Latest revision as of 20:09, 12 December 2022

BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds

With BTA v15.0 comes a brand-new addition to the mod, and to BattleTech as a setting, the Sanctuary Worlds and the nations and peoples that live there. Because the Sanctuary Worlds are non-canon I invented them whole-cloth and I figured some folks might have a small interest in where they came from and why I went to such an effort to make this entirely new faction. Additionally, some folks might want to know more about their background and history in-setting (not much of which appears in BTA v15.0), so I'm taking some time to discuss the factions both in and out of setting. We'll start with the real life aspect to the factions, i.e. why did I make them?

For many years I've had a desire to make something unique and new about BattleTech. It's the old "OC Do Not Steal" vibe from the earlier days of the internet. Everyone has their own headcanon after all and wants to make stuff that's uniquely theirs. The Sanctuary Worlds started life in like 2014 as the Dane Sacellum, a Clan-like faction that fled the Inner Sphere during the Star League era to make their own space nation with blackjack and hookers. I wrote out a rough fluff document and included some notes about rules for their weapons and that was it. I attempted to figure out how Solaris Skunk Werks (a tabletop BT mech design program) functions so I could make their gear in there and actually print and play with Sacellum mechs and gear on the tabletop, but at the time SSW was rather difficult to mod and I abandoned it in favor of having other stuff to do in my day-to-day life. When 2018 rolled around and HBS BT was released and I fell into modding it, I realized that this custom faction could be resurrected somewhat in HBS BT, which is much easier to mod. In fact, in the very early days of BTA (2019ish) I even took a stab at making the Sacellum into a real faction. However, the demands of running BTA quickly interfered and I set the project down, vowing to return one day to finish it.

Which brings us to August 2022. I had been slowly burning out from constant updates to BTA and from the daily grind of making content. Don't get me wrong, I love the job and wouldn't trade it, but even a job you love can wear on you after 3+ years of doing it. I realized that something had to change, and quick, or the ultimate result was going to be me quitting BTA and walking away, which I didn't want to do. I love BTA and I love the community and didn't want to ragequit because I was sick of it. I went digging through my storage files to see if I could find something to revitalize my interest and energy and lo and behold, the Sacellum files were just hanging out waiting for me to rediscover them. I decided that I was going to set out to bring this idea to life and I'd do it right this time.

To that end, I made an announcement on August 19th, 2022. I told the community that I was burning out and needed to shift focus. From then on, I was focused on the new project and normal BTA would get backburnered for awhile until I got it done. The community was immensely supportive and understanding and I felt I had the freedom to go for it so I did. I took the original single faction, the Dane Sacellum, and I spun it out into four factions: the Dane Sacellum, the Mallard Republic, the Jacobson Haven, and their mutually-assembled army the Sanctuary Alliance. I wrote an entire history for the region of space they settled and how they got there. I reworked their entire techtree from the ground up, redid all the weapons, made new ones, adjusted old ones, invented all their new equipment and gear (such as heat sinks and armors and structures and such). I sketched out how many units they'd need to be roughly viable as factions, including tanks and turrets. I figured out where their worlds would be located (trickier than you might expect). I figured out how they'd interact with the Inner Sphere, who would be in their warpath, and how their war would turn out (decently well, as it happens). I even made little characters for the faction representatives that the player gets missions from and who say things to the player at the Mission Complete screen (all factions have this in the upper left-hand corner, that portrait and name and text is all changeable). I sketched out ideas for events that would happen in their space to immerse the player in their lore and personalities, though these were left out of the initial v15.0 release for lack of time due to real-life commitments involving my family (they're coming in later patches, promise!).

The project brought me back to life and rekindled my love of BTA and of working on BTA. Playing with the new gear felt *fresh* in a way that BTA hadn't felt in a long time. I know that not everyone will want to play with non-canon content, that's fair, and I made sure to keep it relatively contained to a corner of the map so that you have to go looking for the new factions to encounter them instead of them coming to find you wherever you are (sort of like the Clans). I do hope that folks approach this with an open mind and give it a fair shake. I want people to experience something new and get to see it with new eyes for the first time, there's something magical about seeing something for the first time that you've never seen or know anything about.

