359 replies to this topic

[Sadistic Savior]

Riffleman, on 01 July 2012 - 08:51 PM, said:

To those who know the lore, how did this work. How did the inner sphere manage to hold on? Did they outnumber the clans in general?

Clans had to maintain supply lines to their homeworlds. But mostly it was the ability of IS leaders to manipulate the Clans' honor system. Clan arrogance was also a big factor. Most Clan weaknesses were self imposed.

Also, the tech advantage eroded quickly once the war started. Wolf's Dragoons defected to the IS and blabbed all the Clan secrets to them.

Riffleman, on 01 July 2012 - 08:51 PM, said:

The clans had huge advantages:

They did not exploit them.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Why dident the clans dominate the inner sphere?


Hubris.

[Grey Black]

In a nutshell? Infighting, inter-Clan competition, supply lines, societal rules about warfare (in order to get into the invasion, they had to bid which cut their supplies down), and smaller numbers. Combined with the fact that they were completely unprepared to fight the way the Inner Sphere did (guerrilla warfare, hit-and-run, etc.) not matching up well with Zellbrigen, and the Clans simply couldn't hold onto their advantages. Better technology doesn't always guarantee victory over your foe. Also, playing Rules Lawyer and giving the Inner Sphere a year to get their act together didn't help. Honestly, the more I think on it, though, had ComStar not stepped in because they were after Terra, the Clans may actually have won, but not been able to actually _hold_ the Inner Sphere, at least as far as controlling Terra. But ah, what can we do.

[Jimskiavic]

What Grey Black said pretty much.

• Only a few of the Clans participated in the invasion. Yes, they were amongst the strongest Clans, but imagine if all 17 had invaded, instead of just 4!
  
• Lack of cohesion and cooperation. e.g. not sharing intel or lessons learned, not providing military assistance despite it being possible, and even attacking each other (and having to tie up resources in guarding against the possibility of attacks).
  
• The Year of Peace: one year complete pause in attacks (after the ilKhan was freakishly killed) when the IS was getting its butts kicked. Allowed time for the IS to regroup, regorganise, re-equip (including with new tech) train, plan, etc. Kind of like Japan vs US in WW2: with enough time, the superior resources and industrial potential of the US arguably made victory 'inevitable'. Japan/the Clans' best hope was victory before this could happen.
  
• ComStar, specifically the Trial of Possession on Tukayyid. This resulted in significant losses for the Clans, and also was a huge blow to their morale. But had it merely been a big battle, rather than resulting in a truce, who knows what might have happened? Perhaps the Clans (who were still generally doing quite well against the IS) would've simply regrouped, evolved their tactics/strategies/planning based on the lessons from the loss, and kept rolling on through the IS for a good while longer.
  
• The focus on Terra. That was the main priority of the invasion - to get there asap. Had the Clans focussed rather on specifically defeating the powers in the IS, their targets and strategies would've been very different.

I don't subscribe too much to the theory that unfamiliar/unexpected/'dishonourable' IS tactics contributed to the stalling of the Clan dominance. Sure, the Clans were less effective than they could've been because they didn't handle it well, but they did slowly learn and evolve their tactics and thinking, and still went through the IS pretty quickly at the start when it was the biggest shock to them.

[N0MAD]

Who ever wrote the Novels/stories decided the Clans were the bad guys and as we all know the bad guys never win.

[ElCadaver]

The Clans failed because the have sex with their siblings.

Nuff Said

[Georgegad]

People have certainly made a lot of interesting points about logistics and such, but as i remember those things had nothing to do with it and the entire reason was actually Comstar. As a few have mentioned.

The clans did dominate and the inner sphere did very little that even slowed them.

Then Comstar realised earth was lost and stepped in with a massive stockpile of starleague era technology manned by their elite trained combat pilots, and fought the clans to a halt.


.......Not that that is the end of it of course, the clans had a truce agreement but if i recall it was not a peace agreement. There are countless reinforcements back on the clan homeworlds just waiting for the next round of bidding after the truce expires. More shiney new mechs than all of the entire inner sphere and comstar could possibly have hidden away.

[Georgegad]

ElCadaver, on 01 May 2013 - 12:05 AM, said:

The Clans failed because the have sex with their siblings.

Nuff Said

Clanmembers are genetically engineered.
The term sibling is a title only and none of the people in your childhood group are likely to share your genetic heritage. They call each other siblings only because they grew up in the same childcare facility. (As always someone correct me if i have misinterpreted the canon.)

Edited by Georgegad, 03 May 2013 - 11:32 PM.

[CrashieJ]

Insidious Johnson, on 01 July 2012 - 11:19 PM, said:

Ok, the painfully obvious has to be brought up. The Vat born egomaniacs reproduced by eugenics. Natural births were frowned upon as not '1337'. They were all virgins for life. Tell me that had no effect to their ability to think clearly. What sticks in your head more, something you are forbidden to think about or what you are supposed to think about? By definition, they can't get no satisfaction.

The process for over torquing a clanner into stupidity is the same as for teenagers. For all you clanners out there, don't think about this:

they should make a parody with Battletech, Hot chicks or guys welding on mechs and firing weapons.

[shabowie]

Really the Clans did dominate. If you look at the relatively small number of worlds changing hands in the succession wars the clans took a huge swathe of territory in a very short period of time. Ultimately the IS was able to hold them off and used the Clans own moral code against them at Tukayyid by arranging for something of a fair fight, and then used superior numbers and larger industrial capacity of the Inner Sphere, along with the internal division of the Clans to win when they launched operation Bulldog to take the fight to the Clan occupied zone, then later their home worlds.

