Web Original / Tex Talks Battletech

2 Following

A YouTube series about the BattleTech universe, which discusses various aspects of their lore, from individual mechs to important events in their history (such as the Amaris Civil War and the Exodus).

The videos are presented as lectures, in the form of narrated slideshows, by Randolph P. Checkers, a.k.a. "Tex", an In-Universe professor and mechwarrior mercenary, on the planet of Van Zandt, a... weird place located in the Deep Periphery. These lectures can be anything from short spotlights to feature-length documentaries, with major historical events and more noteworthy mechs getting the latter treatment.

The series is hosted on the channel The Black Pants Legion, which can be found here.

This series contains examples of:

• Ace Custom:
  • While Tex usually focuses more on different production models of mechs rather than specific customized ones (since that would exponentially increase his team's workload per episode), he occasionally highlights specific mechs and their owners if they might be relevant.
  • In his episode on the Marauder, Tex briefly mentions The Bounty Hunter, a "Dread Pirate Roberts" figure, in that they've actually been a succession of men and women who've taken up the mantle that share only two traits; only working for money and piloting a custom Mech (the actual model varies between each Bounty Hunter, but they include at least one Marauder) that's been upgraded with whatever tech they can buy or find, even including LosTech.
• Amazon Chaser: Tex was at one time married to an Elemental (think a 7ft+ tall mountain of genetically engineered muscle bred to serve as power-armored infantry) from Clan Ghost Bear. He describes their married life as 'an ongoing Trial of... Position'.^note This is in reference to the real Tex once being in a relationship with a female bodybuilder. The Black Knight video includes a credits scene where we get to see his ex putting him in a headlock. Not only is she much bigger than Tex, she turns out to be Bloodnamed, meaning she beat at least five other warriors for the right to bear a surname.
• Ambiguous Time Period: Downplayed. Various context clues indicate that in-universe, Tex's most recent lectures are happening sometime after 3067^note (In BattleTech 101: The Great Houses of the Inner Sphere, the map is from 3067, but the year is referred to in the past tense and Tex comments on how most of the maps after that tend to be a mess for various reasons, at which point he shows several pictures of the Word of Blake. He also references the Battle of Tukayyid in 3052 as a past event, pokes fun at Clan Smoke Jaguar for their destruction in the Great Refusal in 3060, and has a Ghost Bear Clanner who settled in the Inner Sphere for an ex-wife, which means Clan Ghost Bear's relocation to the Ghost Bear Dominion in the late 3050s has occurred.), but other than the latest possible year it's unknown exactly when Tex's lessons are taking place. Best guesses are sometime during the Dark Age, due to the latest known year being solidly during that era, the series itself predating the release of the ilClan era sourcebooks that advanced the setting past the Dark Age, and the epigraph of Blaine Pardoe's Children of Kerensky (set shortly before the start of the ilClan era) being attributed to him^note (though in real life this is a Shout-Out that Tex himself had nothing to do with); or sometime during or shortly after the Jihad, as Tex refers to ComStar in the present tense and makes no in-character reference to the Republic of the Sphere or the HPG network collapse. In terms of the 'Mechs being discussed, Tex usually cuts off his analysis at variants that were introduced in the late 3060s, but not always — in his video on the Warhammer, for example, he lists off a couple of variants that don't exist until the Republic era.
• Asshole Victim: The Smoke Jaguar Clanners trying to kill Tex just keep getting humiliated, with one Khan in particular suffering a Humiliation Conga (including being punted by a Steiner scout and later having his fleet destroyed when they tried to invade Van Zandt, through a mined jump point) who is eventually reduced to attending (and occasionally participating in) his lectures. Given that Clan's actions during the Clan Invasion, and their attitude in general, it's hard to feel sorry for them. Tex certainly isn't afraid to rub the Clan's failures in their faces.
  Tex: "Hey, Smoke Jaguar, remember when you had a clan?" breaks into laughter
• The Atoner: The series, and the BPL channel as a whole is a bit of a meta-example. Their fundraising efforts for various charitable causes originally started as an attempt to rebuild good will with the viewing public after facing harsh criticism for working with fellow wargaming commentator Arch-Warhammer, who has become a figure of infamy for his racist and sexist views (though he wasn't quite so outspoken about his beliefs at the time as he would later become, to be fair).
• Author Appeal: Tex is not shy about his respect for the Taurian Concordiat and pragmatic combat doctrine, and in general tends to side with the Periphery over the Inner Sphere.