Anyways, that's the deal. That's how we got here and what I was thinking the whole while. Hope you give it a shot and enjoy it, it's fun stuff, I promise! :)

Previous Developer Blogs

BTA Developer Blog #1: BTA's Core Philosophy - 2021/5/18

BTA Developer Blog #2: BTA and the Clans - 2021/5/24

BTA Developer Blog #3: Tanks For All The Fish - 2021/5/31

BTA Developer Blog #4: Abiding Quirkiness - 2021/6/11

BTA Developer Blog #5: Artillery and You, A Primer - 2021/10/8

BTA Developer Blog #6: The Salvage Question - 2022/3/13

BTA Developer Blog #7: Damage Reduction And You - 2022/4/14

BTA Developer Blog #8: BD's Favorites! - 2022/4/15

BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds - 2022/12/12

BTA Developer Blog #9.5: The Actual Story of the Sanctuary Worlds - 2022/12/12

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-=BTA Developer Blog #2: BTA and the Clans=
+= BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds =
-Welcome back to the BTA Developer Blog series, where I take a look at and explain various facets of BTA's design for your edification. Today, I'm talking all things Clan and putting to rest why BTA's Clans are the way they are.
+With BTA v15.0 comes a brand-new addition to the mod, and to BattleTech as a setting, the Sanctuary Worlds and the nations and peoples that live there. Because the Sanctuary Worlds are non-canon I invented them whole-cloth and I figured some folks might have a small interest in where they came from and why I went to such an effort to make this entirely new faction. Additionally, some folks might want to know more about their background and history in-setting (not much of which appears in BTA v15.0), so I'm taking some time to discuss the factions both in and out of setting. We'll start with the real life aspect to the factions, i.e. why did I make them?
-BTA did not start with the Clans, it was IS-only for quite awhile, from BTA's release in June 2019 until April 2020 in fact. However, in April 2020 BTA released v5.0, which brought the Clans, the larger Inner Sphere map, and a bunch of extra IS factions to the party. The first thing everyone did was grab the Clans and start playing with them. This led to the inevitable discovery that BTA's Clans aren't exactly the way BT tabletop depicts the Clans. Their weapons were rebalanced to be different, to be shorter range and higher heat. While I did explain myself at the time, this seems like a fine time to really make it clear how this all works and why it works this way. There's two aspects to BTA's Clans: their gear and their factions. We'll start with factions.
+For many years I've had a desire to make something unique and new about BattleTech. It's the old "OC Do Not Steal" vibe from the earlier days of the internet. Everyone has their own headcanon after all and wants to make stuff that's uniquely theirs. The Sanctuary Worlds started life in like 2014 as the Dane Sacellum, a Clan-like faction that fled the Inner Sphere during the Star League era to make their own space nation with blackjack and hookers. I wrote out a rough fluff document and included some notes about rules for their weapons and that was it. I attempted to figure out how Solaris Skunk Werks (a tabletop BT mech design program) functions so I could make their gear in there and actually print and play with Sacellum mechs and gear on the tabletop, but at the time SSW was rather difficult to mod and I abandoned it in favor of having other stuff to do in my day-to-day life. When 2018 rolled around and HBS BT was released and I fell into modding it, I realized that this custom faction could be resurrected somewhat in HBS BT, which is much easier to mod. In fact, in the very early days of BTA (2019ish) I even took a stab at making the Sacellum into a real faction. However, the demands of running BTA quickly interfered and I set the project down, vowing to return one day to finish it.
+Which brings us to August 2022. I had been slowly burning out from constant updates to BTA and from the daily grind of making content. Don't get me wrong, I love the job and wouldn't trade it, but even a job you love can wear on you after 3+ years of doing it. I realized that something had to change, and quick, or the ultimate result was going to be me quitting BTA and walking away, which I didn't want to do. I love BTA and I love the community and didn't want to ragequit because I was sick of it. I went digging through my storage files to see if I could find something to revitalize my interest and energy and lo and behold, the Sacellum files were just hanging out waiting for me to rediscover them. I decided that I was going to set out to bring this idea to life and I'd do it right this time.
