29 replies to this topic

[CyclonerM]

You cannot conquer the whole IS with a bunch of exalted space terrorists, quiaff?

[pbiggz]

They shouldn't have been space terrorists. That's my point. That aspect could be PART of it, but over all, the word of blake should be heavily armed and fanatical war lords.

[SmithMPBT]

Best aspect of Dark Age is the rareness of mechs again. Mechs weren't meant to be the ultimate war machine, heirlooms passed from generation to generation. "Dispossession" or losing your mech was a huge dishonor and essentially made you destitute. During the clan invasion era it seemed everyone had a mech. Regiments easily replaced full batallions at the drop of a hat. Factories were churning them out like toys from China.

[ManaValkyrie]

From the Jihad Timeline Updates that I still have floating around, they used more than 2 chemical/biological or nuclear weapons attacks. When I get time on the weekend I will find the updates and pull the infomation out on planets that were attacked.

Don't get me wrong the FedCom, Jihad.etc could have been very good campaign and timeline sets if they had been handled much better than they were, but by that point the IP's were basically being shared all over the place, FASA was in shutdown and present content and future BT universe content being divided between 2 different games companies.

So its easy to understand Why they used a 'blitz' the known factions to bits and reset the playing field for the future variant of the game but it was handled pretty poorly IMO.

[ManaValkyrie]

SmithMPBT, on 27 November 2013 - 09:18 AM, said:

Best aspect of Dark Age is the rareness of mechs again. Mechs weren't meant to be the ultimate war machine, heirlooms passed from generation to generation. "Dispossession" or losing your mech was a huge dishonor and essentially made you destitute. During the clan invasion era it seemed everyone had a mech. Regiments easily replaced full batallions at the drop of a hat. Factories were churning them out like toys from China.

Don't forget by that point in the Timeline, that the Innersphere tech base was actually begin to resurge, i.e the rediscovery of old SL era technology, which did allow for the retooling and rebuilding on the Battlemech Industry as well as many other technical steps forward.

Not saying that no they shouldn't have been able to replace whole regiments whole hat and in many of the books/stories and sidenotes in games many units didn't manage to massively replace whole units.

Most of the time what you are actually seeing is basically what happens in many major conflicts, units being rotated through the combat zones, gain experience and take losses, rotated back to the rear to repair, rebuild and rearm and hopefully pass back experience. At the same time other fresh units are pulled in and rotated forward for their time on the line. Add in that the clan invasion basically put a halt to inter-house conflict, even amongst the houses that were not directly affected by the initial invasion. Because nobody wanted to rock the boat and risk having the invaded houses losing completely because then they became the next target.

[Hayden]

pbiggz, on 27 November 2013 - 08:35 AM, said:

They shouldn't have been space terrorists. That's my point. That aspect could be PART of it, but over all, the word of blake should be heavily armed and fanatical war lords.

The Blakists went to war with the army they had, rather than the one they might have wanted. The whole thing seems like a ridiculous gambit to me: "Well, we'll throw EVERYTHING we have at EVERYBODY who could oppose us and... that should work, right?"

I think the reason that we didn't see the occupation of vast swaths of territory/frontline combat is because WoB lacked the manpower to do so. Next best thing was to hit the really important stuff (factories, ports, government, R&D, etc) to damage long-term resistance while doing the terrorist bit to weaken the resolve of the enemy. The whole endeavor seemed doomed from the start, but it was a great way to "reset" the universe (if somewhat bungled in actual execution).

[pbiggz]

Hayden, on 27 November 2013 - 09:36 AM, said:

The Blakists went to war with the army they had, rather than the one they might have wanted. The whole thing seems like a ridiculous gambit to me: "Well, we'll throw EVERYTHING we have at EVERYBODY who could oppose us and... that should work, right?"

I think the reason that we didn't see the occupation of vast swaths of territory/frontline combat is because WoB lacked the manpower to do so. Next best thing was to hit the really important stuff (factories, ports, government, R&D, etc) to damage long-term resistance while doing the terrorist bit to weaken the resolve of the enemy. The whole endeavor seemed doomed from the start, but it was a great way to "reset" the universe (if somewhat bungled in actual execution).

That is absolutely true, but the other aspect of my post was the damage the word did. The word of blake's intent was to cripple the successor states ability to wage war, but pretty much as soon as the jihad ended, they bounced back. Make no mistake they had taken serious losses, but they should have done unspeakable things with the word of blake. Zero empathy warlords are a great way to CHANGE the playing field, not just reset it. Places like luthien and hesperus II should have been irreparably damaged. We should have seen swathes of the inner sphere, such as the old chaos march worlds (terran hegemony worlds) rendered uninhabitable by nuclear and biological attacks. We saw a bit of that especially in the free worlds league, where the manei domini used a biological weapon to destroy odessa when coalition forces drove them out of the system, and when regulan warships destroyed the 52nd shadow division on gibson, rendering the world lifeless, as well as bombarding circinus from orbit. We should have seen more of that however. Not occupation of large areas of the inner sphere, but total destruction of areas all over the inner sphere.

Edited by pbiggz, 27 November 2013 - 11:22 AM.

[ManaValkyrie]

Pbiggz thats pretty much how the stories for the WoB and the Jihad read, but the tech readouts and jihad hotspots.etc never actually fufilled that intent. When you read the initial attack stuff, looks like they are going to write off places like Outreach, Tharkad.etc.

Unfortunately ended up being a half assed attempt.

[pbiggz]

Exactly, its like they just give up half way through.