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • The Lyran Commonwealth, a.k.a. the House of Steiner. They may appear a bit goofy at times, and most of their military leadership are laughably incompetent, but if you make them angry, they'll quickly remind you that they are the economic powerhouse of the Inner Sphere and will spend as much as they desire on dropping oversized mechs and war assets on you until they get bored or until you're very dead. Tex outright compares the nation to a blind idiot god, happily humming to itself and making strudel, until someone makes it mad...
  • Van Zandt might look like a backwater world that runs on drugs and corn (and it pretty much is), but it's important to remember that its population, especially the militia, are insane, meaning they have no problem throwing hands with whoever might be stupid enough to invade. Not to mention they have a... concerning number of nukes literally lying around.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • In general, what Tex respects most in a mech is when it's designed from the beginning to be functional and effective, to be built, repaired or replaced comparatively easily, rather than a cutting-edge prototype that was shipped out quickly after production to meet a demand well before it's actually tested for flaws, such as faulty design or rare components that are difficult to replace. This makes sense, since Tex (as in, the in-universe character) is a mercenary and a Periphery native, so the cost, maintenance and actual effectiveness of any mech would naturally be quite important to him. This sometimes crosses over into Simple, yet Awesome.
  • While the Blackjack isn't the most impressive machine, with Tex himself labeling it as "GM's Okayest Product", it's a good example of a mech that can perform well when used in the right way, such as how a Davion garrison managed to hold off a Kuritan invasion (consisting of an army of light mechs) with simple but solid strategy while taking advantage of a lance of Blackjacks (back when they had a rather bad reputation from their initial production line).
  • His gold standard for this seems to be the Warhammer, one of the most iconic heavy mechs of the game, that can be found practically everywhere in the setting. It wasn't made out to be the be-all end-all of warfare or constructed from advanced technology (by the setting standards) that would later become LosTech, but instead was a Jack of All Stats made from fairly common components that could easily be repaired or replaced and was designed with efficiency in mind. Or in Tex's words, to be "good enough" for the job.
    Tex: "In warfare, "good enough" is fucking perfect."
• Brutal Honesty: Tex generally doesn't hold back criticism when he finds faults in mechs, individuals or organizations as a whole, though he usually pairs his critiques with positive feedback if/when he finds good aspects of whatever he's discussing. He's also upfront that, as a mercenary born to the Periphery with a Clanner ex-wife, he has his biases (e.g. never trust a Capellan).
• The Cavalry: In BLACK NIGHT — STAR HEROES, the titular Black Knights are almost overrun by Clanner forces, and thus are about to trigger a nuke to destroy out the SLDF cache (and themselves with it) rather than let it fall into enemy hands, when they are suddenly saved by the timely arrival of friendly Mechs, who proceed to rapidly turn the tide and send the Clanners running.
• Character as Himself: The BLACK KNIGHT - STAR HEROES animation has a credits sequence that lists a number of the In-Universe characters playing movie roles (e.g. Randolph P. Checkers, a.k.a. Tex, as "John A. Alamo"). This includes the Van Zandt Militia, who star as... the Van Zandt Militia.
• Cloudcuckooland: Van Zandt is a planet wide one, and its quirks are numerous:
  • Most people have no idea where exactly it is besides "somewhere in the Deep Periphery" (in part because somebody erased the planet from most star charts out of spite), their elections are decided by professional wrestling matches, and they've been under a "provisional" government for over two centuries.
  • Their currency is backed by the Gold Standard of corn, an entire continent is dedicated to growing nothing but corn and cocaine (and is ruled over by occasionally warring narco-fiefdoms, who are considered a tourist attraction by the locals), they have a restaurant that serves nothing but beans and it is home of the "All-You-Can-Eat Barbecue Maple Bacon Breakfast Log", which is self-heating.
  • Local "businessman" Discount Dan, among other dubious stores (read: junkyards that he slaps signs in front of to sell their scrap), has a nuclear bomb rental place there, and he isn't even the only person who sells stuff like this on Van Zandt: Union Flak And Carbide offers a free apple pie with every kiloton-scale fission product.
    • Discount Dan got in trouble for the nuclear bomb rentals, not because he was renting out nukes, but because he was renting out non-functioning nukes without telling the customers that, and was therefore guilty of fraud.
