359 replies to this topic

[Starne]

Thorn Hallis, on 08 July 2012 - 11:34 AM, said:

This I doubt. Romano Liao wouldn't sent anything (maybe some tires). And Thomas Marik...even as a former Comstar acolyte, I think he would know that sending untried troops against the Clans would be complete suicide. And he would have to convince the FWL parliament to help a foreign power, one that crippled the league during the 2nd Succession War. I doubt Oriente and the Border Protectorate would have been happy to see their troops helping Comstar.

That may be, but unless Romano Liao was even more of a wack-job than I though, she'd be forced to involved the Confederation once the Clans hit Terra. That would put Clan forces within striking distance of Cappie space, and I doubt it would be long before the Clanners would be going for the "Easy Targets" presented by the Cappies in an attempt to shore up their positions in and around Terra. If Romano Liao still refused to act while the Clans threatened the Confederation, she'd be removed. Cappies are nothing if not fervently patriotic.

FWL: Same deal really. If the Falcons were really approaching the Isle of Skye as has been suggested, that puts them within spitting distance of the outer edges of the FWL. If the Falcons pushed far enough, I have little doubt the worlds along the FWL borders would've gotten spooked and started demanding action. If Thomas Marik was on the "I Hate the Clanners" bandwagon, he could've made the case that fighting the Clanners in FedCom space is better than fighting the Clanners in FWL space. Collateral Damage is easier to stomach if it's not your homes and businesses being blown up.

The point I'm trying to make is that if the Clanners continued their drive "South", the FWL and the Cappies would've been forced to get into the fight.

I'm not even going to attempt to argue with Jaroth Winson at this point. His 'arguement' consists of "Iron Womb! Sibkos! Assembly Line! Spartans!" .

I'm not arguing that the average Clan Mechwarrior is better skilled than the average IS Mechwarrior. What I'm aruging is that those Trashborn don't fall out of the Iron Womb and into the cockpit of a Mech. It takes years for them to even "Test into" the Warrior Caste, and a lot of them wash out and either die or get enslaved as a member of the "Lower Castes". He's also blantantly ignoring the fact that there are literally BILLIONS of populating each of the Successor States, and unlike the Clans, the Successor States have no qualms about drafting anyone that can wear a uniform. For every Spheroid solider or Mechwarrior killed, there are literally thousands of replacements. As Arctic Fox said above, the Comguards, one of the smallest military forces in the Inner Sphere had more men(and women) in it's infantry-arm than the total head-count for all the Toumans combined.

Let's not forget production, all those soldiers need equipment, and the IS has more factories, and they're right in the proverbial backyard. It's like that anecdotal story about ammunition coming out of that Soviet arms factory and literally going straight to the soldiers who are fighting right outside. It wasn't until very late in the Invasion that the Clans started investing in setting up production infrastructure in the Inner Sphere, prior to that, all of their equipment needed to be produced in, and shipped from, the Clan homeworlds. That process would take weeks. Say a week or two to produce the Mech, a day or two to get it loaded into a dropship and into orbit, and then another day or two to get that dropship on a jumpship and on it's way, and then there's the weeks-long voyage to the Inner Sphere. And even then, it's a few days or even a few weeks before the Mech makes it from the supply depot to the front-lines.

Let me just say it one last time:

For any given Successor State, you have hundreds of planets, and tens of billions of people supporting hundreds of thousands, if not millions of soldiers, hundreds, if not thousands of Mechs, and thousands of vehicles and Aerospace assets.

For all the Clans combined, you have at most a couple billion people(I'd wager the total Clan population is somewhere around two billion, but that's just an educated guess) supporting a few hundred thousand troops in total.

[Frosty2181]

Sheer numbers, tho the inner sphere mechs were less advanced there were much more of them, clans didnt have as many mechs on the field. plus the guerilla tactics of inner sphere worked over the honor style of fighting the clans portrayed (letting their opponents know they were coming, no retreat etc.) kinda like america over great britain in the revolutionary war.

