359 replies to this topic

[BigJim]

Bombast, on 01 July 2012 - 10:53 PM, said:

There's also another argument - The Clan's lost the very minute they stepped onto Inner Sphere soil, because they BECAME the Inner Sphere. They went from honorable factions fighting each other for practice and strength, to grubby handed, politically fractured group's bent not on an ideal society, but more on one upping each other and fighting petty wars for petty reasons. Just like the Inner Sphere had been doing since forever.

One of the most pertinent points in the thread imo.

Imho there's far less difference between the Clans & any given faction than we make it seem; They're not alien (although some of the first warriors to "meet" the clans might not have known that), they're human with all the same failings & weaknesses as anyone else.

Had the first-contact boot been on the other foot & an IS taskforce tried to invade the Clan's sphere of influence completely out of the blue, I'm sure the same mistakes would have been repeated just with different flavourings - It's the nature of this particular universe.

Edited by BigJim, 02 July 2012 - 03:29 AM.

[Frankdark]

Some good points why there where stop.

For me one of the keypoints is, Poker game for Planets.

They dedicdet how can take the planet with less forces.
And that is for me the problem number one.

Thy coundnt attac in full force
and thats resultat in longer time and more losses.

[Theodor Kling]

Duvanor, on 02 July 2012 - 01:36 AM, said:

I can't remember any effective forces behind the lines except the Yakuzza on Turtle Bay (nuked by orbital strike) and Kai Allard Liao on Alyina. The rebels in Falcon Guard had a refittet AgroMech, on some planets were a few surviving Mechs, but in most cases nothing that could threaten a garrison of a trinary or more.

They didn´t have to. Even with only a coparativly small percentage ofthe population of a planet is determiend to haass the invaders ( and there are always at least some) they can do HUGE damage to the overall war effort. They don´t even need to theaten mech forces. A blown up supply truck here, spoiling of a warehouse full of rations there... like said above: In space suppliesm ight have been save, but not planetside. And each and every terorist/guerilla action against clan military forced them to react. be it with redeploying of aleady present troops, sending reeinforcements, splitting of troops to protect multiple objectives.. even if most local dissidents could not realy endanger even second line mech forces, they could keep the clan military aparatus busyand streched thin. Soemthing they were not used to. Border wolrds were garissioned against raids, sure. But "lower castes" not simply accepting their new rulers, instead making garrisions and policing duty on each and every conquered world was a logistical stretch the clans were not prepared for.

[Fear Radick]

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? The clans had huge advantages:

1. Suprise. Struck hard and fast before the inner sphere even knew of their existance.

2. suposedly superior troops. Bred to wage war, with superior genes.

3. Far more advanced technology. Everything that the clans had was superior to the inner sphere version, and had technologies lost to them.

So how exactly did they survive that first war?

They didn't fight with hart!

And you can't form Captain Planet without the power of hart!

[Lt Shortcut]

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? The clans had huge advantages:

Because the clanners were retards when it came to logistics.

If you run out of ammo, food, fuel, repair parts, etc it doesn't matter how good your Soldiers are.

Stupid canners.

[DeC Drake]

SuomiWarder, on 01 July 2012 - 09:26 PM, said:

And finally, because whoever was in charge of the storyline decided not to have the Clans win, and go for the classic outclassed underdog finds a way to win scenario.

bingo.

[Precentor_Apollyon]

They did not win because the clans are socialists and american autors dont like to see any socialists doing great job, so the clans had to fail

Edited by showers, 02 July 2012 - 04:39 AM.

[BigJim]

To be fair, socialists tend to do an excellent job of that themselves, without any help from outside.

[ARC73]

There is also the reverse side of the equation to look at here, as well. Looking at how much the Clans did in fact accomplished dispite all the points standing against them. They shifted more territory, then had be moved in some 300+ years of ongoing warfare in the Inner Sphere. Also to be fair to the Clans, their enemies had just as many problems to over come as well. A scary thought if they had gotten their act together before the conflict begain. Ironed out their differences, and hit the Inner Sphere as one "nation" rather then a group of co-belligerents. Not saying they would have necessarly won, the war. But it would be a safe bet that they would have closed the gap to terra considerably.

And I agree that some Clans did adapt to the situation more effectively then others, the Ghost Bears in particular. Likely comes from their more "wait and see" thinking. One of the reasons they didnt press the Aerospace modified pilots, they where skeptical about it. Why do something just because you can? An we have perfectly good, unargumented pilots to work with. The Elemental had nearly a century of work behind it, by Hell's Horses (in terms of creating a infantryman genetic legacy). Before Clan Wolf created a successful Battlesuit.