-When BTA Clans released, there were 3 Clans available: Wolf, Ghost Bear, and Jade Falcon. All of these had their own space and none of them offered contracts, nor could players ally with any of them or even gain reputation with them at all. This raised outcry, people were confused and some were unhappy: why would BTA do this? Players wanted to befriend the Clans! Why did BTA deny this? The reason is because in-setting, the Clans really don't hire mercenaries. They tend to consider mercs undeserving of respect and dislike them greatly. Since the player is a mercenary company in BTA, it wouldn't make sense to let Clans hire them: why would they hire someone they hate? Much later on, BTA added two more Clans, both of whom mix things up a little: Diamond Shark and Nova Cat. Diamond Shark goes the extra mile and doesn't offer contracts but also can't be fought against either, they barely have a battlefield presence at all: they're merchants, not warriors, they want your c-bills not your blood. Clan Nova Cat is where BTA finally gave players what they wanted: CNC offers contracts and can be allied with. Why them and not the others? Because Clan Nova Cat at this point in the timeline has abandoned Clan precepts, is no longer part of Clan space or the Clan council, and is fully acclimatized to the Inner Sphere. Since they're now Inner Sphere locals, they realize that they gotta work with mercs and so they do.
+To that end, I made an announcement on August 19th, 2022. I told the community that I was burning out and needed to shift focus. From then on, I was focused on the new project and normal BTA would get backburnered for awhile until I got it done. The community was immensely supportive and understanding and I felt I had the freedom to go for it so I did. I took the original single faction, the Dane Sacellum, and I spun it out into four factions: the Dane Sacellum, the Mallard Republic, the Jacobson Haven, and their mutually-assembled army the Sanctuary Alliance. I wrote an entire history for the region of space they settled and how they got there. I reworked their entire techtree from the ground up, redid all the weapons, made new ones, adjusted old ones, invented all their new equipment and gear (such as heat sinks and armors and structures and such). I sketched out how many units they'd need to be roughly viable as factions, including tanks and turrets. I figured out where their worlds would be located (trickier than you might expect). I figured out how they'd interact with the Inner Sphere, who would be in their warpath, and how their war would turn out (decently well, as it happens). I even made little characters for the faction representatives that the player gets missions from and who say things to the player at the Mission Complete screen (all factions have this in the upper left-hand corner, that portrait and name and text is all changeable). I sketched out ideas for events that would happen in their space to immerse the player in their lore and personalities, though these were left out of the initial v15.0 release for lack of time due to real-life commitments involving my family (they're coming in later patches, promise!).
+The project brought me back to life and rekindled my love of BTA and of working on BTA. Playing with the new gear felt *fresh* in a way that BTA hadn't felt in a long time. I know that not everyone will want to play with non-canon content, that's fair, and I made sure to keep it relatively contained to a corner of the map so that you have to go looking for the new factions to encounter them instead of them coming to find you wherever you are (sort of like the Clans). I do hope that folks approach this with an open mind and give it a fair shake. I want people to experience something new and get to see it with new eyes for the first time, there's something magical about seeing something for the first time that you've never seen or know anything about.
-Also when BTA Clans was released, it did not take long for players to realize that the weapons had been changed, many of them heavily (cLRMs, cLPLs, cERPPCs all were frequent targets of complaints). As a general rule (there's a few exceptions) Clan weapons were rebalanced to be higher damage and lighter weight/smaller size while being shorter ranged and higher heat than a straight TT conversion would indicate. Why? Two reasons, one lore, one gameplay. First, as I was making the Clan module, I was reading over Clan lore and backstory. In Clan culture, there is a focus on dueling and on pilot skill as the ultimate arbiter of combat. However, on table, Clan weapons are universally strictly better than IS ones, often in terms of *range* as well as damage, which made no sense to me. Why would a culture that relies on 1v1 dueling for their conflict resolution also rely on extremely long-ranged guns for those duels? The IRL equivalent is like being a cowboy in the