[Hunson Abadeer]

Jaroth Winson, on 08 July 2012 - 11:59 AM, said:

To your first point. It is a known fact that not all of the trueborns created from the iron wombs become warriors & maybe even less so after the Blooding but the fact is that, whatever number is final is worth individually more than their IS counterparts & they are still produced together in an assembly line fashion which is STILL faster than the IS.

To your second point, the fact REMAINS, if the same scenario had occurred between say the Draconis Combine & the Federated Commonwealth, they would never be able to replenish troops as fast as the Clans. The iron wombs tips the scales in favor of the Clans. Also Clans fighting Clans would be fought on equal ground with the same level of tech & in the rare case of two Clans actively trying to decimate each other (like the Refusal War) it would indeed put a strain on both Clans to refill the ranks of their respective toumans. Nobody is denying that. It is simply the fact that how the Clans do things in terms of filling up their fighting forces, is a LOT more expedient.

Invading Clans says specifically that only 4-5 out of every 20 make it to the Blooding. It does not give the numbers for how many people fail to progress through the Trial, but failure means not making it into the warrior caste. The same book also says that the Trial of Bloodright "often leave[s] the losing candidate[s] wounded or dead," so warriors are needlessly lost at other points in their careers (Ibid., 149). Also, the eugenics program potentially produces replacements faster in the long-term because it removes the need for intercourse, but it still produces children that are then raised. Classic BattleTech RPG says that Clan children are qualified warriors before what the Inner Sphere considers adulthood rather than adolescence, which I read to mean that they are considered ready to be warriors when they are teenagers.

Warriors of Kerensky states that there are 110,000 warriors out of a total population of 1.15 billion in 3062 (pp. 37). The same book says that the Clans have averaged a 2.35% population growth rate for two and half centuries (Ibid.), which means there were only ~870 million Clanners in 3050.

And I disagree with the notion that the Clans could inherently recover better. First, the Inner Sphere has a much larger population, so the Great Houses could branch out to find and train warriors to maintain their numbers advantage. Second, Crusader Clans tells us that Clan Wolf was having to rebuild by drafting people from the lower castes that had originally washed out of the warrior program. In my mind, that speaks to the fact that the eugenics program cannot quickly replace drastic losses, and drastic losses are drastic regardless of whether they are inflicted by another Clan or one of the Great Houses.

Edited by Hunson Abadeer, 08 July 2012 - 02:49 PM.

[Jaroth Corbett]

Thanks for the page numbers. Will check after I get a shower & something to eat. Glad to meet you Hunson. You are one the few IS people I can have an actual debate with. Thanks for the stats. Will get back to you shortly.

[Arctic Fox]

Jaroth Winson, on 08 July 2012 - 02:02 PM, said:

What I mean is they can control the expansion of their population in general which of course would have a percentage of warriors. They can basically simply order another batch & another & another because the wombs are artificial.

And the Inner Sphere can just call up another draft from its practically endless supply of manpower. Even if Iron Wombs give you the ability to replenish more losses on you would otherwise, the disparity in population between the Inner Sphere and the Clan Homeworlds is way too great for it to matter.

Jaroth Winson, on 08 July 2012 - 02:02 PM, said:

Not saying that at all, as we know the military is a small percentage of the population but their training makes up for it as the universe attests to.

Assuming the exact same precentage of the population serving in the military, each Clan warrior will have to be 'worth' at least a thousand Inner Sphere troops for any sort of parity in that regard. Assuming the Inner Sphere uses only infantry units, the most manpower-wasteful formations (and it obviously doesn't), that would mean each Clanner would have to be able to deal with at least an entire regiment all by himself.

Jaroth Winson, on 08 July 2012 - 02:02 PM, said:

This has nothing to do with your claim about ComStar deployments on Tukayyid outnumbered all the Clans toumans. That is what I want stats for. Also what page of Warriors of Keresnky are you referring to?

I gave you the number for the total size of the Clan warrior caste and the estimated number of part of ComStar's forces on Tukayyid based on their known organization. Unless ComStar's non-infantry forces somehow have negative unit strengths, this shows exactly what I was comparing. What more do you want?