  • The postal service is heavily armed, protects the mail using BattleMechs and large attack dogs that can kill in one bite, and responds to people obstructing mail boxes with nuclear weapons ("Nothing Stops The Mail" isn't just a motto, it's a part of the planet's founding colony charter, and was the only thing everyone agreed on). They also need to remind people that crack pipes, baggies of drugs, and pipe bombs do not qualify as stamps. They are still one of the sanest groups on the planet.
  • The militia views war crimes as a good way to pass the time and also does mercenary work, the milita's recruiters will offer basically anything to get people to join up (from a grilled cheese sandwich to being allowed to call in an airstrike on a corn maze), and military service is frequently offered as an alternative to being thrown in jail (which in this case is literally just a giant hole in the ground). They are very open about the fact that they aren't anywhere near the best fighting force out there, with even the cover of a charity music album raising funds for them bearing the phrase "377 years of adequate service". Also, they are the reason the planet is under a provisional government: they blew up the previous government.
  • There are giant eagles who kidnap people and dogs, which are enough of a problem that they produce fully automatic pistols solely to kill them.
  • One of their most notable "historical artifacts" is a Star League coffee mug and a napkin with a message written by Alexander Kerensky. This might pass as comparatively normal... if it weren't for the fact that said "message" was Kerensky complaining about the poor service he had received.
  • They host an annual event called the Van Zandt Urbie Derbie on one of their moons. This is Wacky Racing in Humongous Mecha, with the comedy coming from the fact that the UrbanMech, which is the only class of 'Mech allowed to enter, is notoriously slow and graceless for a light 'Mech and furthermore bears a passing resemblance to R2-D2◊. The sheer shenanigans involved means that a dumpster with a flashlight taped to it was allowed to enter as a contestant. It beat out the actual Battlemechs and won the race.
  • Their second moon has Space Pirates on it, though their tourism ads assure potential visitors that they shouldn't worry about them.
• Combat Pragmatist: Tex very much subscribes to this school of combat, not caring much for the Clans ideas of honourable combat, and often points out and compliments groups who manage to punch above their weight through asymmetrical warfare (especially if it is against the Clans). He actually praises Clan Wolverine (aka the Not-Named clan) in his video on the Clan Exodus for embracing more pragmatic methods of combat and social structure (e.g. allowing their members to move between Castes as needed rather than having them stuck in one role for life) in contrast to the other Clans at the time.
  Tex: As a mercenary plying his trade in the Inner Sphere, I find concepts such as war-fighting ideology largely a position of what you can cover-up from the general public. Mainly because, at the end of the day in the Inner Sphere, it's about you and yours. And smoking craters tell no tales.
• Crazy Enough to Work:
  • In contrast to the examples under Boring, but Practical, Tex holds that one of the major advantages that the Inner Sphere had over the invading Clans is their capacity for crazy, the will to do what looks to be impossible (or simply a bad idea) because they either need to or they just think it'll be awesome to try, a trait Tex feels was bred out of the Clans (to their detriment) thanks to their overly honor-bound and rigid society.
  • While most of Stefan Amaris' "wonder-weapon" projects were abysmal failures, as Tex is all too happy to point out, one such project was somewhat different; the Rifleman III, a "Gausszilla" that was armed with four Gauss Rifles and a stealth system. While Tex is clear that the mech itself was a Flawed Prototype, given that it was slow, poorly armored and had so little ammunition that it could only maintain combat effectiveness for about 40 seconds before the SLDF brought it down, the fact that in that 40 seconds the Rifleman III managed to bring down nine of the twelve mechs it had been fighting showed that it was (briefly) hideously effective as an ambush weapon, meaning that it had at least some potential.
  • According to Tex, a willing pilot of the Charger (a frequently, and justifiably, maligned mech with speed to its name, and little else) is often the most dangerous thing you can face, since they're crazy enough to run right at you for mech-sized fisticuffs, odds be damned, and can prove surprisingly lethal before they're put down.
• Culture Chop Suey:
  • Apart from its very Dutch name, Van Zandt takes a lot of cues from Flyover Country and the Deep South, right down to its stereotypes. Interestingly enough, for all the Americana, among the dominant languages is Bahasa Melayu, further adding to the world's very peculiar culture.
  • Tex accuses Nicholas Kerensky of doing this (referring to the man as "a cultural magpie") when the Clans were formed, picking and choosing aspects he liked from old Earth cultures like the Mongol horde and Shogunate Japan (e.g. the idea of warrior honor) without apparently learning from the flaws of those same cultures.