old west and challenging someone else to duel, but instead of pistols at noon it's sniper rifles at noon and you plink away from a half-mile away at each other. It makes negative sense and more to the point it's not how Clan duels are portrayed in fiction. In fiction, Clanners often face each other within visual and sensor range, don't hide either visually or from sensors, and use their superior skill to win, not the limits of their technology. So, I rebalanced Clan weapons accordingly: higher heat and damage with shorter range encourages short, sharp, decisive, skill-based engagements. From player commentary, it seems to have been a success: Clan loadouts favor alpha-strikes that kill or cripple in one or two shots. This is good and what was desired.
+Anyways, that's the deal. That's how we got here and what I was thinking the whole while. Hope you give it a shot and enjoy it, it's fun stuff, I promise! :)
+= Previous Developer Blogs =
-However, there's a second reason the Clan weapons were changed: to change the nature of gameplay. Inner Sphere mechs have to make compromises between speed/firepower/endurance. Clan technology generally lets them not have to make those compromises because of cEndo/cFerro/cXL and their weapons all being lighter. This makes Clans strictly better, which is bad gameplay. By introducing downsides to Clan technology, the gameplay changes. Now, Clan loadouts aren't all upside: there's compromises to make. Compromises make interesting gameplay and loadouts. Getting everything for free is boring and bad design. Better gameplay design is introducing side-grades, compromises, complexity. Changing Clan weapons to not be purely upside makes gameplay more complex, which keeps players coming back to explore and experiment more. From what I've seen in various chatter since introducing the Clans, I believe this approach succeeded, at least somewhat (the AI isn't as smart about Clantech as I'd like, still working on that, it's always a process).
+[[BTA Developer Blog 1: BTA's Core Philosophy|BTA Developer Blog #1: BTA's Core Philosophy - 2021/5/18]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 2: BTA and the Clans|BTA Developer Blog #2: BTA and the Clans - 2021/5/24]]
-There is also the matter of the Clan quirks. True Clanmechs, omnis and battlemechs alike, have a pair of global "Clan quirks", one positive and one negative. The positive quirk provides a lot of good bonuses, such as move speed, heat dissipation, and better targeting, while the negative quirk provides a massive debuff for melee attacks (except for DFAs). These were included to help differentiate the Clan pilots a little as well as to represent that the Clan chassis come with inherent benefits. Notably, the Clan negative quirk was made because Clanners disdain melee combat and don't build their mechs for it. However, a sharp eye will notice that I left off DFAs from the list of penalized melee attacks. The reason for this is that DFAs are bold and come with honor built-in: to pull one off requires high pilot skill and is both dangerous and flashy: the perfect Clan maneuver, doubly so if it kills the target. Other melees are dishonorable but DFAs are big and showy and impressive when they work, so they're ok. Clan culture at its finest.
+[[BTA Developer Blog 3: Tanks For All The Fish|BTA Developer Blog #3: Tanks For All The Fish - 2021/5/31]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 4: Abiding Quirkiness|BTA Developer Blog #4: Abiding Quirkiness - 2021/6/11]]
-There you go, BTA's reasons for the Clans. Hopefully, this settles the question going forward. Come back next time for another, hopefully less divisive, blog!
+[[BTA Developer Blog 5: Artillery and You, A Primer|BTA Developer Blog #5: Artillery and You, A Primer - 2021/10/8]]
-=Previous Developer Blogs=
+[[BTA Developer Blog 6: The Salvage Question|BTA Developer Blog #6: The Salvage Question - 2022/3/13]]
-[[BTA Developer Blog 1: BTA's Core Philosophy - 2021/18/5]]
-[[BTA Developer Blog 2: BTA and the Clans - 2021/24/5]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 7: Damage Reduction And You|BTA Developer Blog #7: Damage Reduction And You - 2022/4/14]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 8: BD's Favorites!|BTA Developer Blog #8: BD's Favorites! - 2022/4/15]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds|BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds - 2022/12/12]]
+[[BTA Developer Blog 9.5: The Actual Story of the Sanctuary Worlds|BTA Developer Blog #9.5: The Actual Story of the Sanctuary Worlds - 2022/12/12]]
+[[Category:Dev Blogs]]

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Latest revision as of 20:09, 12 December 2022

BTA Developer Blog #9: The Story of the Sanctuary Worlds

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