What can I say? Matt McLaine aka Lethe had the greatest, little site, ever!
It was called Wars in the Inner Sphere and was the home for the famous TRO: Legends and the ever-evolving MechList. It was also my all-time favourite site. So there you go, a fanboy of a fanboy's work!
When I first started out this little endeavour, below's texts and one still active link to a sub-site were all that I could scrounge up.
Matt's "Best Mech" Opinions: Inner Sphere 2750/3025/3050 - Inner Sphere 3055/3058 - Clan - "Better uses for a Cerberus, Longbow tactics, love / hate relationships with Falconers, Train in a Tempest Today, and more: the best of the best from every era."
Matt's "Worst Mech" Opinions: Inner Sphere & Clan - "Battle of the Century! Charger 1A1 versus a Koshi-A: they'll rust before either can do enough damage to roll for a single critical hit. Mechs to avoid at all costs."
Obscure Mech Names - "Find out just what the heck a Cataphract is, who Mackie was, and who owned the first Turkina." In case you can't be bothered searching for these in Wikipedia - hey, Matt was here first, after all!
However, as already stated on the front page, Matt's legacy lives on thanks to Dylan Myers. The MechList was expanded to become CBT List (as such incorporating the work previously done by Rocky O'Leary), TRO: Legends is sure to get healthy boosts ever so often. What I did not know at first was that Dylan had inherited more than "just" the MechList and TRO: Legends. That puts me in the difficult position of being quite redundant. But again: I did chase up the above myself (apart from the "Worst Mech" section, where I only had the descriptive line; the content is taken from Dylan's archive). In a way, this was the core of Matt's most personal touch of the website.
So I am going to do one better than originally envisaged: In order to present you with the most complete possible picture, here is a 1:1 recreation of what Matt had to offer. It's true, his main page was rather plain and not graphic-enhanced at all. It was the content that was great. And TRO: Legends made up for all aesthetic deficits. If you want to see for yourself on the wayback machine, this was his Wars in the Inner Sphere's old URL:
http://www.geocities.com/timessquare/labyrinth/5080/index.htm
Otherwise, you will find that quite a few of the features below do actually work!
MechList - The single-source reference for stats on every 'Mech design ever published; currently listing 1500+. *3*
Technical Readout: Legends - Full stats on official mechs, etc. that were abandoned or never reprinted by FASA. *3*
Mech Information - Collected trivia, tidbits, charts, opinions, and more dealing with 'Mechs. *4*
BattleTech History and Information - A repository of knowledge on various BattleTech and FASA topics. *5*
BattleTech International - Collected information and tidbits from Germany, France, UK, Japan, and more. *6*
Warfighting Literature - Essays, books, poems, quotes, and more from thinkers throughout history. *2*
PC Game Support - In-depth support for everything from Crescent Hawk's Inception to MechWarrior 3. *6*
Programs - PC utilities, Mech Designers, Desktop Themes, and more. *2*
Discussion Board - A message board for all BattleTech-related topics. *1*
Campaign Rules: 3026 - 3058 - A comprehensive and tested set of long-term Campaign guidelines. *5*
BattleTech Bookstore - Buy your books at 20% off - in association with Amazon.com. *1*
Links - Recommended Official and Fan pages plus useful services and resources. *1*
Webrings - BattleTech webrings and support, plus helpful webpage items. *1*
"Great web site! I like your website. Very nice and thanks for providing those mech files." - Rob Feehan, Co-Author of The Drawing Board and listed in FASA publications as Commander of the Wolverton Highlanders
*2* File archives. I recommend checking Mordel's if you want to access older design programmes. The Literature section bore witness to a keen interest of Matt's in humanity's military and political past. It featured a huge span of texts, from the humorous "Murphy's Laws of Combat" to Sun Tzu's "Art of War", from the "Dicta Boelcke" to Hobbes' "Leviathan"; and these are just the texts I had previously heard of!
*3* Projects currently active and lovingly maintained by Dylan Myers.
*4* Page kept alive 1:1 by Dylan Myers.- thankfully! In many ways, this was Matt's most personal section.
*5* Pages currently nowhere to be found online. The Information section had a comprehensive list of mercenaries, a recreation of the Ares Convention, a section on IS ranks and titles, a FASA product list and a chronological list of novels. The latter stuff you can find either on the CGL page or on Mordel's. The Campaign Rules are excellent, despite being very old. Putting them up here would be beyond the scope of this page; I may yet do so in the more distant future.
*6* Insanity! These two sections were not hosted by geocities, but by FortuneCity. Hence...these are still up! Yup, you can still tread the very outdated but hallowed grounds of the original Wars in the Inner Sphere!
return to Lost and Gone Forever
return to LosTech Cache
And yes, that Archer graphic is taken from his old site.