Kay Wolf, on 02 December 2013 - 09:17 AM, said:
This is actually as good a question as...
How could between 80 - 85% of the Star League Defense Forces boost out to worlds more than a year away from the furthest Periphery state, with no factories, a few engineers and scientists, no ability to extract minerals nor refine them once extracted, almost kill one-another in a mass civil war, which prompted the creation of the Clans and the 300 blood names, and then rise less than two-hundred years after that to be a complete civilization with manufacturing and scientific capabilities to far-exceed over a thousand years of development on around 2000 worlds, with a vast army, only one-fourth of which was required to be able to take and hold over 100 worlds within a few months, to be the greatest threat the Inner Sphere has ever seen?
I realize that's a big question, but it has a very simple answer...
It's a science fiction game of giant hokey-robot combat.
While true that it's a science fiction game of "giant hokey-robot combat", this question isn't as good a question as questioning the tactical logic of the battle of Tukayyid. You can answer your question and stay within the realm of possibility.
Battletech history specifically states that the first two Succession Wars forsake the Ares Conventions and absolutely decimated industries, civilian populations (specifically skilled civilians), and information databases, along with military equipment and knowledgeable personnel via weapons like orbital bombardments and nuclear warheads, not to mention specific targeting of scientists and jumpships. Reversal of technology is part of what happens when someone pulls all the morality from a war and releases literally any horror he/she can onto his/her enemies to win it, like completely breaking industrial capabilities by nuking all facilities in enemy territory and slaughtering entire worlds of civilians.
Clans never had to suffer that because the Kerensky exodus was essentially a departure of moral military personnel who didn't want to be used as a tool to destroy a house. The "Nearly Destroyed" statement in BT history is worded rather ambiguously. It's entirely likely based on clan beliefs the statement referred to military assets, but strongly worded as the numbers that are available only refer to around 33% of military assets lost, and there is no information about casualties or the lack thereof.
When one considers that the clans had 21 years of civil war, likely a limited civil war considering that Nicholas managed to retain 260 of 406 warships (which is pretty close to 2/3 of that particular asset), which were probably used to fight with during the civil war, one can assume that the clans kept a lot of what they brought out during Operation Exodus in terms of civilians and assets.
On the other hand, the Inner Sphere saw 60+ years of complete total war before the Successor Lords decided to start following the Ares Conventions again, and then another 175 years of almost continuous war before the clans returned. Even after the Ares Conventions were reinstated, you can bet safe that any budget that most Successor Lords had for R&D went instead to funding more military assets in their standing armies. Only on Avalon in the Federated Suns was there any real research and development of weapon and medical advancements, and that only happened after Hanse Davion was crowned prince.
Toss in the Comstar group, that horded and kept secret all technological knowledge instead of spreading it amongst the known universe, but had little in the way of R&D to improve technology, and it's entirely feasible that the degradation of technology was widespread and quite regressed.
For examples, let's take this to real world application. The U.S. doesn't win wars by pouring numbers into the fight, it does so by it's military industry (which is still America's largest industry), logistics (U.S. has the largest fleet of ships in the world), and advancements in military technology. Limited war creates a demand for improving war tech, while total war will destroy it. If someone nuked San Diego, who knows what R&D we'd lose when that part of Boeing disappears.
Using another example, the Romans carved out an empire by creating a professional standing army and training soldiers to use pilums that they could throw to maim or destroy shields and short swords used for stabbing in concert with tactics and discipline. Small advances in technology often are the difference.
As for the ability to survive out in other areas, during the Star League era there was a lot of colonization occurring still, so the tools to turn a barely habitable planet into an industrial complex had to be capable of space travel. During the Exodus, the clans made pitstops on the way out and gathered a lot of skilled laborers, tools, and assets, some by force, and brought them along. That means they had the tools and personnel with the correct knowledge to operate them for colonizing planets.
Kay Wolf, on 02 December 2013 - 09:17 AM, said:
The Clans shouldn't exist and, until the Clans came about, neither did the ComGuards, at least not with 85 regiments worth of Star League era technology BattleMechs. As for the training, if you want to get picky, no one messes with ComStar, so spying on them would be fruitless. Technically, with the kind of technology they have, and the intelligence apparatus they've been known to possess for real-world decades, they could test everyone in simulators for years and come about with the nearly same effect as fighting in the field.
Not sure if that answers the question, and I didn't read anything between the OP and here, but that's what it is.
There has been mention in the novels that there has been several attempts to infiltrate Comstar with eyes and ears, but with no success. A direct reference to that was made by Quintus Allard that he had sent agents to attempt it. Plus, having the war stockpile of 85 regiments of mechs is not entirely unfeasible, considering that Comstar has had Terra (Earth) to mull over for centuries, where the seat of power during the Star League was, and where some of the last fights Cameron the Usurper put up. Who's to say that there wasn't a stockpile left there for Jerome Blake, along with what remained of the SLDF after the Exodus, in which the CO was placed under Jerome's command. Plus, all that money that Comstar makes from being the only name in interstellar communications probably helped increase that stockpile over the 2 centuries. During all that time, not once was any group allowed free rein to run around Terra looking for bunkers of pristine Star League era Battlemechs.
Edited by Guido, 02 December 2013 - 07:52 PM.
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However, i would point out that , even if with a terrible civil war, they still had about 300 years to colonize the planets, build industry and develope new technology (which was actually an evolution of Star League era tech, as later claimed in the sourcebook) .
