359 replies to this topic

[J0anna]

Ironically enough Phelan summed it up very neatly (from "Lost Destiny"):

"The ilKhan has seen what you have not. You all dreamed of an Inner Sphere torn by war and utterly unable to withstand your onslaught. True, their level of technology is not as high as yours, but it approaches it swiftly. At the end of the first year of your invasions, you had made great headway, but the Inner Sphere had already learned tactics that put you at a disadvantage. At Wolcott, the Draconis Combine beat you at your own bidding game. One member of your own Bloodname House died because he so poorly negotiated that battle. And again at Twycross we tasted defeat."

He clasped his hands at the small of his back. "In the time it took us to elect Ulric ilKhan, the Inner Sphere came together. They trained together and exchanged information. They learned from each other and new technology began to be shared between their ruling Houses. We managed, with a few exceptions, to unite people who had not worked together since before our ancestors left the Inner Sphere. And, yes, we learned, too, during our time away and shifted our tactics, but they beat us."

He pointed at Osis and the other Smoke Jaguar Khan. "You lost a battle for Luthien. The Jade Falcons failed in their attempt to capture Victor Davion. We did take worlds, but these crucial victories eluded us. "We have dismissed these losses and have blamed them on circumstance. At Twycross, for example, Kai Allard-Liao tricked the Jade Falcons into a trap. On Luthien you met the Wolf Dragoons and the Kell Hounds, in addition to the best the Draconis Combine had to offer. Again on Alyina, Kai Allard spoiled the trap we laid for Victor Davion. Then Allard eluded us for four months and finally ended up freeing our people so that they could liberate the planet from ComStar. And Victor Davion led an elite unit to Teniente to free Hohiro Kurita who we did not even know we had trapped!"

Phelan felt his heart begin to pound again, but it was no longer from nervousness. Suddenly he saw what Ulric had always wanted from him. I am a fusion between the Clans and the Inner Sphere. I know, I understand, what Ulric could only ever hope was true. He nodded his head, then slammed his fist into his left palm. "Special people, you say. Special circumstances, you sputter. I disagree with every cell in my body! Yes, Kai is special, and so is Victor and so are the Dragoons and the Hounds and the Genyosha, but they are not unique. There are countless special people in the Successor States. The Com Guards, before they fought us at Tukayyid, were untried forces. The Wolf Dragoons you faced are all orphans adopted at the end of the last war or freeborn offspring of those Wolf Clan members who originally ventured out into the Successor States.

"Look at me. In the Successor States, the only thing remarkable about me was my family and my hardheadedness. Granted the latter has been of help in the Clans, but had I completed the course of study at the Nagelring, I would have been just another MechWarrior”probably not even a Leftenant. Yet here I stand among you, the leaders of the Clans, having commanded a Star and having won a Bloodname." He pointed back at the ilKhan. "This is the truth the ilKhan has seen. Three hundred years of breeding has not made us all that different from each other. Were we to proceed, it would be the battle of a knife against a grindstone. Yes, we would get sharper, we would win great victories, but in the end, we would be ground away to nothing.

"The ilKhan's agreement with Focht buys us the time we need to prepare ourselves for the future. This invasion will never again know the lightning victories it did at the start. As ComStar showed us, our tactics are not suited to a long, drawn-out conflict. You did not prepare for that and you lost. The Wolf Clan did prepare for that and we won." Phelan pulled his head up. "The world-by-world conquest and administration of the Successor States will be nothing if not long and drawn-out. In the fifteen short years the ilKhan has bought us, we can prepare the bases we need to continue our conquest. He has been true to his role as war leader because in seeing defeat on the horizon, he has stopped us from rushing headlong into it.

"Remove him, repudiate the deal, and the Clans will be a memory long before the agreement has run its course."

Phelan returned to his seat and Natasha gave him a wink. Ulric graced him with the barest of nods, then turned to the assembled Khans. "You have heard the arguments. Weigh them, then make your decision. Shall the ilKhan be removed and his deal with ComStar rescinded? How say you, children of Kerensky?" "Nay," he and Natasha cried as one. They smiled at each other because their voices were not in the minority.

As the monitors winked out and the other Khans left the room, Ulric approached him and Natasha. "You were able to point out that of which I could never convince them."

[ElCadaver]

Georgegad, on 03 May 2013 - 11:32 PM, 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.)