The old argument about raw potential vs hard won experience seems to be the bane of the Clans in some ways.

[Lightdragon]

read the blood of kerencky triology and youll see how they survived... jamie wolf dragged all of the hosue leaders into a meeting and had them and their sons train clan style and even gave them omnis and some clan weaponry for their older units

[Davoke]

LunarWind, on 01 July 2012 - 09:03 PM, said:

Numbers.
As I understand it, the clans live further from the galactic center on less hospitible planets which cannot sustain massive populations.

I would guess that the Inner Sphere has greater numbers of pilots as well as vast amounts of natural resources and an industrial infrastructure to exploit them.

As a point of reference, you ever hear of the Imperial Guard from Warhammer 40K?
They have the worst troops, the worst equipment, and never surprise anyone, ever.
They also outnumber just about everyone else by at least 10 to 1. Sometimes more like 1,000 to one.

I don't care how well you aim your gun, or how great your gun is, or how long you had to prepare the gun to shoot me.
You've got X number of bullets and I've got X+2 friends.

I once heard there was something like a thousand Imperial vehicles for every space marine.
And the Chimera has nearly twice the armor of a Predator

[trycksh0t]

It is very simple, all because of Anastius Focht. Much as I hate ComStar, Focht deserves a lot of credit. He manipulated the Clans and lured them into a battle they couldn't win. The Clanners were so convinced of their supriority they didn't realize Focht was using their own tactics to work against them.

Superior Tactics > Better Tech in the hands of idiots who refuse to adapt.

Had the war continued as it was, without the Trial on Tukayyid, I suspect the Clans would have taken most, if not the entirety, of the Sphere. Then their problem would have become how to hold it.

Edited by trycksh0t, 02 July 2012 - 01:23 PM.

[Squigles]

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? The clans had huge advantages:

1. Suprise. Struck hard and fast before the inner sphere even knew of their existance.

2. suposedly superior troops. Bred to wage war, with superior genes.

3. Far more advanced technology. Everything that the clans had was superior to the inner sphere version, and had technologies lost to them.

So how exactly did they survive that first war?

These 2 articles are pretty much the bulk of what you need to know.

http://www.sarna.net...tle_of_Tukayyid
http://www.sarna.net...uce_of_Tukayyid

Prior to Tukayyid, except for a few notable exceptions, the clans were effectively pounding the IS into a fine red mist across the board. Even Tukayyid was a thing of luck, as clan forces nearly discovered Focht's bunker, which would have ended any hopes the Comguard had of winning.

[Steinerwolf]

The main reasons the Clans failed to dominate the Inner sphere are:

)Lack of a strong logistics support system.
)A culture that really prevented them from uniting into one force.
)Having no experience in long term warfare.

On the flip side IS forces had logistics systems that were not only where strong but could adapt to a changing battle ground. IS troops were geared and trained for long term warfare. Eventually the IS united into a single force that annihilated Clan Smoke Jagua[color="#000000"]r.-Delivering a crushing moral blow and teaching the clans the true horrors of war. [/color]

[Aaron DeChavilier]

heh, they lost because of the authors. There were so many different ways the invasion could have been written, and many different outcomes. I think how the IS won was boring. The IS was not really the underdog; if you can spam mechs and win the war of attrition, then you are not the underdog. Would have been interesting to see how the clans would have acted had they realize the sleeping bear they had awoken.

another point during the actual invasion was: how much infantry and armor the IS could throw at the clans. Mechs are powerful, but in heavy urban combat, infantry performs far better. Infantry + Inferno SRMs trump DHS any day. The clans were unaccustomed to fighting on heavily populated worlds, having to slog through urban sprawl and ruins.

[Januph]

Pride/honour earlier on really hampered them. Also low bidding each other doesn't help.

[Teirdome]

In my mind it came down to the following:

The Clans are nothing more than glorified football teams.

Don't get me wrong, they're really damn good at playing football. They're the biggest, fastest, meanest dudes at their positions. But they're so constrained by the rules that they can be exploited.

If we get to play out the battle of Tukayyid, I'm certain that by the end all the clanners will be yelling "H4X!"

[Hunson Abadeer]

The Inner Sphere Houses were more like the real samurai of the Sengoku-jidai -- soldiers. The Clans were more like the faux samurai of the Edo-jidai -- people obsessed with power, pomp, circumstance, and rituals. The former may not look as nice or seem as idyllic, but they know how to win wars. The latter may be superior in some ways, but they also allow their own nonsense to limit themselves.