[CaveMan]

Given a typical Cluster with about 50 Points worth of units, and a typical Galaxy containing about 6 Clusters, then assuming an average 6 active, front-line Galaxies per invading Clan (Jags had more, Nova Cats had less), the 7 invading Clans together could be assumed to field a combined 12,600 Points of troops (with some wiggle room for the batchall process and exact numbers for particular clusters). Since MechWarriors are the most equal of the three equal branches of the Clan military, we can assume about half those troops are 'Mech assets and the remainder are split roughly evenly between Elementals and AeroSpace assets.

So that gives the Operation Revival force about 6000 'Mechs in the field and about 15,000 Elementals.

In 3025, the IS had about 5000 operational Stingers, a comparable number of Wasps, 2000 Locusts, several thousand Archers, hundreds of Banshees, and similar numbers of a dozen or so other common 'Mech designs, based on the numbers given in the old TROs. This is ignoring post-3025 designs and new production of old machines. So one could thus ballpark the numbers of 'Mechs in the two Successor States affected by the Invasion at around 10,000 pre-3025 machines alone. I would guess you could increase those numbers by 50% to account for post-3025 production.

Then there is armor, which vastly outnumbers 'Mech assets in the Inner Sphere, and the vast, vast numbers of infantry that could be conscripted in a relatively short time period.

Even with a 4:1 advantage to the Clans, the IS should have been able to just zerg them into submission. Writers made the Clans too small.

[Jaroth Corbett]

Arctic Fox, on 08 July 2012 - 03:07 PM, said:

I gave you the number for the total size of the Clan warrior caste and the estimated number of part of ComStar's forces on Tukayyid based on their known organization. Unless ComStar's non-infantry forces somehow have negative unit strengths, this shows exactly what I was comparing. What more do you want?

Well you need to go read over whatever you are looking at because according to the Tukayyid Sourcebook, 12 armies of the Comguards fought 25 Galaxies of Clan troops.

According to the same sourcebook, a ComGuard Army is 1,296 individual units. An Army is listed as type V (the highest type) & the notes state that any ComGuard unit III or higher is a combined-arms unit, consisting of mechs,armored vehicles, fighters & infantry.

12x1,296 = 15552

Since there were Elementals in Tukayyid, I will not use the all mech trinary formation but Supernovas which are a mix of Mechs & Elementals.

1 Star = 5 mechs or 5 points of Elementals

1 Nova = 1 Star of Mechs + 1 Star of Elementals

1 Supernova = 2 or 3 Novas

1 Cluster = 3 to 5 Binaries, Trinaries or Supernovas

1 Galaxy = 3 to 5 Clusters

So taking that into account, 10 (Nova) x3 = 30 (Supernova) x5=150 (Cluster) x5 (Galaxy) = 750

25x750 = 18,750 Of course bidding would take this down, but still at the onset, there is a difference of at least 2000 because we have of course, excluded Clan fighters.

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 08 July 2012 - 03:44 PM.

[Dakkaface]

I suppose it's all been answered and we've moved on to other topics, but hey, my two cents.

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.

And the Clans won everry single one of their early fights. Once reports of what was going on started filtering back, and the IS got a better picture of who these newcomers are and how they fought, that's when the IS started to be able to mount a real defense.

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

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

5 superior troops cannot survive against 20 veterans with slightly less ability. Multiply this a thousand fold and you have the war in general. On top of that, Clans were bidding lower and lower numbers to see who took a planet, so IS forces always only had to face the bare minimum of Clan warriors.

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

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

Look at WWII - German tanks were amazing - some of the best armored and armed tanks on the battlefield. Panthers and Tigers were all enormously more effective than the Sherman - the US lost 11 Shermans to every Tiger they managed to take down. But there was allways that 12th Sherman to take the killshot. The IS just had more mechs, more conventional infantry, more vehicles, more guns, and a bigger production base - they could afford to lose more than the Clans, and they did so.

