49 replies to this topic

[IraqiWalker]

Shar Wolf, on 02 April 2014 - 09:03 AM, said:

One of the awesome (and sad) things about the series is that there really isn't an "America" or other countries (unless the RotS counts.....)

All of the factions have elements of it - but none of them fit.

They all have elements of a lot of places (there is even a group of worlds mostly settled by the Polynesians! which looks spelled wrong..)- without being a copy-paste of those places.


Closest you get to one of the factions being one of the modern day factions is probably the Combine - which is more Japanese fanboyism (and largely presented as such) than actual Japanese.

Yeah, the authors tried to skirt the symbolism line as much as possible so that they didn't offend people. However, for the areas they didn't know much about either stereotypes prospered or were almost never mentioned. (Rim Worlds League Draconis Combine {Azami settlers}, has lots of Arabs apparently, but that's as far as it goes in that aspect.)


EDIT: It's the Draconis Combine, just checked.

Edited by IraqiWalker, 02 April 2014 - 02:50 PM.

[Craig Steele]

Ghost Badger, on 02 April 2014 - 06:40 AM, said:

Honestly, I've always thought of Davion as holding onto a LOT of French chivalric values with a sprinkling of American libertarian policy.

Yes, a lot of people see Napoleanic France influences as predominant in House Davion, with an overlay of British nobility and all the pitfalls 'breeding' can bring with its social standing requirements.

None of the successor states 'embrace' the traditional American values of freedom democracy and liberty, they are all autocratic top down feudal states.

Davion is also marked by significant economic peaks and troughs. Many worlds towards the periphary edges are little more than back water worlds, minimal population living a 'wild west' existance. But closer to foreign borders, military spending creates infrastructure and interior capital worlds are very wealthy indeed. There is a strong element of 'old money' implied by the canon.

[dragnier1]

Merchant, on 01 April 2014 - 04:59 PM, said:

Example - Ravens are made in House Liao territory and thus were used by them first. However, over wartime, damaged Units such as Ravens can be captured by enemies and repaired for their use. Given Liao usually fought Davion, Davion can be considered to have captured some and repaired part of those for use.

Maybe davion's ravens came from the time they gave liao the fake masc plans. After their plan worked, they sent the recovery teams in...

[Craig Steele]

dragnier1, on 03 April 2014 - 12:26 PM, said:

Maybe davion's ravens came from the time they gave liao the fake masc plans. After their plan worked, they sent the recovery teams in...

In Canon, the fake myomer was only used by one regiment and exposed to the counter compound on Sian. The canon makes no reference to any salvage operations, they came for (and got) Justin Xiang / Allard with Candace Liao being an extra bonus and got the heck out.

[Cataphractos]

Thing One: The Houses also sell BattleMech designs to each other, and the corporations that build them have been known to steal BattleMech designs from other corporations. That's on top of all the salvage-and-resale questions... Conclusion? Whatever you use to pick a faction, don't bother using Mech designs.

Thing Two: If we're going to make ludicrous claims like "House Davion has American libertarian elements in it" -- I'm sorry to have to disagree with my elders and betters, but seriously, they have a prince LOL WUT? -- then I get to point out that House Kurita combines the worst aspects of Imperial Japan in its terminal, "Co-Prosperity Sphere" phase (i.e., real-world "samurai fanboy-ism" multiplied by "careless disregard for human life"), with the most xenophobic 1980s stereotypes about how Toyota and the Yakuza will take over the world. Okay, so Teddy Kurita's a decent guy -- but there's only one of him, and half the Combine hates his guts anyway!

And Liao...don't even get me started about Liao. Seriously, I can't understand why FASA didn't get slapped with class-action lawsuits by every Chinese- and Japanese-American in the US.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Cataphractos, on 03 April 2014 - 08:22 PM, said:

Conclusion? Whatever you use to pick a faction, don't stress to much about using specific house's Mech designs.

Fixed that for you - specific designs still appear a lot more in specific houses.

Cataphractos, on 03 April 2014 - 08:22 PM, said:

Seriously, I can't understand why FASA didn't get slapped with class-action lawsuits by every Chinese- and Japanese-American in the US.

