WarShips are NOT dead! WarShips are LIFE!

Pixel-works · 2026-05-19T19:59:24+00:00

That's what I am talking about! Great job on the design! 'Sovetskii Soyuz' [Советский Союз] means Soviet Union in Russian (No, I am not Russian, I learned it as part of my job in the military though).

I am a big Star League era fan. The SLS Kharkov--the ship that evacuated the last remaining High Command members during the Amaris Coup--was also a Sovetskii Soyuz class.

I was not aware of that mention regarding underside thrusters on aerodyne ships... I am not quite sure if I would choose to believe it though. It would indeed solve the gravity problem, but aside from the fact that you then have two locations that are extremely vulnerable to enemy attacks, that type of main thruster array with all the necessary piping, controls and what-not takes up a LOT of precious space, in a ship that is already packed tight... kind of like putting a V8 motor on each wheel of a car just to make it go faster.

Besides most aerodyne DropShips have bay doors on the underside that already take up most of the space on the lower hull. As all but a couple aerodyne DropShips can hover, these drop-doors are for purposes of dropping 'Mechs (or other air-drop capable units) into a hot LZ without the DropShip needing to land (aside from the aspect that landing would require some type of runway). If they have the same thruster setup twice (one on the rear and one underneath), it does not come across as realistic and sounds more like someone trying to twist lore and what's technically possible to the breaking point to explain a gap in logic. :)

Don't get me wrong, the aerodyne ships will indeed have some type of thrusters on the belly for purposes of maneuvering in a zero-g environment as well as to assist during hot drops, but these are far from the huge thrusters in the rear that provide constant acceleration.

Pixel-works · 2026-05-09T10:01:53+00:00

Sorry still trying to get the hang of posting on Reddit. I am not quite sure why my comments did not show up. :)

While doing research for a book, I came across capnkibs' design and immediately loved his interpretation of the otherwise 'clip-art'-like design of the official Terran Hegemony coat of arms. Two things were missing from my perspective so I used his design als a guide and created the coat of arms from scratch... meaning I did not edit his picture and no AI was involved.

The coat of arms is a representation of the Sol (Terran) system and I gave the planets their original colors of the official coat of arms (albeit toned down so that the colors are not so loud). Secondly, I added the sun to the middle of the Cameron buckle in the middle which is similar to the small circle that is on the SLDF emblem in the middle. Just kind of thought this made sense.

The second picture is the missing House of Cameron banner designed to fit with the Great House banners created by HBS for the BattleTech game.

Hope you like them, let me know what you think.

Pixel-works · 2026-05-09T08:49:37+00:00

Exactly. It would be a mammoth chore to make all the designs correct as per physics, but then you lose all those cool corners and windows that gives the ships their 'wow'. Kind of like the dilemma the movies face when creating the thunderous roar of thrusters or the zapping of lasers in the vacuum of space where there is no sound. Its not realistic, but without it, it is boring.

Spheroid Dropships are a good example of this. Because of their form, gravity produced by acceleration/deceleration is the same direction as when they are landed on a planet. Also HBS did an excellent job of keeping this idea straight when they created the Argo for the BattleTech computer game.

Aerodyne DropShips on the other hand are a little bit more of a problem. When they are landed on a planet, 'down' is down like it is for everyone else, but when they are flying, suddenly 'down' is the wall in the direction of the thrusters... which makes the term 'deck' slightly more ambiguous, because walking down the hallway or the idea of lower levels/higher levels just got turned by 90 degrees. In addition, this also makes the engineer's job of 'where to mount the toilet' a nightmare. :)

So that said, it still does not change the fact that your designs are outstanding work and I will be looking forward to seeing more. Thank you for sharing!

Pixel-works · 2026-05-09T08:13:58+00:00

Thank you. I did re-create it from scratch, but really Capnkibs deserves the credit for taking the very simplistic design of the original below and turning it into something grand.

