MW2 already had a honor system, it could also deduce wether or not you were responsible for a direct kill.
Anyway, you should really read this article by deathshadow to know what it means to be a Clan warrior:
[indent]Sheesh, boards are only up for five hours and I've already got four PM's asking me to repost this.
What it means to be a Clan Warrior
My distaste for how the clans are currently handled and played, compared to how the players I knew back in the early 90's handled them is well known. The clans of the early 90's are so completely different from the ‘soft’ clans of today.
Perhaps my biggest problem is the Wardens behavior running contrary to the philosophy they claim to follow. Look at true old-school clan warfare as handed down by Nicholas: Warriors fight on the battlefield minimizing damage to infrastructure and civilians, isolating the populace from the horrors of war. The Inner Sphere illustrates this lesson to them, waging total war and the Wardens just roll over and take it. Worse, many begin to adopt the same tactics. If anything, the mere existence of forces fighting by Inner Sphere standards should be a rally cry for the Wardens to want to remove said forces from existence, as they endanger their own people with their practices. The hypocrisy shown by the Wardens on the whole bothers me no end.
Truthfully, I am amazed the clans did not pack up the whole invasion and turn the invasion corridor about 180 degrees when Kali started lobbing nerve gas around. The clans a people who waged a war of genocide against part of their own nation for using a nuke on a city they spent the time to evacuate first; the wardens with their so called high ideals should have been first in line proposing the annihilation of House Liao.
Between their unwillingness to use might to make right, and the fact that no less than two warden clans are willing to be little more than Mercenaries to the great houses, I cannot believe that said clans ever were part of any sort of great warrior tradition, and certainly those who play them generally seem unable to play a people whose viewpoint and morality should be so radically different from their own.
Malicious Intent:
A Warrior is one trained in the art of killing.
A Warrior is one who kills without regret.
A Warrior is one who leaves dead enemies in his wake because he knows the dead can never harm him.
I think a lot of this stems from most players not being able to grasp what being a Warrior first means, or the concept of "might makes right" that is an inherent part of it. I often say the best way to play clan is to always remember - "We are the strong, and the strong shall rule!", to which I often hear responses like "I cannot grasp concepts like manifest destiny."
Cannot understand/play manifest destiny? Then what the {censored} are you doing playing the Clans?
Just the mere way people play Clans in battles runs contrary to the training and lifestyle we have seen for warriors. They put the ideal of surviving to win a bloodname ahead of the actions necessary to be considered to enter the trial to win one! One does not retreat from a battle with a functioning ‘Mech and get nominated for one of the bloodname slots. One does not even retreat from superior odds and get considered for a bloodname. It is the warriors who survive against impossible odds remaining on field past the point the average person would consider sane that get nominated. The flashy showy victory with the lowest force is what a clan warrior is bred for. It is the ENTIRE reason for the bidding system.
I cannot believe anyone would bid an assault with more force than the enemy has; that is pure nonsense and no road to advancement. I repeatedly encounter players who consider the cutdown to be 10-20% over the force they are facing. Gutless cowards; any freebirth scum can win a battle with more strength than the enemy, and this is no way for a clan warrior to behave.
But then, people focus on winning being more important than honor; Using certain characters as the focal point of their supporting arguments. What they forget is those who use dishonorable tactics are often derided by their peers for such should it ever be known. A victory without honor is no victory among the clans, should the loss of face become public knowledge. Such behavior is easily the grounds for unseating a Loremaster or even a Khan; imagine what it would do to a normal warrior. Their road to a bloodname would quickly disappear, should they even be allowed to remain a member of their Clan.
One of the keys to the warrior mindset is no surrender, no retreat. If you give up fighting while your body still draws breath, you are violating everything clan training is supposed to instill. Clan training is brutal and uses live weapons for a reason; and not the one most people think of. It is plain as day once you know to look for it.
In several novels, most notably "Lost Destiny", we are informed that the clans are ‘but mayflies’, going through twelve generations of warriors in 60 years. That’s five years per ‘generation’. Since the average clan Touman seems to remain fairly fixed in size, this means a 20% turnover of personnel yearly under normal conditions.
Where does this 20% go? While certainly a handful is tested out of the warrior caste, that number must be fairly low since most warriors would rather die than not continue as warriors... Many of these likely take their own lives; they were the pinnacle of evolution and society, being anything less is unacceptable.
While a number end up in Solahma units, those that do are sent there for one purpose and one purpose only; to die as a warrior should, weapon in hand ready to meet their fate.
Bloodname
If they ran out of ammo, they were to use their knives. If they lost their knives, they must go after the nearest enemy with their bare hands. If their hands were broken, they must kick the enemy with their feet. If their feet were shot off, they must crawl to the enemy warrior and try in some other way to kill them. If they could not crawl, then they must fire into the nearest brush. If they could not move, then they must wait to die. If they could not die, then there must be something wrong with their attitude.
