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SteamPoweredMikeJ β Battletech - Open Sesame
Published: 2012-12-20 20:54:39 +0000 UTC; Views: 8775; Favourites: 94; Downloads: 170
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From the Battletech 4th Edition Box Set, FASA, 1996.This is one of my earliest color works. I find the colors a bit gaudy now, but I still like the composition.
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It made for a better looking image without it ; )
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Well, trying to explain the workings of how one of these things operate... could make your brain leak out of your ears.
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It's a bit like the stacks of technobabble that began cropping up in Star Trek: Next Generation, trying to rationalise warp drive, transporter beams, and so forth... usually by sticking the term "subspace" in front of another word.
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BattleMechs just work. Maybe there's a little hamster in a treadmill inside the engine compartment. Maybe the machine runs on coal. I'm usually just trying to blow the other guy's walking tanks to bits to worry about the feasibility of 'visible' laser bolts.
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Battletech was originally a strat game with some fluff to set up why you were blowing each other up with walking tanks. Then people kept writing them for details about the fluff parts, demanding more and more, so they started creating the whole universe. One thing FASA never got around to, nor, as far as I can see, has Catalyst or any others associated with it, is defining cockpits and how much room a given machine would have... or even how the thing works. The Neurohelmet (which this mechwarrior doesn't have) is supposed to give the machine access to the pilots sense of balance. Some writers describe foot pedals (a rather tiring way of doing things) for walking/running, others omit that. For me a battlemech will always be not just a tank on legs, but an extension of the warrior. While the ones in my games do not do hand-springs or such, they do not move like simple tanks either. To me the neurohelmet lets them move like something alive, the only way to explain a 30 foot giant being able to dodge continual headshots 
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Here's how I see it:
Pedals turn your mech's legs.
A throttle to the left of you controls its speed.
A joystick to the right controls torso twist/pitch and/or movement of the arms.
Waldo gloves control melee combat.
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Reactor Axe Man:
See - A Time Of War, Page 187: Barrier Armor Table
In BAR ratings, 0 through 10, with Paper at 0, Safety Glass at 2 and Battlemech Armor at 10, Battlemech canopy armor ranks as 9.
Battlemech "Glass" is not glass. It's almost equivalent to Battlemech armor, thus why you can afford to have large jet-like canopies for greater visibility.
On a related note, if that Zeus mechwarrior is that cramped in the cockpit, I can only imagine what it must be like for the Hunchback mechwarrior.
GO INTO BATTLE IN THE FETAL POSITION!
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One thing I have never understood about Battletech imagery, though I have played and loved the game for years, was the idea of big open "glass" cockpits. You never see a tank with something like that, and for a very good reason. Why bother armoring the rest of the 'mech? Just shoot the cockpit. Even with crappy targeting systems in the Inner Sphere, spam enough lasers, autocannon rounds, and missiles, and you're bound to hit it.
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