Sorry if these points were already raised in the thread, TLDR.

Edited by shabowie, 04 May 2013 - 12:06 AM.

[Kurayami]

Simple answer is "because they newer supposed to do so by authors".

[FearNotDeath]

Every clan but Wolf was too stupid to use a proper tactic in warfare to suit the situation, completely embarrassing themselves losing to the inner sphere.

[w0rm]

The IS had the better poptarts.

[Kasak]

They couldnt win.. Just look at the map of the known worlds, their "superinvasion" did what - hit 10% of the innersphere?
Like someone else pointed out earlier in this thread, Napoleon did the same against russia, same with the germans during ww2, you get HUGE logistical problems, I dont care how good your mech is or how badass your weapon is, if you got no ammo and no spare parts - you lose!
The way they lost is just a story, they wouldve lost even if they had taken Terra. They dont have the numbers to hold the worlds they annexed, and theres still some 80% of the IS that isnt conquered.... So it mattered little.

[Commander Kobold]

Clans fought with a bunch of self imposed restrictions which is the only real reason they lost.

[Georgegad]

Kasak, on 04 May 2013 - 07:26 AM, said:

The way they lost is just a story, they wouldve lost even if they had taken Terra.

I think you missed the point of their goal. Not singling you out of course, many have shared similar opinions, i simply do not agree.

They did not seem to me to have any interest in conquering the innersphere. Once they had got to terra they would have won and wouldnt have cared what happened next. They might even have just gone home, there is nothing they really needed in the inner sphere.


I also got the impression they had massive amounts of supplies and reinforcements if they chose to but they intentionally bid their force as low as possible.

If it had been their desire they could have appeared in mass with a hundred times the mechs and overtaken every planet in the Sphere all at once. They chose not to because it was not their style to apply unnecessary force.

All the clans intentionally bid their armies down to the smallest possible size they thought would be enough to take terra.
They only underbid by a fraction. If it was just the innersphere they would have made it, but they did not account for Comstars hidden army in their bidding and were overpowered by a force they had not accounted for.

Edited by Georgegad, 04 May 2013 - 06:05 PM.

[Sky Ferrix]

Gotta give Clan Wolf credit for purposely bidding the largest force at Tukayyid. While the other Clans bid low forces with honor on the brain, the Wolves wised up and realized honor wasn't going to win the war. Hence why they were able to take all their assigned objectives during the battle.

[Jimskiavic]

Georgegad, on 04 May 2013 - 05:53 PM, said:

They did not seem to me to have any interest in conquering the innersphere. Once they had got to terra they would have won and wouldnt have cared what happened next. They might even have just gone home, there is nothing they really needed in the inner sphere.

The focus on Terra was because capturing it would determine the ilClan. What would've happened next would've depended heavily on which Clan that was, and the political leanings of the ilKhan.

Crusaders I suspect would've then turned the Clans on conquering the whole IS ('re-establishing the Star League' was one of their prime justifications and reasons for Operation Revival), probably bringing all the remaining Clans into the fight, and fulfilling Kerensky's promise (as they interpret it) that they would 'return home'. No doubt the Clans would've continued to bid about who would get which campaign theatres (as with Operate Klondike too).

If it was Wardens though I'm less sure of what would've happened. Re-establishing the Star League still would've been a priority, but not in a 'because we control the entire IS' sort of way. The remaining Clans still would've wanted to return home too, and I think that would've had to be allowed. But again, rather than an all-out invasion to conquer the whole IS, it might've been more a case of staging a lot of Trials of Possession against the IS states for worlds and resources, to find each Clan a foothold/home within the IS.

[AdultPuppetShow]

Basically, the clans centered their ideology around honor and ritualized combat as a means to keep relative bloodshed and loss of material to a minimum in battle. This was mostly due to their lack of resource rich worlds. They also didn't like to have more than one clan warrior engaging the same enemy mech at the same time. The inner sphere warriors had no reservations about bringing the firepower of the entire lance to bear pumping a Dire Wolf full of lead and plasma in a most infernal manner.

The Inner Sphere had more people, more diverse tactics, and apart from the Kuritans less adherence to an overly strict code of honor that would prevent them from making tactically sound decisions. Once the technology gap was mostly bridged after a few years into the war the clans lost any edge they had.

Edited by AdultPuppetShow, 05 May 2013 - 06:25 PM.

[Damon Howe]

The Clans failed in large part because of the awesomeness and cunning of one man: Ulric Kerensky.

Unlike the other 4 clans, Ulric heeded the advice received from the Wolf's Dragoons and planned extensively on the invasion after he failed in the Clan Council to shoot down the notion of invasion (he was one of the few who fought against it, but once he had no other choice decided to beat every other clan at their own game). Unlike the other clans, Ulric concentrated his forces on using energy weapons and extensive supply routes - while the other clans ran dry on the field and overextended themselves, Ulric's Wolves ran strong, forcing the other clans to force themselves beyond their logistical capacity.

And then he became IlKhan.

What did he do? Call up the reserves! Bring in more clans to help the invasion! Oh, there's one thing...the reserve clans were given corridors in the same lines of hated enemies - Falcons/Vipers HATED each other inparticular - AND gave the reserve clans permission to bid against the initial invasion clans for worlds they conquered in order to "set up supply routes". Now at least 2 of the invasion clans were about as busy fighting off their own as they were trying to advance their forces.

And then he negotiated Tukayyid.

He counted on the other clans, pissed at his clan's success, to turn away his advice and rush in for quick victories, while he planned for a long campaign. He was right.

In short, Ulric almost single-handedly crippled the Clan Invasion, through his clan's success and the other clan's underestimation of the IS and his advice.