From what I've read, a sibko is the group of children produced from the genetic material of a male and a female warrior's genetic line. The Jade falcon trilogy had a sibko where they were all (mostly?) brothers and sisters. It mentions the family resemblence in many of the sibkos members. I assume the clans had no problem with it, as the sex was not for breeding purposes anyway. Still, they had sex with kids they grew up with, living as siblings, hence the term sib-ko.

Eww

[Alik Kerensky]

Kinda like Stargate SG-1...

• Clan warrior is like a Jaffa Staff designed for terror
  
• Inner Sphere warrior is like a P90 designed for war

Surprise only last so long and desperation breeds ingenuity.

[King Arthur IV]

or else there would be no story of overcoming ebil.

the clans struck, the end.

[Ari Dian]

Alik Kerensky, on 05 May 2013 - 10:54 PM, said:

Kinda like Stargate SG-1...

• Clan warrior is like a Jaffa Staff designed for terror
• Inner Sphere warrior is like a P90 designed for war

Surprise only last so long and desperation breeds ingenuity.

I would say the Clans are the P90 and the IS the Faffa Staff in your analogy.

But there are around 10 Jaffa staffs for each P90. The IS is Quantity over Quality.

[Utilyan]

The TRUTH.

Because they pulled out the totally bad mf Mechwarrior 2 clanners for some table top nerd's mech-klingons.

You better hope it ain't the mechwarrior 2 clanners that show up, you better hope its those zellbrigen/batchall circle of life klingons that show up.


Now folks can cry say mechwarrior 2 isn't cannon. Makes bout as much sense as saying Star Wars: A New Hope isn't cannon.

Mechwarrior2 put this game on the map, Wasn't for mechwarrior2 we wouldn't even be here. No one knew what battletech was till mechwarrior 2, least for most folks. It not only outshined all battletech.....it outshined every computer game that existed then.


...And since Mechwarrior 2.....the table nerd with a bias for inner sphere has always dictated to us clanners ........what a clanner is and how to be one......a mech klingon......

B* please.......

As I remember being there......we took that ****.

Know what I'm saying? Yeah yeah....the clans lost.......::::WINK WINK WINK::::

BELIEVE THAT.......

Edited by Utilyan, 06 May 2013 - 03:58 AM.

[L1f3H4ck]

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.

Clan space lies coreward of the Inner Sphere.

They wanted to win it all in one glorious battle and lost, that's the tl;dr of the Blood of Kerensky Trilogy.

[ValdnadHartagga]

And again, numbers.

I don't have the statistics of the Invasion in front of me, but according to Sarna, Clan Wolf had 24 Clusters as of 3054. Assuming a max of five Trinaries per Cluster, that's up to 1800 combat units (which includes Points of Elementals, Aerospace, and combat vehicles), probably close to 10,000 individual warriors. Of those, only a few Galaxies are considered Frontline, and within those forces not everybody was deployed at once - I would venture to say that only a few hundred warriors participated in each aggressive wave of the Invasion (a lot planets are garrisoned by a company or less so you really don't need that many unless you're assaulting a capital world). Additionally, total population of Clan Wolf by itself numbered 101,850,000 by 3060, which is 1/70th the population of planet Earth today, and a third that of the entire USA. The Clans could never have produced enough warriors to match the attrition rate, considering that only a few members of a sibko (if any at all) are viable candidates to even become warriors.There was no way they could have played the long game with their numbers and methods.

The FRR Kungsarme, in comparison, consisted of 16 combined arms regiments for a maximum total of 2880 combat units (and again, combined arms, so the number of actual soldiers is probably higher). By numbers, they were theoretically (and barely) an even match for a single Clan (though of course that wasn't the case). The full might of the AFFC in 3050 can be divided into corps.

Supplies. Most Clanners expect and prepare for short, brutal assaults (i.e., Trials). They load up for maximum damage potential, which means a lot of ammo-based weapons (See Roar of Honor, where the Wolf invaders ran short of ammo and armor when the Ghost Bears dragged the Trial out). The supply lines during the Invasion were pretty long, and interstellar travel takes months. I'm sure the frontline Galaxies were pretty short on supplies, and no frontline MechWarrior in any Clan will accept anything less than a full OmniMech to pilot, so it's not like they could just pick up any old 'Mech along the way. Secondline units were able to reinforce with IS salvage, but that doesn't help if your goal is to keep pushing toward Terra. The farther you get, the longer it will take to resupply (assuming your supply lines don't get cut off) and the less effective you will be in the long run.

