BattleTech: Industries is a fan maintained update of the BattleTech sourcebook Objective Raids (stock number 1665.) All credit for original material is to be given to the authors of said publication and to FASA Corporation.

Medron Pryde

Though certainly not a particuarly exciting read, Objective Raids was nevertheless one of the most valuable reference books ever to be published by FASA for the BattleTech universe. Unlike other sourcebooks or the novels, OR did nothing to further the BattleTech story line, and contained no new 'Mech designs (FASA's favored gimmick for selling its products.) Conversely, its worth was discovered in the dry, database like listings of regiments, factories, and worlds. This information was a windfall for those players and game masters who wished to create a BattleTech scenario or MechWarrior adventure that could fit seamlessly into the "realities" of the BattleTech universe.

OR is divided into a number of sections, the principle two titled "Frontline Forces" and "Industries". The first of these two sections gives the status of each house, clan, and mercenary BattleMech unit operating within the Inner Sphere and near-periphery. The latter section describes the defence contractors of the Inner Sphere, with information on factories and the vital components they produce, on which world they reside and by whom they are defended. Details such as this can flesh out what might otherwise be an unimaginative conflict.

Perhaps a GM has said to your gaming group, "Your unit is raiding a factory that makes 'Mech weapons. Get in there, grap what you can and get out. It is defended by a company of heavy 'Mechs, so try not to get killed." Now, how exciting is that? Nothing is said about the world this is on, exactly who is defending the factory, or even which specific weapon types are being purloined. Are your opponents elite Clan troops, or some wretched mercenary group? Will any of your team pay the ultimate price for a few Voelkers machine guns? And how long will you have before you can expect enemy reinforcements to arrive in-system? Now those are details worth considering.

As stated before, OR enables you to give details to the situation. Now, your ad-hock strike lance is in the employ of the Free Worlds League, and based on the planet Trellisane. The League is desperately short on replacement PPCs, and your assignment is to relieve the Commonwealth of some of its excess inventory. SAFE intelligence reports that extended range PPCs are produced on the Commonwealth worlds of Hesperus II and New Syrtis. Defiance Industries of Hesperus II is far too tough a nut to crack, so your best bet is to hit Johnston Industries on the ice world of New Syrtis. It takes one week to get to your jumpship, six jumps to arrive at the New Syrtis star system, including two through the space lanes of your dubious ally, the Capellan Confederation, and finally a four day trip from the system nadir point to the planet of New Syrtis. You have three months to complete your mission and return home.

Do the ends justify the means? Will a few dozen Johnston High Speed ER PPCs be worth their weight in Germanium, or is the risk to your mercenary command so great that you choose to default on your contract instead? Perhaps you can pick up a Poland Main Model A gauss rifle or two while you're at it, and make that dream modification to your Awesome that you have for years been fantasizing about. Damn, you say, let's do it...

Forgive the above illustration for going tangent on the subject of why I have created and maintained Industries. I feel that the writing goes far to explain the usefulness of what undeservedly may be an often overlooked resource. The ravages of time have taken their toll on the publication dated 1992, and my own copy is much the worse for wear, the binding having disintegrated entirely and the ragged pages tearing loose from their hole-punch three-ring notebook. Sadly, the information contained within has fared no better. Set in the year 3054, Objective Raids is wholly out of date. Alliances have been shattered, dozens of worlds have changed hands, and scores of new war machines have launched from the assembly lines onto the battlefield.

However, it was not obsolescence that prompted me to begin this update. In fact, when I had begun this work in midsummer of 1994, Objective Raids was still fairly up to snuff. To be certain, Technical Readout: 3055 had been published, but I was not at that time too concerned with adding in all of the new BattleMechs to what was already in OR. However, as a fanatical Taurian Concordat devotee, I was a bit miffed by the disporportionately large number of mistakes and omissions present (or absent as the case may be) in the Taurian portion of the Industries section. An entire Stinger assembly area gone? And a missing aerospace assembly line missing as well. A VOX 280 fusion engine for the Marauder? Or a Warner 300F aerospace engine for the Thunderbolt and a fighter that the Concordat did not even produce? Preposterous! Corrective measures had to be taken immediately. Now please do not think me too critical here. The writer(s) of Objective Raids did a marvelous job of sifting through an enormous amount of data scattered throughout the old House books, Technical Readouts, and other sourcebooks and melded it into a single [semi] coherent whole. It did seem to me that the industrial powerhouse of the esteemable Taurian Concordat had been treated in a more careless or hasty manner than the successor states or clans.