Because
1) Most people are mature enough to realize that: Fiction is just that - fiction

2) Most people are mature enough to realize the difference between a company saying "group-Y is like this" and a company saying "X years into the future a fictional group Z will be idolizing certain concepts will hold group-Y up as the ideal of that concept, while it being very obvious, even in the 80s, that group Z has no real idea what they are talking about"

3) Most people have never heard of Fasa, Battletech, or Mechwarrior, let alone be familiar enough with the factions to take offense.

[Amsro]

For the Dragon!

[IraqiWalker]

Cataphractos, on 03 April 2014 - 08:22 PM, said:

If we're going to make ludicrous claims like "House Davion has American libertarian elements in it" -- I'm sorry to have to disagree with my elders and betters, but seriously, they have a prince LOL WUT?

No one made that claim, I said some people see some american traditions in there. Mostly the AC fetishism I guess, as far as the political structures we've been mostly saying 100-years war era France/England.

[Cataphractos]

Shar Wolf, on 03 April 2014 - 08:30 PM, said:

Fixed that for you - specific designs still appear a lot more in specific houses.

True, but the purpose of MWO isn't to build a canon Mech company, following standard-vs.-non-standard-unit rules. If you want to form a player-guild based on a specific House, and set "Only X% of players may use a non-standard Mech" as a guild rule, then feel free. But it's not mandatory. If anybody asks, you can always come up with a reason why your Marik character is traipsing about in an Atlas.

Shar Wolf, on 03 April 2014 - 08:30 PM, said:

1) Most people are mature enough to realize that: Fiction is just that - fiction

2) Most people are mature enough to realize the difference between a company saying "group-Y is like this" and a company saying "X years into the future a fictional group Z will be idolizing certain concepts will hold group-Y up as the ideal of that concept, while it being very obvious, even in the 80s, that group Z has no real idea what they are talking about"

3) Most people have never heard of Fasa, Battletech, or Mechwarrior, let alone be familiar enough with the factions to take offense.

You could apply the criteria of maturity and obscurity to a great number of class-action lawsuits...but somehow, people still brought them to court. I'm not saying it should have happened; I'm just expressing surprise that in 30-some years of BattleTech history, it never did.

IraqiWalker, on 03 April 2014 - 11:44 PM, said:

No one made that claim, I said some people see some american traditions in there. Mostly the AC fetishism I guess, as far as the political structures we've been mostly saying 100-years war era France/England.

Forgive me, my Overlord, but Ghost Badger made that exact statement.

Ghost Badger, on 02 April 2014 - 06:40 AM, said:

Honestly, I've always thought of Davion as holding onto a LOT of French chivalric values with a sprinkling of American libertarian policy.

Now, I'm not a libertarian, but I know enough about the philosophy to recognize that a centralized federal government in which most of the power is retained by a hereditary monarchy whose monarchs ARE REQUIRED BY LAW TO BE ARMY OFFICERS...is almost the opposite of libertarianism. That's like saying Sweden "has a sprinkling" of Genghis Khan's "Yassa" law-code. If we insist on attaching real-world political concepts to characters in a game of Giant Laser Robots...and apparently we do, for some reason...let's at least stick 'em with concepts that maybe make some kind of sense. Such as:

http://en.wikipedia....ened_absolutism

Or maybe even:

http://en.wikipedia....ederal_monarchy

[Ovion]

Also, having elements of a thing, doesn't make it the thing.

A monarchy can have democratic elements for example.

[Alaskan Nobody]

Cataphractos, on 04 April 2014 - 04:16 PM, said:

You could apply the criteria of maturity and obscurity to a great number of class-action lawsuits...but somehow, people still brought them to court. I'm not saying it should have happened; I'm just expressing surprise that in 30-some years of BattleTech history, it never did.

See point 3.
Add point 4:
4: people who go looking for something to complain about will always find something - even something as stupid as "hot coffee" that they ordered hot ....burning them when spilled.

There may be a "great deal" of those lawsuits - but you will notice they still comprise only a tiny percentile of the total population.
/End of conversation.

[IraqiWalker]

Cataphractos, on 04 April 2014 - 04:16 PM, said:

Forgive me, my Overlord, but Ghost Badger made that exact statement.

1- No need to be condescending.

2- His quote was:

Ghost Badger, on 02 April 2014 - 06:40 AM, said:

Honestly, I've always thought of Davion as holding onto a LOT of French chivalric values with a sprinkling of American libertarian policy.

Sprinkiling doesn't mean their entire system was based on it. Just that they leaned towards it a bit.