Even this group must be a fairly small number; The Clans are a bit like the klingons in this regard:
"Look around you, there are no old warriors."
"No sir, I’m sure they died with honor."
So where does the remainder go? Simple, they {Censored} DIE. In battle; as warriors... No surrender, no retreat. The bid is simply a means of controlling the rate of attrition. The clans are in a constant state of war, always attacking and raiding each-other. In war, Soldiers die. Get used to it. If anything I think a 20% yearly mortality rate shows a fair degree of restraint and control.
When I say this to people, they often go "That is a waste of resources" or "How could they maintain that scale of losses"... We’ll get to hardware resources later, but for now let us look at the ‘waste’ in terms of manpower.
The Clans can MAKE PEOPLE; as many as they like; at will! In all probability it would less cost than a ‘Mech or a tank. All you have to do is just churn out ten thousand or so sibbies a year; the constant testing weeds out the truly inferior either through death or relegation to another caste. If even 80% of these are sent to other castes it would help explain the EXTREMELY high figures for the clan’s civilian population. You make a constant stream of replacements to replace those killed in the field, and a steady attrition is easily maintained by all clans. This is why to me people who think the Falcons or Wolves should still be feeble a few years after the Refusal war are (IMHO) dimwits. Five years for the Falcons for total personnel recovery, perhaps longer for the Wolves since Phelan and Ulric raped the sibkos of their best and brightest.
Likely expecting higher losses for the invasion, the clans would have stepped up production ahead of time. There are indications of this within the ‘wolf supremacist’ movement that caused the refusal war. Not enough warriors were being killed off in peacetime (or the invasion for that matter), leaving no room for the warriors entering service to advance:
Bred for War
I turned twenty-nine a month and a half ago. I am a Star Colonel, which is an excellent position considering the fact I have no Bloodname. Without one I can go no further, and if I do not earn one in the next five years, the chances of my ever getting one drop off precipitously - as do my chances of maintaining my rank.
Clan Wolf has many warriors who have proved their worth in the invasion, but who cannot advance because war is no longer killing off the older warriors or forcing them off to retire. Of all the clans, only the Wolves did well on Tukkayid, but it has hobbled our young. They see themselves as part of the Wolf Clan, and revel in its glory, but they do not believe they will ever be allowed to add or increase that glory.
Repeatedly we have been shown that the beliefs of the clans and their way of life is that warriors must die; en masse, in great quantities to make room for "those below rising above". Inherently a rank system has to be a pyramid, and let us face it... How many 29 year old Clan warriors are going to hold their rank if they have not even reached Star Commander? It makes me question the 45 years old ‘average life expectancy’ for a clan warrior as unrealistic, as I prefer to view that as the maximum age you could expect a ristar to reach. It often seems that with each sourcebook release the age a clanner can expect to live gets pushed further and further up, removing yet another thing that makes them unique.
We are also shown in most every piece of literature involving the clans that the "Elderly" (those over 30) are viewed with disdain, even outright disgust over lacking the good graces to die for the clan. Despite this it seems a goodly number of players are obsessed with having clan characters that survive every battle, victory or no.
I think a healthy portion of people’s problem with the concept is the inability to separate their own beliefs from those of others. When you can make as many people as you like, breeding them to fight and die in battle, life itself becomes devalued. Fanatics have been bred for centuries to fight the enemy and die in battle, sacrificing their lives in fashions that would make a normal ‘soft’ person cringe. What I’m talking about is no different than that.
Often I get the argument "There’s no such thing as someone who doesn’t care for their own life." Rubbish, pure and simple. The minute someone believes they are dying for a higher cause all that goes out the window. If you tell someone from the day they are born every day something, regardless of what total tripe it is, they will believe it and act on it. As was so aptly put in "Dogma" - "A belief is more dangerous than an idea." If you can convince a couple hundred people that if they suicide with arsenic laced yogurt while wearing blue silk robes that aliens will come down and take them to heaven... You get the idea. Self sacrifice for the greater good, or for the promise of bettering your own position in the scheme of things is nothing new.
So much for the human ‘waste’, what about materiel? By nature clan ‘Mechs are more likely to survive yet be salvageable. The XL engine allows them to be reduced to ineffectiveness long before a more ‘conventional’ design. The clans are salvage obsessed, and in this way operate more like mercenaries than I think any clanner would be comfortable admitting. Their superior CASE, XL and other components make large portions of a ‘Mech survive the worst damage to be rebuilt to fight another day, reducing the strain on manufacturing new ‘Mechs. Assuming at worst a 50% materiel loss per warrior killed, you would still be looking at a mere 10% force replacement yearly, something that a society in which the ‘ruling’ Warrior class needing said materiel’s is a single digit percentile of the population should not be a huge strain economically; While they abhor waste, they accept that it is ALWAYS the number one cause in war, and instead of fighting it have chosen to isolate it to a mere fraction of their population to save the remainder from the horrors of war.