I took it upon myself then to correct those mentioned abberations and more by typing up my own personal version. So I loaded up Professional Write on my hopelessly outdated Tandy 1000 HX and tried my hand at a bit of data entry. After a while the researched and revised Taurian Concordat Industries took shape. Printing it out on a decrepit dot-matrix printer, I was quite pleased with myself. It didn't take too long, afterall. I had not the slightest inkling then of what an enormous project this would become. A slight revision would grow beyond all recognizable proportion to become a hobby unto itself, spanning several years and up until today. Numberless hours I have whittled away and many a hard earned dollar has slid into FASA's coffers since, and I certainly hope there is at least one soul out there who appreciates my efforts for it.

I did not, of course, stop with the Taurian Concordat. The other two periphery realms looked as if they could use a bit of polishing too, and so I increased my own database with an update of the Outworlds Alliance and Magistracy of Canopus, which had between them every bit as many mistakes, if not more than, the Concordat. Little St. Ives was next, followed by the Capellan Confederation. All minor powers so far, but perhaps you see a pattern developing here. No sooner had I finished researching and updating one faction than I would be commencing work on the next. The Draconis Combine was the first "large" faction included, then the up and coming industrial powerhouse of the Free Worlds League. The reader will likely notice that the Federated Commonwealth was the last major power on my list, so intimidating was the size of it and so extensive the number of components produced. I decided to divide the gigantic Commonwealth into its component Steiner and Davion parts. This turned out to be a real time-saving measure, as the very week after I finished the FedCom section FASA released the new (at that time) Hardback Compendium with an enticing forward that described the splintering of the alliance.

The last piece to be completed (for a while, at least) covered the small Independent Powers which, from a manufacturing standpoint, included only the pre-schism ComStar and the Wolf's Dragoons stronghold of Outreach. At a later date this section would grow substantially larger from the information provided in the Chaos March and Fall of Terra sourcebooks. So there it was, after a few months, that I had my own much improved edition of Objective Raids: Industries. As I have never been one to care much for the Clans, I resisted including them due to the scant information available as to their manufacturing capabilites. There was virtually no hard data on what the Clans were up to in their respective zones, except a mention in the Invading Clans sourcebook that the lunatic Nova Cats had a grand time of vaporizing the last LAM manufacturing facility in the universe. [I took that as good news, in case you are wondering. One less factory to worry about and good riddens to those confounded LAMeos.]

Please note that it is beyond the scope of this resource to include the status of defending forces. Given the ever-fluctuating political situations in the Inner Sphere, units can be frequently shuffled around, in some cases destroyed, and new forces can be created. For reasonably up to date information on what military units defend which planets, refer to the series of Field Manuals or to the Shattered Sphere sourcebook.

I previously mentioned having "researched" the various factions, and this dissertation could not be complete without describing what I mean by this. Industries (or Industries: 3056 as it was initially) is built directly upon the foundation of Objective Raids. However, I verified and modified the information based on many other equally important sourcebooks. Paramount among these were the Technical Readouts and the House Books, as well as the newer Field Manuals. Occasionally a novel would reveal some clues as well. The following is only a partial listing of those publications I have used, but these have proven to be the chief sources of material:

All information provided in Industries is as accurate as I can make it, but trying to make every new model of 'Mech or vehicle fit is seldom an easy task. All too often, and particuarly with anything published after TR 3050, the person writing the "fluff" text for a design would use components without regard as to their origin or availablity. This, combined with the changing political realities of the BattleTech universe, has required that I substitute components on some designs. Therefore, if you see, say, a large laser used on a 'Mech that is different than that specified in the Technical Readout, then it was likely a neccessity rather than a mistake on my part. However, if there is any glaring omission or error that you would like to see corrected, please drop me a line and I'll see what can be done about it.

Again, I wish to reiterate that Industries is a resource document that I hope BattleTech and MechWarrior players will find handy.