In addition to what was already said - the Clan way of warefare is to pick a world/city/resource they want, and then issue a bid fromt he defender and from the attacker. They wager the world/city/resource on the battle, and when the battle occurs, the two forces pair off and fight honor duels in the open field in tandem with the rest of the forces. The loser accepts the loss and gives up the territory. It's not bloodless, but it's a clean, safe way of warfare that minimizes damage to resources and civilians. Artillery isn't even used, as it's seen as indiscriminant and unsporting

The IS doesn't play like that. Clans competed to see who would get IS worlds, and issued lower and lower bids to see who could take an IS world with the fewest troops. So the clans show up, and the IS defenders focus-fire on a mech or two with ALL thier forces - artillery included. They'd drop the Clanners because the Clans were still half expecting to play by the rules, and the IS was doing total warfare - using every weapon available, setting up ambushes, attacking industrial bases and supply lines, and generally being good soldiers and in the Clan view, completely dishonorable as warriors.

And then the Clans revealed they wanted to take Terra, and Comstar, previously helping them, turned thier back as well, and pulled out a bunch of mothballed Star League era mechs to have a throwdown. The Clans showed up, expected the IS to finally fight their way, and roll over them with superior skill and tech, and were surprised by tech which almost matched theirs and pilots that knew te local terrain and used it to their great advantage - using the swamps to hit and fade, and negate the Clan's range and heat-dissipation advantages.

After this, Clan Nova Cat had watched the Jaguars behave ever mroe agressively and watched a lot of stupid moves by the Clans who had ignored their advice. They basically went turncoat and let the IS issue absolutely stupid bids for a whole bunch of worlds in an offensive against the Jaguars. They let the IS reclaim worlds on things like drinking contests, sports, shooting contests, video games, and a freaking coin flip, in order to let the IS not only eliminate Smoke Jaguar, but to have an excuse to say 'Hey these IS warriors totally defeated us, we're bondsmen now and we're fighting on thier team.' When the big throwdown on Strana Mechty happened, Nova Cat was fighting on the side of the IS.

[CaveMan]

Jaroth Winson, on 08 July 2012 - 03:43 PM, said:

So taking that into account, 10 (Nova) x3 = 30 (Supernova) x5=150 (Cluster) x5 (Galaxy) = 750

25x750 = 18,750 Of course bidding would take this down, but still at the onset, there is a difference of at least 2000 because we have of course, excluded Clan fighters.

You're assuming that every Cluster is made of Supernova Trinaries. This isn't even close to the case. You've effectively added 25 Galaxies of Elementals to the 25 Galaxies of 'Mechs. That's not how it works.

The Nova is a rare formation in most Clans, the Supernova doubly so. Gigantic Clusters like that are the exception, not the rule. A typical Clan Cluster looks more like 3 Trinaries or 5 Binaries, with a couple of the Stars being Novas, and the assets are mixed 'Mechs and Elementals on the Star level, with an AeroSpace Star attached on the Cluster level (except in the Cloud Cobras and Snow Ravens, who deploy substantially more fighters as part of their formations).

[Jaroth Corbett]

I was working with the knowledge that there were Elementals in play. The fact is they were & remember I had not taken into account the Clan fighters. If you like, I can look at each Clan in detail but it would take some time. Overrall though my point stands.

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 08 July 2012 - 04:19 PM.

[Arctic Fox]

Jaroth Winson, on 08 July 2012 - 03:43 PM, said:

Well you need to go read over whatever you are looking at because according to the Tukayyid Sourcebook, 12 armies of the Comguards fought 25 Galaxies of Clan troops.

According to the same sourcebook, a ComGuard Army is 1,296 individual units. An Army is listed as type V (the highest type) & the notes state that any ComGuard unit III or higher is a combined-arms unit, consisting of mechs,armored vehicles, fighters & infantry.