To better illustrate it:

Stalinism had a sprinkling of personal freedom and indivdualism in it. Plus a massive heap of authoritarianism, and oppression. That's the contrast

[Katzenwolf]

So love how my post blew up into several number of things. XD You guys are awesome <3

[IraqiWalker]

Katzenwolf, on 05 April 2014 - 07:43 PM, said:

So love how my post blew up into several number of things. XD You guys are awesome <3

Glad you're enjoying this, sometimes people don't appreciate the splinter-talks that pop up.

[Karl Marlow]

luxebo, on 01 April 2014 - 02:07 PM, said:

Alright, thanks. And Spiders I looked up are mainly Kuritan, though Marik has some plans from it.

Actually the FWL owns the rights to the Spider chassis and they are all build in the FWL. The FWL just sells the vast majority of them to the DC because the Mariks don't care for the design and Kurita does.

[Craig Steele]

ThomasMarik, on 06 April 2014 - 03:34 AM, said:

Actually the FWL owns the rights to the Spider chassis and they are all build in the FWL. The FWL just sells the vast majority of them to the DC because the Mariks don't care for the design and Kurita does.

The manufacture is correct in Canon.

Objective Raids source identifies the only manufacturing facility for Spiders in the IS is in Marik Space. The TRO 3050 also identifies the manufacture of the Spider exclusivily in Marik space.

It is often referred that Kurita 'purchases' these which is likely considering the more or less neutrality between the two states and Mariks general distaste for the Spider, but I do not recall seeing that detailed specifically in the canon.

[Cataphractos]

IraqiWalker, on 05 April 2014 - 02:50 AM, said:

1- No need to be condescending.

2- His quote was:


Sprinkiling doesn't mean their entire system was based on it. Just that they leaned towards it a bit.

To better illustrate it:

Stalinism had a sprinkling of personal freedom and indivdualism in it. Plus a massive heap of authoritarianism, and oppression. That's the contrast

I'm not sure what the titles in people's profiles mean. I tend to err on the side of fawning. I didn't mean to condescend -- Shar Wolf's got enough of that for this whole forum.

Now, that said: I used the Yassa-Sweden analogy to try and illustrate my point. The FedSuns don't even have a sprinkling of libertarianism. For pity's sake, their entire economy is slaved to the government's military-industrial complex! At no point did Hanse or Victor Davion express any interest in preserving the sanctity of the free market, or the Austrian School of economics, or the dangers of "statists", or the literary and philosophical works of Ayn Rand. The only similarity between libertarianism and...whatever "-ism" is current with House Davion...is the fact of their both having an "-ism" in their names. This is blasphemy! This is madness!

[IraqiWalker]

Cataphractos, on 09 April 2014 - 01:23 PM, said:

I'm not sure what the titles in people's profiles mean. I tend to err on the side of fawning. I didn't mean to condescend

ohhhhhh, I actually forgot about that. The titles just mean that the person has purchased these packages (different Founders tiers, Talon, Storm, Guardian, and Overlord for the phoenix ones, and there will be the same thing for the Clan packages as well, if I'm not mistaken.

[ManaValkyrie]

Ovion, on 31 March 2014 - 04:22 PM, said:

Yeah, Locusts are one of the most common, if not the most common chasis with thousands in use.

Furthermore, to my knowledge for the most part you're representing Mercs in the employ of the houses, so it doesn't necasarily matter what you pilot.

Actually No.... For example, The Draconis Combine, pretty much still has little to no mercenaries in its employ at this point in the timeline, and the DCMS generally has little to no trust with mercenary units. The idea was that you would be a member of that house, representing it's military either in one of the supposedly earnable 'faction unit' awards for loyalty in CW, which we are still waiting for, or represent a non canon based house unit. If you want to go Mercenary they have their own faction.

[SethAbercromby]

Sure, the original fluffs are somewhat cheesy and stereotypical but that isn't what we like the houses for, isn't it. We often take the ideals and ideas behind the houses and interpret them into a more modern depiction.

The Draconis Combine seems to be influenced by a lot of Edo period Japanese culture. From the Class-system to the loyalist ideology, the highly conversational nature a very similar closed county policy. The DCMS also seems to follow a lot of the ideals of the Busido, reinforcing the idea of pilots practicing an art (often painting or cutting bonsai trees) in addition to their pilot training to rest their minds and being able to fight battles with a good mental and physical balance.