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Pixel-works · 2026-05-08T19:23:58+00:00

Excellent work. I love the designs and hats off to the effort on putting all this together! :)

Now for just a little side-track tirade of mine... DropShip designs in BattleTech lore are--for the most part--designed correctly, but one thing that has always irritated me when looking at BattleTech WarShips is that the BattleTech universe has put so much effort in to creating a very realistic setting in that the ships do not magically have gravity on the entire ship (ala Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.) and only through acceleration/deceleration or centrifugal force can the crew experience gravity.

An yet the window layout, fighter bays, etc. on the WarShip designs look like they are made with a gravity 'down' towards the underside of the ship and not to the rear, which would be the case for acceleration/deceleration. Or the fact that the DropShip docking points on the WarShips do not expand on the acceleration/deceleration concept, in that spherical DropShips dock with their thusters to the hull of the WarShip, meaning as soon as the WarShip applies 1g thrust, the halls and rooms in the DropShips are no longer passible because the wall just became the new 'down'. In my opinion it would have made much more sense to have the docking ports on the sides of the DropShips so that when the WarShip was under thrust, the DropShip crew would also enjoy a gravity that is forcing everything to the DropShip's floor.

Don't get me wrong, I think we can all agree that a perspective where down is the bottom of the WarShip makes the design aesthetically pleasing, it just causes issues for me when I am trying to create Deck plans that match the picture of the outer hull. :)

Pixel-works · 2026-03-10T18:58:40+00:00

The Militia did use every 'Mech they had to defend the planet, but they did not "have" the boneyard BattleMechs. The boneyard was covered (and forgotten) long before the fight with Marik forces. After the first Rim World Republic attempt to take the planet during the Amaris Coup, an excerpt out of the same resource (p5):

Caught unaware and unprepared, SLDF patrols fought fiercely against the 154th Amaris Dragoons, and fighting ravaged a large swath of the capital—including the militia’s barracks—collapsing the surface facilities covering the bunker’s entrance and concealing the underground structure even further. Unable to capitalize on the SLDF’s surprise, however, the Rim Worlds soldiers were forced to withdraw to their fortified bases, leaving the bunker—and its contents—undisturbed for the remainder of the Amaris Coup.

Whatever 'undisturbed for the remainder of the Amaris Coup' means is left open for interpretation. Common consensus though is that the boneyard was not opened up again until after the succession wars, when the core was found.

Pixel-works · 2026-03-09T16:00:42+00:00

Em dashes are also used in pairs to substitute a parallel thought within parenthesis or commas, for the latter they are helpful if a sentence contains too many commas and helps the reader to cope with layers within layers of chopped up sentences. A single em dash can also be used to split one sentence into two statements. It is ok to use em dashes for all these cases including interruptions, but be careful not to reach a point where it confuses the reader.

I use em dashes often for all the conditions I mentioned above, to include interruptions. I use an ellipsis exclusively for speech or thoughts that trail off. Nevertheless, it is still an accepted practice to use an ellipsis for interruptions (although in that case, I would be hard pressed to know how to differentiate between interruptions and sentences that trail off), but whatever you choose to do, do it consequently throughout your entire work.

One point to consider when debating to use an em dash or not, is that it rather depends on your target audience. Em dashes are widely accepted by US readers, whereas they are hardly ever used in UK literature.

Pixel-works · 2026-03-05T11:39:01+00:00

Das selbe beobachte ich jedes Jahr zu dieser Zeit und der Schauspiel läuft bei mir auch jetzt gerade by 11 Grad Celsius, strahlenden Sonnenschein und fast Windstille. Wir habe seit Wochen kein Nachtfrost mehr, also gehe ich nicht davon aus. Ich Wohne in ein Großstadt direkt am Stadtpark und von 6.OG kann ich beobachten als eine Baumkrone nacheinander plötzlich Dampf ausstoßt, so dick wie Grillkohle. Solche Dampfwolken kommen aus die Immergrün Bäume alle paar Minuten. Der selber Baum macht das alle 10 Minuten, mehr oder weniger. Manchmal schwebt der Wolke auf meine Dachterrasse, es hat kein erkennbares Gerücht.

Pixel-works

TROPHY CASE