All of these things culminate in the Warrior: the pinnacle fighting machine within clan rules and beliefs. During sibko training they are taught to die at a moments notice and not mourn those who have passed. Worrying of death is NOT clan. As warrior training progresses they are put in more and more realistic combat situations; live fire exercises culminating in actual combat, all of which can result in the trainee’s death at any time. A clan warrior gives their life for the clan; if they are worth keeping alive, they can prove it by putting themselves in near death situations without fear of failure or death. All this is formulated to create a warrior who in battle given the choice between life and death, will push forward for the clan without worry or concern; not tuck their tail between their legs and run. Those who survive pushing forward are those worthy of life and a continued place within the Warrior cast, NOT those who merely survive. It is not necessarily the RIGHT thing to do, but it is the CLAN thing to do...
This leads to a portion of Clan training that I consider being both their greatest strength, and their greatest weakness. In training Clan warriors are simply not prepared to even consider the option of losing.
The way of the Clans
If you think Kill, you will Kill.
If you have a boot, you crush your enemy.
If you have a hand, you strangle your enemy.
If you have a club, you bludgeon the attacker.
If you have a knife, you stab at your foe.
If you have a gun, you shoot it.
If you have a tank, you roll it over the opposing ranks.
If you have an aerofighter, you bomb them.
If you have a mech, you win.
You are always the victor.
When the blood is spilled, the bloodname is earned.
We are the Clan.
The above passage speaks volumes, and spells out that clan warriors are not prepared for failure. "You are always the victor."
Doubtless many remember my dislike for Nystul and his work on Battletech. Despite my distaste for much that happened during his reign, I have to say that in his final contribution, "Test of Vengeance", he delivered an excellent example of the clan warrior with Jake Kabrinski. When we are introduced to the character, he is the uber Ristar Ghost Bear elemental, best of the best who despite being a mere point commander equals a Khan in combat, forcing said Khan into the most shameful of things, retreat. Defeating opponents and kin alike to advance his position, he reaches command of a supernova binary only to face the unthinkable: Defeat.
While many warriors likely face defeat early in their careers and learn to deal, A Ristar who faced victory after victory would have no such experience to draw on, and this comes out in bloom with Kabrinski. The loss nearly cripples him; even with the campaign on the whole being a relative success, his simple loss not only garners him shame, but brings shame to the unit as a whole. Worse, it removes his unit from frontline combat, the ultimate disgrace. It takes a risky victory and the death of his trusted second to rouse him from his funk, and a victory against impossible odds to remove the taint from not only himself, but his unit as well.
If a simple defeat that doesn’t even affect the outcome of the whole battle could have such far reaching effects, what of the effect of a large scale defeat on a unit commander? With the shame of defeat, the simple fact is it may be better to die on the battlefield than return to the clan in disgrace. Depending on the situation a defeat could even result in abjurement from the clan; the worst of all fates. A defeat where you stood in fought may at least make the enemy Clan want you... Can you say the same of your own Clan if you turn and run? What if you begin to retreat and are still defeated? Take up a defensive posture avoiding the enemy? Could you bear the shame of the enemy not taking you as a bondsman? A warrior lives and dies for the clan, how does one deal with the clan abandoning you for a failure?
I think that is the heart of the problem many ‘power gamers’ have in playing a clansman, is that to many people winning is the all important thing; Yes, clanners play to win, but that does not mean their victory conditions are the same as yours. An honorless win is no victory. Without honor in clan society, you have won the battle, but lost the war.
To me, this is the heart of what it means to be a Clanner, and seems to be something few others seem willing to grasp or even attempt.
I will close with the passage I try to keep in my mind every time I play the clans... To me this is a clearly worded ideal to which anyone wishing to achieve the true warrior mindset must adhere to... Hopefully I won’t have to censor too much of this, but it is George so...
Gen. George S. Patton, June 5, 1944
When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea; the hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving, and don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-{censored}, we're going to rip out their living {censored} guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy hun {censored} by the bushel-{censored}-basket. War is a ******, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!
I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a {censored} thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's *****. We are going to twist his ***** and kick the living {censored} out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like {censored} through a goose; like {censored} through a tin horn!
From time to time there will be some complaints that we are pushing our people too hard. I don't give a good {censored} about such complaints. I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that.
There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled manure in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-{censored}-{censored} named George S. Patton."[/indent]