• David Versus Goliath: Whenever Tex talks about the Reunification War, he usually compares the two sides in this way, with the newly formed Star League as Goliath (covering both a larger united territory and having access to a higher technology base, as well as more abundant resources) and the Peripherary nations (especially the Taurian Concordiat) as David. In this case, Goliath ultimately won, but at a much heavier cost than they expected due years of protracted combat versus forces that were skilled at guerilla warfare and were supported by the preparations of Properly Paranoid leadership. The Star League had also been severly hampered by decisions made by Armchair Military, including unwise investments such as the Baron.
  Tex: "The Hobbesian Leviathan [that was the SLDF] was alive and well, and being fed regular police actions."
• Deceptively Simple Demonstration: He notes this about the famous first livefire test of the Mackie, pointing out that, for all the hype it was given, the test was really a pilot in a vehicle with the most cutting-edge weapons, armour, and targeting systems going up against four obsolete tanks^note Tex leaves out a few other details: the exact model of tank, the Merkava Mk. VI, had less than half the armour of the other Merkava variants available at the time, and the ones used in the test had to have their LRM/10 launchers removed to make room for the remote control systems, meaning they weren't just obsolete, they were weakened versions of an obsolete tank. Had they still had their LRM launchers, they would have had a range advantage on the Mackie, as the LRM outranged all of the weapons the prototype carried.. From Tex's point-of-view, it was more a propaganda stunt than a proper test, albeit one so successful that it changed the face of warfare in the Inner Sphere forever.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The earlier videos were much shorter, semi-shitpost style affairs before the series found its footing, with the episodes becoming longer and more in-depth about their topics. For example, the fourth episode on the UrbanMech is less than 10 minutes long, while its remake (which came around 5 years later) was over 35 minutes long, and that's on the short side compared to some of Tex's other recent works. The early videos were also from a real world point-of-view, such as the Thor video out-right talking about how the cartoon was retconned to be in-universe propaganda, while the later videos are presented from the point-of-view of an in-universe professor/mercenary.
• Epic Fail: The Baron class of destroyer warships. These were sold as "the next generation of warships", made with the most powerful engines and technology available then, but the first models were so flawed that they required major refits to function, and poorly at that. To cement their status as this, during their first major use in warfare during the Reunification War against the Taurian Concordat, the Barons were annihilated by their opponents, who were using warships that were simultaneous much cheaper and much more powerful, thanks to competent engineering using off-the-shelf components. It was so bad that when the Star League (who had bought and still owned many of the useless warships) started giving them out as "gifts" to the nations aligned with them, Tex thinks they might have actual damaged relationships with the Star League by making their allies question if joining them was worth it, those warships were that bad.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Duncan Fisher is alcoholic, impulsive and has a streak of pyromania in him, all made worse by a career as a mechwarrior combined with years of living on Solaris, and even he thinks Van Zandt is bizarre. In his skit in the Turning Point at Twycross episode, he has trouble reading out tourist ads for the planet because he keeps having to question what the hell he's actually reading about the place.
  • The Smoke Jaguars Clanner Khan may be... well, a Smoke Jaguar, but even he quickly admitted he was in the wrong when Tex pointed out the subject of the lecture that he was interrupting with his attempt at reaving him — the Amaris Civil War, the fall of Star League, and especially the actions of Alexander Kerensky, whom all Clanners hero-worship; he not only humbly apologized, but calmly asked if he could attend the lecture as well.
  • Tex is open about being a pragmatic merc who fights and kills for money, but he makes his disgust for atrocities (especially those targetting civilians), governmental corruption, those who think War Is Glorious, and hypocrites clear. Any mention of the Ares Conventions will almost always include a mention of how the Capellans who organized it would then perform atrocities during a war with the Taurians only a decade later under the basis that the Taurians didn't sign them.
• Evil, Inc.: ComStar, like in the source material, is a telecommunications company that grew to be an extremely powerful organization with a monopoly over various vital services in the Inner Sphere and the Periphery, particularly over the communication network and banking (the primary international trade currency of the setting, the C-bill, is entirely owned by ComStar), and take a very dim view towards anyone trying to oppose them. They're somehow even more brutal when it comes to anyone trying to research or revive some Lost Technology, for "weirdly specific, quasi-spiritual reasons." The only difference in this series is they are even less subtle about this, with the various "ads" for ComStar just being reminders that they own the bank, alongside a lot of very thinly-veiled threats against anyone who doesn't pay their bills by reminding their customers about how they were powerful enough to beat the Clanners back at Tukayyid.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • He hates Clanners with a passion^note Though he generally makes an exception for Clan Ghost Bear. Typical spheroid barbarian.