That is the cultural reason. The more pragmatic reason is that the Clans simply were not up to the task. Every world they took then had to be controlled, and the Clans simply did not possess the necessary manpower. Each Bloodname only has a maximum of 25 members, and there were at least ~50 Bloodnames that had been eliminated of the original 800 long before the invasion. Some Bloodnames had been lowered down to as few as 5 possible members. In theory then, the number of Bloodnamed warriors for all Clans was well under 20,000. The original invading Clans had just 18 MechWarrior and 10 'General' Bloodnames and thus an upper limit of 700 Bloodnamed MechWarriors AT MOST. The nature of the Trial of Bloodright and the melee that precedes it ensures that many warriors die just to try to earn such a name. If you check the Invading Clans sourcebook, you'll see that none of the invading Clans actually had very large forces relative to the size of the task.

[Steinerwolf]

Januph, on 03 July 2012 - 10:30 AM, said:

Pride/honour earlier on really hampered them. Also low bidding each other doesn't help.

Yeah the Clans were really selfish too. Seeking personal glory or glory for their individual clan instead of the Clans as a whole.

[Jaroth Corbett]

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? The clans had huge advantages:

1. Suprise. Struck hard and fast before the inner sphere even knew of their existance.

2. suposedly superior troops. Bred to wage war, with superior genes.

3. Far more advanced technology. Everything that the clans had was superior to the inner sphere version, and had technologies lost to them.

So how exactly did they survive that first war?

The IS got devastated early on. The combination of the Clans superior training & tech with ComStar's media blackout of worlds to be invaded, allowed the juggernaut to roll on, decimating IS forces planet after planet. There were a few victories by the IS, most notably Twycross & Wolcott, but they were few & far between. Then on Octonber 31st, 3050, Free Rasalhague's Elected Prince Magnusson jumped into the Radstadt System where the Dire Wolf, flagship of Clan Wolf, was stationed. The ilKhan of the Clans Leo Showers was aboard to lead a Grand Kurultai. When the forces loyal to the Prince, realized the situation, they deployed fighters to give him time to escape. Tyra Miraborg, one of the pilots got her fighter shot up really badly while strafing & decided to go out in a blaze of glory. She flew her Shilone directly into the bridge of Dire Wolf, which killed the ilKhan.

According to Clan law, a new ilKhan had to be elected immediately as a matter of protocol since the Clans needed an ilKhan to coordinate the invasion. However, according to Clan law, a vote would need to be cast by all Bloodnamed warriors participating in the invasion. The length of time to fly back to Strana Mechty, hold a memorial for Leo Showers, elect a new IlKhan & return to the IS, took a year minus two days. This time period is called "The Year of Peace". At this time, the invasion was halted. The Clans were basically in a holding pattern. They secured their worlds with PGCs & warriors without Bloodnames, but they did not attempt to take any new worlds.

The IS used this time to rest, re-arm & resupply. It was during this time that the Wolf's Dragoons, the most elite mercenary unit in the IS, sent out invitations to the leaders of the various "Great Houses" of the Successor States. At this meeting, they revealed they were of Clan origin & offered to help the IS repel the Clans. They provided schematics for productions of new BattleMechs below Clan standards at the time but much more advanced than anything the IS were popping out of their factories. They also provided new tech & weapons for the IS to use as well as detailed insight & intelligence on Clan training procedures & tactics. During this meeting as well, the enmity between the Successor States was temporarily halted with unofficial armistices being agreed upon. (Not everybody did, but the majority) When the Clans returned, they were facing a better equipped, trained & almost united, IS. This did not stop the Clans from outdoing their IS counterparts, but the IS did a LOT better.

ComStar though aiding the Clans, were simply playing for time, trying to ascertain the Clans true intentions for returning to the IS. When they learned it was Terra (Earth), they decided to oppose the Clans, They issued a challenge to the new ilKhan, Ulric Kerensky of Clan Wolf, to fight a proxy battle for Terra. Terms were agreed upon & the battle was fought on Tukayyid. The detailed planning of A.Focht of ComStar with the brilliant defensive strategy & the Clans underestimating the IS forces on a few occasions, led to a ComStar victory by their (secret until that time) army, knows as the ComGuards.

Not sure if you need anything else.

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 03 July 2012 - 05:24 PM.