The primary reason why the IS suffered as much as it did was because nobody saw it coming (either the invasion or the technology). The primary reason why the Clans didn't push further was their adherence to protocol (Zellbrigen, electing a new ilKhan, et cetera). They seriously stopped everything for about a year and pulled their finest warriors off the line to elect Ulric. The Clans had their heads shoved too far up their own rear ends to have truly conquered the IS (and really, the goal was just to get to Terra, where they would be surrounded by the entire rest of the IS. How would that have gone? Ask the Word of Blake.).

[Gladewolf]

I see there are a lot of complicated and well thought out theories here....but you've forgotten two words. Script Immunity. That's it. I read the clan books. I could not believe the level of silliness the clans were bound to. Perhaps I'm just old and jaded, but the concept of "noble combat" just doesn't seem like a possibility in reality......unless by "noble" you mean, don't teabag dead enemies.

[Volume]

Numbers, tactics, Comstar, etc.

[Jawbreaker6]

Bad writing is how the clans failed.


The clan invasion wqas tied to a new product line, not an actual war. The writer(s) needed a Maguffin (tool to serve purpose) to stop the clans. That tool was the need to elect a new khan of the clans.
The one year halt to that crushing offensive killed them. In essence, this society of warrriors, dedicated to one thing--fighting war--did the one thing they would in reality never do: continue to exploit sucees and crush their enemies before them.

Enter the clan invasions books, clan minis and ultimately, that wonderful bit of marketing and economic strategy--the Word of Blake Jihad--and CLICKY TECH!

Now having siad all that...there is a difference between taking ground and holding ground. Like Trashkanistan and Iraq we've seen what a pack of motivated idiots can do to a well-equipped and properly trained force. So the clans would have been bled white and either been absorbed by the planets they had conqured, killed off entirely or gone home with their tails between their legs.

Edited by Jawbreaker6, 06 May 2013 - 09:01 AM.

[ValdnadHartagga]

The word you guys are looking for is "fiat." You see it all the time over on the BT boards

[Aethon]

Long lore-related answer:

History is full of upsets, of vastly powerful, unstoppable forces being driven back by determined people in defense of their homeland, either before or after the initial conquest takes place.

In most cases, as is the case here, the conquerors were prepared for an entirely different sort of war; whereas the IS generally thinks nothing of bombing its own infrastructure into the stone age, the Clans sought a cleaner sort of war that, aside from the Smoke Jaguars, left the civilians out of the conflict. They knew that war is as much a part of man's nature as is breathing, and there must be an outlet; thus, they saw a style of war based around trials as the purest manifestation of our competitive nature at its highest, most lethal level, and shaped their vision of war around that ideal.

The IS was equally unprepared, but they were not as entrenched in their point of view as the Clans, and were more than willing to 'fight dirty', so to speak. However, like any outgunned force, they thought outside the box, came up with their own bag of tricks, and like every one of the upstarts I mentioned throughout history, they turned the invaders' very nature and fighting style against them.

Then, you have the reduction of Clan invading forces by other factors. Clan Ghost Bear, the largest of the invading Clans, officially changed its stance to that of a Warden Clan. The Wolves endured a civil war that decimated their ranks, with the surviving Wardens dedicating themselves to the defense of the Inner Sphere against the Crusader Clans. The Nova Cats also ceased their invasion, based on one of their visions. The Smoke Jaguars' slaughter of civilians, among other things, earned them the focused ire of the entire IS, which led to their annihilation, with the other Clans allowing it to occur without interference. Later on, the Wars of Reaving weakened almost all of the Clans, while the Hell's Horses reverted to their previous Warden stance and moved to the Inner Sphere, therein destroying a large portion of the Crusader Wolves' Touman and taking about half of their worlds.

So, it is a combination of many factors: the IS bulwark which was strenghtened by the resolve anyone has when defending their homeland, combined with the fact that many Clans had changed their views and stopped the invasion of their own accord, which led to an effective halt of the invasion. The Jade Falcons still made probes here and there, but the borders did not effectively change much, in spite of their having been only one or two jumps from Tharkad at one point; once again, they were stopped not by IS military might, but by the elusive defenders on a particular world, coupled with the Crusader Wolves invading their space, forcing them to withdraw and repel the Wolves.