  • He also distrusts Capellans, as might be expected of a periphery native. His hatred goes so deep that he goes as far as to blame "Capellan fuckery" for the Exodus Civil War, a conflict that ultimately paved the way for the rise of the Clans.
• Flawed Prototype: Some of the mechs Tex covers had issues in their first iterations before Equipment Upgrades made them more effective.
  • The original BJ-1X Blackjack was infamous for falling over on its own due to poor leg design, as well as some of its parts and armor dropping off, though Tex raises the possibility that its flaws might have been exaggerated by GM's competitors.
  • The MSK-6S Mackie was more an incredibly expensive experiment and last ditch attempt at success by the current Cameron than a fully thought-out military project. Downplayed, with Tex seeming to be a little more generous to the Mackie in this case, as it was the prototype to all Battlemechs, and an incredibly successful Game Changer to the BattleTech universe and its flaws were only really apparent in comparison to the various forms of Battlemechs that evolved from its blueprint.
  • The CRG-1A1 Charger, an Assault mech that suffers from Crippling Overspecialization due to poor design. Tex doesn't mince words about how badly it fails as a scout, with the most generous thing he can say about it is that any mechwarriors that find a Charger appealing are probably crazy enough to charge straight at you at full speed to throw mechanical hands. Later models of the Charger would improve on it by largely abandoning the "scout" concept in favour of a more focused close-range combatant, usually by sacrificing some of its speed for more weapons or armor, though they could never shake the original's infamy.
  • A non-mech example is the Baron class warship, an Epic Fail of a destroyer as the advanced engines it was built with had numerous flaws from the start, requiring major refits to make the Baron work while still under-performing in several critical errors.
    • Tex presents the Baron's existence as a cautionary tale, to not let "cutting edge" design and technology take the place of proven components and sensible engineering, and to actually prototype anything cutting edge rather than immediately put it into full-scale production. He contrasts it with the BattleAxe and the Hammerhands, prototype mechs the Davions made in the early days of the BattleMech, which were also flawed but were specifically meant to gain experience with designing, building, and operating mechs and as such never went into full-scale production, instead being improved using lessons learned during the process and with feedback from the soldiers maintaining and operating them to make a better model (though Star Corps would end up beating them to the punch by making the Warhammer based on the two).
• Filk Song: An entire album of them, mostly covers of various songs done with BattleTech lyrics (with the exception of "Home Is The Regiment", a song that originates in BattleTech), some of which have appeared in the videos. In universe, the album is a fundraising effort by the Van Zandt Free State Militia, with several songs specifically being about the militia itself.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Duncan Fisher among Solaris's entertainment community (outside his commentating work anyway), due to his drinking, bouts of Insane Troll Logic and his habit of setting things on fire (either metaphorically or literally) when bored. In one instance, a Clanner agreed to star in a Solaris B-movie (a role they find heavily degrading at best) solely because she was promised the opportunity to punch Duncan square in the face with her full strength, a promise Duncan had not been told of before he started working on the same movie.
• Genius Bruiser: Tex is a veteran mercenary MechWarrior and a highly knowledgable scholar with a focus on history, geopolitics, and military science.
• Honest John's Dealership: A frequent Running Gag is a skit for "Discount Dan", a "reputable" businessman who's willing to sell anything, from spare car and mech parts he took from the local junkyard to abandoned nuclear warheads he happened to find lying around. If there's a venture that might let him make a quick buck, it'll soon have his name on it, regardless of if he's actually qualified for it in any way or if it's safe at all for his customers (it usually isn't). About the most consistent part of his business is his pledge below:
  Discount Dan: "I will always take your money. Guaranteed!"
• Honor Before Reason: Tex is heavily critical of the Clans' honour system and their obsession with it, in particular their use of it in warfare. While he acknowledges it served its purpose in limiting collateral damage among the Clans internally, he also points out that their culture had several flaws that ultimately led to the Clan Invasion failing;
  • When the Clans invaded the Inner Sphere, they believed that their approach to battle (fielding an elite but limited group of warriors trained mostly in one-on-one honour duels) would work just as well for wide-scale battle. In reality, it was extremely foolish to expect it to work in the same way when applied to total warfare, especially against nations that had been in a state of more-or-less constant war against each other for centuries.
