Brainstorming a sci-fi setting, and justifying interstellar war

[payn]

I think you could do a pretty good handwave that that "limited resource" in this universe is habitable planets. It gives you a limited resource that people would be motivated to both fight for and maintain. And it's based in reality (lot of planets really aren't suitable for humans).

It also provides a somewhat plausible explanation for the planetside battles. There is a real problem of "stuff" in orbit being quite difficult to deal with. Too much junk in space close to a planet can make travel or maintaining satellites quite problematic. For that reason, the clans could all have agreed to avoid space battle at all costs, essentially treating a space battle the same as nuking a planet and leaving it full of fallout.

You've still got to deal with why people fight with mechs instead of drones, artillery, whatever. But that could give you a pretty good start.

I think the idea that nuking planets leaves them an unusable husk might be a reasonable idea for mechs. Warships in orbit make air superiority too difficult to maintain. So, mobile mechs have become kings of the battlefield. Though, its good to mention that BT does have orbital bombardment, artillery, etc.. rules.

 

[Nutation]

If you take the Stargate approach, then you have a land invasion from one planet to another, and you don't have to twist your brain around the idea of dropships. The gates are defended, of course, but maybe the first thing through is EMP grenades or smoke & chaff that make the situation feasible for the mechs.

You can also do planet-to-planet wormholes or teleportation that can't be predicted, but in that case, it's better to just throw bombs.

 

[MGibster]

I think you could do a pretty good handwave that that "limited resource" in this universe is habitable planets. It gives you a limited resource that people would be motivated to both fight for and maintain. And it's based in reality (lot of planets really aren't suitable for humans).

A limited resource in the Battletech universe is also industrial production facilities. Between the First, Second, and Third Succession Wars, pretty much every faction has lost the ability to produce military equipment on the scale they were able to in the past. Space battleships like the ones seen during the First Sucession War are rare as hens teeth these days and even mech production facilities are in short supply. So a faction might want to take the planet of Colchester because the have the facilities to produce Orion mechs or something.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think you could do a pretty good handwave that that "limited resource" in this universe is habitable planets. It gives you a limited resource that people would be motivated to both fight for and maintain. And it's based in reality (lot of planets really aren't suitable for humans).

It also provides a somewhat plausible explanation for the planetside battles. There is a real problem of "stuff" in orbit being quite difficult to deal with. Too much junk in space close to a planet can make travel or maintaining satellites quite problematic. For that reason, the clans could all have agreed to avoid space battle at all costs, essentially treating a space battle the same as nuking a planet and leaving it full of fallout.

You've still got to deal with why people fight with mechs instead of drones, artillery, whatever. But that could give you a pretty good start.

This is potentially legit but it implies that for some reason people need to live on planets. That multigenerational space habitats are non-viable for some fundamental reason (mental health?) and that terraforming is not an option.
This, then is why no one is employing planet killers or nukes from space.

 

[payn]

This is potentially legit but it implies that for some reason people need to live on planets. That multigenerational space habitats are non-viable for some fundamental reason (mental health?) and that terraforming is not an option.
This, then is why no one is employing planet killers or nukes from space.

A good question, but space is also pretty harsh to the human body. While folks absolutely can live in space stations, its likely they prefer to make homes on planets that have stable gravity and radiation shielding. Not prone to cataclysmic events or cascading failures to life support is a big plus.

 

[RangerWickett]

There's also, perhaps, a philosophical element, where we expect 'warfare' to have high stakes, when really it might just be super petty. It's a lot easier for villainous a-holes to justify sending in the military to kill a bunch of civilians if it takes a minimum of 2 weeks for news to reach anywhere else, and if very few people travel between worlds.

Like, think of all the abuses that billionaires get up to in our current world - putting fingers on the scales of elections, buying whole media companies to convince people to be upset about the same stuff they are. They don't hesitate to make life difficult for small fry folks who try to get in the way of their economic goals.

If you're a trillionaire or more, and you have the ability to control multiple planets, and you hear that Nektar III has a really cool island with a great cliff waterfall view next to the ocean, eh, maybe you don't blink at sending a dozen mechs to the planet to kill the local governor and occupy the place so you can take it as your vacation spot.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

A good question, but space is also pretty harsh to the human body. While folks absolutely can live in space stations, its likely they prefer to make homes on planets that have stable gravity and radiation shielding. Not prone to cataclysmic events or cascading failures to life support is a big plus.

Somebody dropping a relativistic planet cracker on you is a pretty cataclysmic event.
Tens of meters of rock and/or water should be enough to give earth surface levels of radiation shielding and a civ capable of moving thousands of tons of mechs across interstellar distances should be able to build and O'Neill cylinder. They have shielding tech.
The bulk of the population living on planets with that tech level would imply some strong dependence on planets at a level that cannot be supported by current science.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In Greg Bear’s Forge of God & Anvil of Stars novels- as well as works by other authors- certain aliens are so xenophobic that they send out drones to preemptively destroy nascent civilizations before they can become competitors. They might not need your planetary system’s resources right now, but they can and do envision a time when they probably will. Even if that time is millions of years from now.

Antagonists like that are DEFINITELY worth fighting against in an interstellar scale. As the attacked, it’s not about resources, it’s about survival.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

There's also, perhaps, a philosophical element, where we expect 'warfare' to have high stakes, when really it might just be super petty. It's a lot easier for villainous a-holes to justify sending in the military to kill a bunch of civilians if it takes a minimum of 2 weeks for news to reach anywhere else, and if very few people travel between worlds.

Like, think of all the abuses that billionaires get up to in our current world - putting fingers on the scales of elections, buying whole media companies to convince people to be upset about the same stuff they are. They don't hesitate to make life difficult for small fry folks who try to get in the way of their economic goals.

If you're a trillionaire or more, and you have the ability to control multiple planets, and you hear that Nektar III has a really cool island with a great cliff waterfall view next to the ocean, eh, maybe you don't blink at sending a dozen mechs to the planet to kill the local governor and occupy the place so you can take it as your vacation spot.

This would make sense if one has mechs on hand anyway, but it would strike me as cheaper to bribe a local to off the governor and bribe and commercially intimidate whomever is necessary to get someone more tractable in power.

 

[payn]

In Greg Bear’s Forge of God & Anvil of Stars novels- as well as works by other authors- certain aliens are so xenophobic that they send out drones to preemptively destroy nascent civilizations before they can become competitors. They might not need your planetary system’s resources right now, but they can and do envision a time when they probably will. Even if that time is millions of years from now.

Antagonists like that are DEFINITELY worth fighting against in an interstellar scale. As the attacked, it’s not about resources, it’s about survival.

True, but the OP had a trojan horse of battle mechs in it. Maybe the mechs are drones?