesses were protested out of existence. The politics of destruction allowed no one who believed differently to survive. Many people just checked out of politics and tried not to pay attention to it. Others wallowed in it and moderates faded from the political landscape. Most people just didn’t care what was happening in Washington by the end. Apathy is the five-dollar word people toss out for why people let it get so bad. I suppose there are worse ones out there.

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The Second Great Depression

by on April 27, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

One of the things that made the Second Great Depression as bad as it was is the decades of political and cultural division that preceded it. Identity politics divided people by race, sex, religion, politics, and more. Those who had friends in other groups were called race traitors, or the like. And there was always a protest group happy to march with signs held high to call for someone to lose their job, their business, or worse if they didn’t do exactly as they were told. By the time the economic crisis hit its peak, the time when people really needed to hang together for the good of everyone, too many people no longer cared what happened to those outside their close group of trusted friends and associates. And too many others took a delighted glee out of watching those who’d attacked them lose their jobs or homes in turn. And when the governmental social safety nets failed, those who depended on them had to sink or swim. Far too many of them pulled others down with them in their frantic attempts to avoid drowning. It wasn’t just the economic crisis that hurt. It was the political crisis. The culture crisis. The moral crisis. It all came to a boil at once, and when it hit America, it hit the rest of the world like a thunderbolt.

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The Second Great Depression

by on April 26, 2018 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Book of Civilizations

Most historians separate the history of the United States of America into the Colonial Era, the American Confederation, and the four American Republics. The Colonial Era of course speaks about the time under British Rule, which ended with the Revolution against the Crown. The Confederation was the first formation of Free Colonial Rule, before the adoption of our current Constitution. The First American Republic started with the passage of the new Constitution and was generally characterized as a mutual assemblage of Sovereign States. The Civil War, or the Second American Revolution as some name it, transformed America into the Second Republic, with a far more powerful Federal government. The Second Republic ended with the First Great Depression and the New Deal. This Third Republic grew up in World War II to become the new guarantor of peace in the world. Some call it the First American Democracy. Whether a Democracy or a Constitutional Republic, many Americans alive today were born and grew up in this time. They lived through the Second Great Depression in living, bleeding color.

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