  • This was made worse by the Clanners' own arrogance in their skills and the superiority of their "honour", dismissing the Spherites' ability to fight back out of hand to the point that most of the Clans didn't bother with things like logistics to support the Clan Invasion. This wound up biting them hard during the Invasion, as ComStar would exploit the Clans' flawed honour system during the Battle of Tukayyid to convince them to walk into obvious traps under the guise of a "batchall", ultimately leading to their defeat.
• Inadequate Inheritor:
  • Tex views Nicholas Kerensky as this to his father Aleksandr Kerensky. While Aleksandr was a War Hero who spent years fighting to overthrow a tyrant, then refused to take leadership of what was rapidly becoming a system-wide system war because he didn't want to be involved in the destruction of the worlds he fought to protect, Nicholas became a tyrant, forming the Clans based on aspects cherry-picked from various old Earth cultures that he was interested in but apparently didn't learn the right lessons from (with Tex referring to him as "a cultural magpie" because of this). Tex also views Nicholas as a hypocrite who would make and change the rules of his society to suit his own vision ahead of the Clans' needs, not to mention how Nicholas would rewrite the history of his society to depict himself in a more positive light.
  • The Inner Sphere is not without fault in this regard and Tex has a very low opinion of Richard Cameron, the sixth and final First Lord of Star League who made a series of bad decisions that pissed practically every major power off, and whose bloodline was ended when Stephen Amaris (whom Richard foolishly trusted with far too much information about the inner workings of his palace and military, simply because Amaris acted nicely to him) started his coup by shooting Richard in the face.
• Inventional Wisdom:
  • Tex notes how several models of Battlemechs were designed to fit a perceived role in the battlefield, and in some cases it seems little thought was put into whether it was actually a good idea or not. One example of this is the Charger, an Assault mech designed to be a high speed scout unit, with speed as its only real virtue as the armour and weapons did not meet the standards one would normally expect from an Assault mech. The original model didn't even have the necessary equipment to make it a good scout (like long-range communications), meaning it was easily outperformed as both a scout by much lighter units that were considerably cheaper and as an Assault mech by other models that could deal much more damage for the same price, if not cheaper.
  • One of the post-lesson skits in the Hunchback episode is a breakdown of the Rotunda, a 20-ton car made during the Golden Age, ostensibly designed as an unobtrusive scouting vehicle in a war zone. Its effectiveness in this role is questionable at best, considering that only 5% of its weight is dedicated to (paper-thin) armour and its only weapons are a small laser and some SRMs that can only fire from the front (meaning the driver has to manually position the car to aim properly). This doesn't even go into the numerous other flaws of the Rotunda, like its tendency to break down constantly for one reason or another. The narrator basically calls it 'the Baron of automobiles'.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: During the episode on the Mackie, a subtitle pops up when Jacob Cameron's picture◊ first appears informing the viewer that, yes, that is his official, original artwork.
• Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense:
  • Tex often describes the Golden Age of Star League as a whole like this, especially in regards to the military industry where a lot of crazy (and poorly thought out) projects were frequently approved, produced and then bought en masse by the Star League before the product in question was actually properly tested. This has resulted in numerous Flawed Prototypes, most infamously the Baron model of warships which were marketed as the next generation of warships, only to quickly shown to have so many flaws that the ships required major refits just to reach the status of "serviceable," and even then they failed their first real trial by fire almost immediately during the Reunification Wars when the Star League fought against the Taurian Concordat (who were fielding warships that were both better designed and much cheaper to build).
  • The Lyran Commonwealth, particularly their military, are also portrayed as this. Their combat doctrine can be summed up as "keep throwing as much military hardware at the problem as they can, regardless of how wasteful it is, until they either win or get bored". A Running Gag (both in this series and in the larger BattleTech fandom) is how their scouting units are made up of heavy/assault mechs.
• Running Gag: There's a few of these across the series, mostly as skits that come between the end of the 'lecture' and the Closing Credits:
  • Ads for Discount Dan and his various "businesses" that are completely legal and not just Dan sticking signs over abandoned junk to sell it for a quick buck before the cops catch him.
