On Battletech and Superfluous Background Data

One of the games I spent a lot of time on as a child was Mechwarrior 2: 31st Century Combat, which was part of the larger Battletech universe of tabletop wargames. It was my first exposure to the concept of mecha, even before I saw Star Wars and its Imperial walkers. It also introduced me to the idea of ammo management, which unfortunately I didn't fully grasp until much later.  Thanks to the modern marvel that is MechVM, I was able to break out our old disc and finally finish the game late last year, 18 years after I first played it.

"Overheating my mech?! Thermal shutdown failsafe?! What does that even mean?! Star Wars: Rogue Squadron lets me hold down the trigger for five minutes straight and absolutely nothing bad happened!" (Image source: Wikipedia)

Being a game from 1995, its environments left something to be desired, but I loved seeing all the different planets the missions took place on. One of the advantages of a tabletop gaming universe is that there tends to be a lot of superfluous background information, presumably to better immerse the players in the game and help them come up with original but authentic game scenarios. I've only briefly dabbled in the game, having purchased the starter set recently, but I've found some of what I've seen rather interesting.

Disclaimer: despite the awesome articulated war machine on the cover, contents are mostly rulebooks and scoresheets. The closest you get to this is the miniatures. And you have to paint the miniatures. (Image source: Amazon)

This sci-fi setting has no sentient aliens to speak of, so all storylines are human-centric. Consequently most of the planets have names with real-world origins, which I've always found more respectable than alphabet soup. Take a look at this doc for example. Note also that we don't get more than a page of background on any one planet, but at least (in most cases) we get some basic statistics and an image. Rather than all looking like Earth clones, the planets are quite diverse and visually appealing. (The artwork style looks similar to planetary art I've seen elsewhere; I wonder what software was used to create these pics.) The flavor text similarly paints a picture of colonization as a difficult endeavor, with settlers having to deal with a variety of hostile conditions. This is way more background than you'd get in most other media, with the possible exception of the Star Wars Legends continuity.

Also interesting to note is this map from the recent Mechwarrior Online multiplayer game: "Tourmaline Desert".

It's so beautiful, I got nothing snarky to say. (Image source: Mechwarrior Online)

Whereas most of the other maps have environments with real-world analogs, this "Tourmaline Desert" definitely shows some cookie-worthy creativity. From the red sky and twin suns to the massive crystal formations to the 97-Celsius ambient temperature, this feels like a hostile world. Can't speak for its plausibility though. Until I inevitably Wikipedia'd it, I had no idea what tourmaline was. Here on Earth, though, it's classified as a semi-precious stone, so it seems unlikely you could have that much tourmaline in one place. Doesn't mean those crystal formations couldn't be made of something else though. I'd definitely like to see more like this in video games. (Hopefully we will once No Man's Sky comes out.)

On a similar note, the brand new map, "Hellebore Springs" is a simple but appealing concept. Purple plants!

Image source: YouTube

Sure it's just a palette swap of trees and grass, but it's clear they're making an effort. Seems like you're more likely to see this kind of creativity in video games. I suspect that's because one way or another you're building everything from the ground up; in movies and live-action TV it's easier to use real-world locations for sets, and in books it's easier to not describe the planet at all (this happens too often).

More Cookies For This Guy

In high school I messed around a lot with Celestia, a freeware "universe simulator" that allows you to view pretty much any known object in the solar system, the galaxy, or the universe. The key appeal of Celestia is the ease with which one can code add-ons, many of which can be found here. In college I once coded an add-on that contained every star, planet, and moon in the Firefly verse, which I never uploaded because I knew nothing about creating planetary textures.

Still don't.

One that I've always remembered is this interpretation of the HD 40307 solar system. At the time it was made there were only three "Super-Earth" planets known around that star; now there may be as many as seven. Regardless, it wasn't that big of a stretch for modder "AVBursch" to add a hypothetical fourth planet.

Clockwise from top-left: HD 40307 b, hypothetical e, c, and d, dubbed Lemnos, Naxos, Thebes, and Samothrace respectively by the modder. (Image source: Celestia Motherlode)

None of these planets could be habitable, and this modder doesn't try to make them so. Instead he comes up with four inhospitable worlds that seem incredibly real. This is helped by the flavor text he provides in the readme file that comes with the add-on.

The innermost planet, Lemnos, is covered in molten metal seas and rivers, tidally locked to its star, with day and night temperatures of 1880 degrees F and 1232 degrees F respectively. Zoom in on the surface and you'll find that the sky is bright red.

Thebes, the next planet, has a thick atmosphere but is described as being too hot for clouds to form (though the model has clouds - they can be toggled on and off).

Samothrace, however, has a thick cloud layer like Venus, though you can still view the surface through the clouds. Its atmospheric density is 4 times that of Venus.

Naxos, the hypothetical planet, does not quite match with any of the planets that have been discovered in real life since this mod was created. It's described as having a mass of 5.51 Earths and a semi-major orbital axis of 0.422 astronomical units. Compare HD 40307 f, with a mass of 5.2 Earths and an orbital axis of 0.247 AU, and HD 40307 g, with a mass of 7.1 Earths and an orbital axis of 0.600 AU (give or take 1 or 2 Earths and 0.1 or 0.2 AU). Described as having "ocean of water that is kept liquid in spite of the surface temperature of 605 kelvin (630 F) because of the immemse atmospheric pressure", the description for Naxos is where I first heard the term "Pelagic" used to describe an ocean planet.

These planets would almost never be used as settings for any mainstream sci-fi media, unless Hal Clement were still alive (look him up). This modder made these planets just to be creative, and it's a shame there aren't more well-thought-out mods like this, where scientific accuracy and realism are the top priority. Why can't they all be like this?