Short, real-world answer:

The line writers and the owners of the franchise saw the continued profit in a prolonged conflict between the IS and the Clans, so the Clans never won, but were never driven out. After all, if the IlClan conquered Terra and reigned supreme, there would not be many wars to sell books and models about, would there? Similarly, if the Clans had been kicked right out of the IS, the remainder of Battletech's lore would be the usual IS circle-jerk, with the occasional Periphery action. *yawn*

[Aym]

Take your pick, http://en.wikipedia....Deus_ex_machina
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue
Either way it was written that way, that's the only reason.

Edited by Aym, 06 May 2013 - 12:46 PM.

[CMD Storm]

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.

So they are like Goonswarm of Eve

Seriously I understand the IS played dirty/actual war, but the Clans were very dumb for realizing the first time there enemy didnt "Duel" Hey maybe we should stop sending our leaders in to 1 v 1 them and then have them get swarmed and killed.

Fool you once shame on you...and all that.

Sounds a lot more like Germany vs Russia in WW2 like another poster mentioned.

Russia had vast amounts of resources and natural numbers and lands in which the Germans had to take each time, and even though Germany was superior vs even numbers, the numbers wern`t even.

So say IS has 5 million Mechs and Clans have 1 million, the IS also has the ability to keep creating at record rates while Clans have to ship huge lines of logistics.

So even if every planet was taken by a margin of 5:1, at what point do the clans simply run out of Mechs to fight with.

Sounds to me from my very very limited knowledge that the CLans should have come i nand just become Mercs right away. And followedWolfs Dragoons model I think. [I think they were Clan origin].

Seems like the Clans wanted to just fight more than conquer, and maybe stick it to the IS for sending them in exile TBH.

If they came to win there wouldnt have been "Honor fights", also If they came to win they would have went straight for earth right away or the main planets and taken them hostage.

Lets say there was the IS making up the 6 major families, all the Clans had to do was split into 6 HUGE forces land on Davion, Mariks, Stien, Draconis, Laio etc capitals where there presidents or parliment or dictaors lived, cut through them like butter and then simply said come get us and we will turn your capitals into dust and kill your King/Governments in 1 action. Hell include all subfactions as well like the guys controlling the nav beacons.

If they would have done that there would have been no organization and the masses would simply have joined there new masters and the few who resisted would like we said have been out Tech`d out classed and killed.

Invasion looks from the outside more as a "We want to go home, these planets are cold and suck, but we care about honor so much we will lose the war but gain our respect and a place in the new society" type deal.

The Vikings did it at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, and they were very very similiar to the clans in many ways.

Harald King of the Vikings knew if he could kill enough Saxons and hold the bridge long enough [much like the 300/Thermopolaye/Alamo situation] for William to come anddefeat theSaxons that William the king of England would remember it and help Norway and the rest of the Vikings and even buy them time to remain hethens against Rome

Its similiar in the way that the Clans to gain respect and it being the only way they knew how to respect "Combat" they might have figured lets go to Valhalla and the survivors will be so respected about our prowess in combat they will have better lives on better worlds.

Im just saying they certainly did not come to actually win by there "1v1 Fights" and certainly once the IS never honored there agreements and played dirty could they have thought there way of valor was going to work.

I really think the clans like us in games came for the GF`s, because to them it was what they strove for, tales of glory and death in battle.

Thats how it seems anyways from just browsing over it.

To those that know it well what happend to Clan Wolf that survived? Who did they join? Also Im still unlcear as to why the Clans had all this lost tec and the IS didnt? Did the Tec get developed out in the edge or did we have it in the IS before the CLans left and we pulled a "Dark Ages" and killed all our tec from war?

[VanillaG]

CMD Storm, on 06 May 2013 - 01:00 PM, said:

Also Im still unlcear as to why the Clans had all this lost tec and the IS didnt? Did the Tec get developed out in the edge or did we have it in the IS before the CLans left and we pulled a "Dark Ages" and killed all our tec from war?

The IS pulled a Dark Ages in which almost every factory and scientist who know how things worked was killed or destroyed. In 3028 the Helm Memory Core was discovered and puts the IS back on track to rediscover the technology that was around at the times the SLDF (i.e. Clans) left.

The Clans on the other hand have a Golden Century which allows them to improve upon the tech that the IS is now just rediscovering as well as creating new tech that the IS has never seen.

[Georgegad]

And of course among the opinions there is also this from the clanners perspective.........

Good sportsmanship.