  • The Steiner Scouts, episodes from a series about a Steiner scout team that all operate Atlas mechs. After all, if no one reports that they've seen you (because you've massacred them already), then the scouting operation was a success! You can also usually expect a cheerful brass band to play at some point, usually with the sounds of gunfire and screams in the background.
  • Whenever Tex mentions the Black Watch, especially the moments when they're about to do something awesome, expect to hear bagpipes in the background.
  • One recurring line, either said by Tex or appearing in the background is this:
  "GM Autocannons: Because fuck that guy in particular".
  • Ads for ComStar reminding you to "Pay your bill, fucko."
  • Recruitment ads for the Van Zandt militia, which start off normally enough but quickly go off the deep end once we start hearing testimonies from their recruits (read: a mixture of regular people drafted in because they joined the wrong line, and various kinds of whack-jobs that no sane military would enlist).
  • Stefan Amaris's ghost ending up in a dumpster behind a Golden Corral. More generally, the mockery of Stefan Amaris's massive amounts of villainy as well as his poor fashion sense, such as referring to his unframed waistcoat as a "giant bib".
  • During the Closing Credits for the Hunchback episode, someone took a Hetzer (a cheap tank in the BattleTech setting) and tried to run a loop with it, only to somehow crash it into a roof. That Hetzer, or the hole it left behind, can be seen in later episodes in the building next door to where Tex holds his lectures.
• Shout-Out: Tex is big fan of Space Station 13, which shows as it has appeared in one form or another multiple times in the series. For the Primer on the Clans, the lectures were held on "Clown Prison 13," which, true to form, was exploding by the end of the lecture.
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • Tex tends to prefer equipment that actually works for its intended function, regardless of how "ordinary" it is, as opposed to simply looking or sounding impressive. Of course, when "equipment" includes giant mechs, form and function aren't always so far apart.
  • Tex's personal favorite mech, the Awesome, doesn't have anything too advanced in its design or components, with its primary weapons being 3 PPCs, a small laser and a Power Fist, but it's well made enough (having enough heat-sinks to make prolonged battles much more sustainable) to be a terrifying force on the battlefield. He references an in-universe saying about how "the only way to defeat an Awesome is with another Awesome."
  • What happens when some mech manufacturers have the design philosophy of "bring big gun to front lines"? You get the Hunchback, a "street-fighting" heavy mech with a built-in BFG, a small arsenal of other weapons, and just enough armor to get close to your enemies, annihilate them in a short burst of violence, and maybe survive long enough to do something else that's useful, all built with parts that can be easily replaced (although the big gun may occasionally get downgraded a slightly-less-big gun if you're unlucky).
• Special Guest: A frequent recurring character is Duncan Fisher (voiced by George Ledoux himself!), a commentator for the Solaris Games. In various skits, he's voicing ads and starring on shows like Celebrity Tabletop... much to the frustration and/or horror of his fellow cast, since Duncan is frequently drunk, impulsive, and inclined to cast fireball at any (perceived) problem he comes across. Even worse, he's not above pulling out a grenade for some real-life fireballs when he gets bored.
• Take That!:
  • In the THOR/SUMMONER episode, Tex talks about how the slightly infamous animated series was later retconned by the owners of BattleTech into being an In-Universe piece of propaganda. He immediately follows this up by telling GW that this is how you do retcons.
  • Tex frequently calls out the military industrial complex (both In-Universe and out) for how frequently they encourage investing into dubious warfare projects by playing on the paranoia of their customers, made worse by being such a bureaucratic mess that it's near impossible to find those responsible for truly colossal fuck-ups until everyone initially involved has either retired or is long dead. On at least one occasion, he quotes Eisenhower's famous farewell speech on the subject:
    Eisenhower: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
• Wait, What?:
  • The Smoke Jaguar Clanner Khan's reaction when Tex reveals that the old Van Zandt jump point the Clanners just ported through has a minefield around it that ComStar put there after the planet failed to pay its bills.
  • Duncan Fisher's reaction in one skit to finding out that the reason a Clanner was willing to star in what is essentially a B-movie (an undignified, borderline dishonourable act in most Clanners' eyes) is that she was promised the opportunity to punch Duncan square in the face when they were done.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: Tex is no fan of the Clanners in general, but considers Wardens, and specifically Clan Ghost Bear as the exception, owing to them having something resembling a familiar (and familial) culture, and actually making an effort to integrate with their Rasalhague subjects/partners. After all, his ex-wife is one of them.

Alright. Class dismissed.