The clanners national pastime is battlemech fighting. They had been training for centuries in their own league and wanted to come to the innersphere for an all galactic mech fighting championship.

They got there and the IS sucked. Like an army of noobs. The clans beat them severely battle after battle. No matter how much they lowered the bid they just kept winning.

It was really disappointing for the clans. Like getting to the national championships and finding your only opponent is an old man with cataracts and a limp.

Eventually after continuing defeat the IS brought some ringers in from the comstar league and when the clans put in a pity bid the IS sent their 'A' team in..... After a very long hard game the IS super team managed to score a win against the clans 'B' team.


The clans feel much relieved about this. As good sportsmen they felt a little embarrassed about beating the home team so badly over and over, but that is the way they play the game,

Now there is a long truce, and clan members are happy to have it. The IS were not really up to the fight but now they have a generation to get themselves together and put together some form of defense.

Hopefully they wont suck so badly when we come back in 15 years.

[Ryebear]

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?

Im not going to read through every page of posts to see if someone pointed this out. But this feels like a WWII analogy. Clans are Axis, IS are Allied

1. Bliztkrieg

2. Aryan Race

3. Tiger II Tanks, U-Boats, Ju 87 Planes etc

Then as everyone everyone said, Comstar who had stood apart decided to no longer be neutral, represents The United States of America.

Just a thought based on the few posts I read in this topic.

[Dawnstealer]

Long supply lines and infighting - no matter how much superiority you have in technology, that's a death sentence for an invading army. Plus they got dragged into a guerrilla war, which was the IS domain. The IS had a lot more real-war experience as they had been fighting, heavily, since Kerensky grabbed his troops and set off for deep space.

Also axes and punching and hanging aluminum streamers in trees and being sneaky, tricky jerks. Yay Inner Sphere!

[Kyone Akashi]

CMD Storm, on 06 May 2013 - 01:00 PM, said:

Seriously I understand the IS played dirty/actual war, but the Clans were very dumb for realizing the first time there enemy didnt "Duel" Hey maybe we should stop sending our leaders in to 1 v 1 them and then have them get swarmed and killed.

Well, it can be difficult to let go of a tradition that has been such a major part of one's lifestyle. Besides, it's not as if everyone in the Clans always fought honorably, and nobody in the IS. There was an overlap that likely delayed the realisation.

"The refusal to submit by the citizenry of the Combine, and the steadfast leadership of Hohiro Kurita, the Kanrei's eldest son, led to the worst atrocity of the Clan Invasion. The Smoke Jaguars, wearied of putting down the guerilla attacks by the resistance fighters on Turtle Bay, resorted to orbital bombardment from their WarShips to annihilate the city of Edo. This brutality was more in keeping with the tactics that the DCMS could expect from Inner Sphere opponents and it galvanized the troops and the citizens. No more could the Smoke Jaguars, Nova Cats or Ghost Bears expect to face single combat and honorable conduct. The fight was now to the death, and there would be no surrender."
- Era Report: 3052

Oh, the irony.

This atrocity also led to even more internal problems for the invaders, as the other Clans condemned the bombardment, "an action not seen since the darkest days of the Succession Wars" as "cowardice or - worse - criminally stupid". Following the massacre, Clan Wolf declared it would no longer bid naval support during the invasion, and in an attempt to save face all other Clans followed suit.

Just one more of the many reasons for why the Clan Invasion ultimately failed.

Speaking of ER3052, this sourcebook goes into great detail regarding the invasion and the many factors that led to its failure - quite recommendable to anyone who is left with questions regarding this topic. For example, it reminds us that one of the greatest reasons for why the Clans were able to push into the Inner Sphere as far as they did was that, whilst the Successor States had many, many more 'Mechs, they were spread across thousands of worlds - and such a massive military force simply cannot be deployed in short time. Countless times before has real world history shown us how an overall numerically inferior foe can win again and again merely because they do not have to face the full might of their enemy:

"Despite these remarkable victories, the Inner Sphere was losing the war - badly. So long had we focused on one another as the enemy that our ability to meet an outside threat was sorely lacking. The Federated Commonwealth numbered 256 regiments of frontline BattleMechs in 3050, but only a fraction of these could be brought to bear, and the combined Falcon/Wolf front left too few resources to cover too many worlds. Had not a miracle given us room to breathe, to learn and to adapt, few historians disagree that the Clans would have fought their greatest battle not on Tukkayid, but on Terra."