12x1,296 = 15552

I think you're confusing 'units' with 'troops'. I was comparing the manpower employed on both sides, not the amount of combat units. Anyway, I'll show you how I got to those numbers:

Each ComStar Army (Level V) is composed of 6 Divisions (Level IV), each Division is composed of 216 Level Is (Yeah, these are organized into Demi-Companies (Level II) and Battalions (Level III), but those don't matter at the moment) and has a Greek letter designation to indicate the ratio of 'Mechs and conventional units it is made up of. Using the ComGuards deployment table in 20 Years Update and the organization table in Field Manual: ComStar (and assuming I haven't made a mistake in counting somewhere), ComStar's forces at Tukayyid contained the following Level Is:

BattleMechs - 6,154
AeroSpace Fighters - 2,808
Combat Vehicles - 2,196
Infantry - 4,394

Total - 15,552 Level Is

The total number of units matches what you said, but a Level I is either a single 'Mech, vehicle, AeroSpace Fighter or an infantry Platoon of 28 men, not a single man. Assuming an average crew of 2 for Combat Vehicles, ComStar would have (around) the following amount of troops:

MechWarriors - 6,154
Pilots - 2,808
Vehicle Crewmen - 4,392
Infantry - 123,032

Total - 136,386 men

(Note that this doesn't include crews of DropShips, JumpShips or other such elements, even though they are probably deployed at the Division level.)

Assuming the Clan warrior caste in 3052 is the same size as in 3062 and made up of 110,500 men, ComStar's forces on Tukayyid clearly outnumber it in manpower. Which is exactly what I was saying.

Edited by Arctic Fox, 08 July 2012 - 04:26 PM.

[Jaroth Corbett]

I will have to go through the Tukayyid sourcebook as well as others to further analyze your stats. Thank you for the further explanation. Will get back to you.

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 08 July 2012 - 05:01 PM.

[Hunson Abadeer]

Front-line units from Invading Clans (1994):

Clan Steel Viper ... 705 OmniMechs
Clan Ghost Bear ... 675 OmniMechs
Clan Smoke Jaguar ... 586 OmniMechs

I do not feel like trying to add up the other Clans right now, but those three give you an idea.

[Jaroth Corbett]

Thanks I will check out the Invading Clans sourcebook as well. Give me some time to crunch the numbers.

[Hunson Abadeer]

Clan Jade Falcon ... 952 'Mechs (Jade Falcon Sourcebook)
Clan Wolf ... 807 'Mechs (Wolf Clan Sourcebook)
Clan Nova Cat ... 560 'Mechs (Invading Clans)

Edit: Invading Clans gives the impression that the listed units are post-Tukayyid, but the Wolf Clan Sourcebook specifically states that the units list is from just prior to Tukayyid.

Edited by Hunson Abadeer, 08 July 2012 - 06:19 PM.

[XV88 Broadside]

From what I know of the lore the biggest thing that stopped the clan invasion was their own system of combat (which they hammer into the ground in just about any book that involves "The way of the Clans")

The clans had tech. Glorious, glorious sexy tech. Superior in every way to the IS hardware by virtue of not pounding themselves into the stone age (I feel an "as often" is appropriate here)

As part of the Clan war doctorine, they tended to plan to prevent losses early on. It was part of their whole honor thing. In short, anybody could win with superior forces, skilled leaders could win with equal forces, and superior commanders could win with weaker forces. The Clan method of conflict forced commanders to be superior by using the bidding process. Commanders would bid down their existing forces until they had what they felt to be the bare minimum necessary in order to achieve the objective. They allowed reserves in the form of the commander's previous bids, although in order to use them, the commander would have to give up some of their spoils to the commander who lost the bidding.

The clan's superior tech won out in the early days of the invasion, until the IS figured out how the clans were setting up the fights. The Draconis Combine handed out one of the first major defeats to the Clans (Either the Jags or the Cats, I forget which) on Wolcott by horribly abusing the Clans own bidding system.

Consider also that only about a third of the Clans were commited to the invasion. If they could have gotten everybody into the mix, things could have turned out drastically different.

Tukkayd also saved the IS's bacon. The truce gave the IS time to put together a coalition force to put the boots to the Clans, which did pretty much what it was upposed to (although it also cost Vic his realm)

[Jaroth Corbett]

XV88 Broadside, on 08 July 2012 - 06:52 PM, said:

Consider also that only about a third of the Clans were commited to the invasion. If they could have gotten everybody into the mix, things could have turned out drastically different.

My point exactly. It should have been another Klondike.

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 08 July 2012 - 07:04 PM.

[Hunson Abadeer]

Taking and holding ~2,000 planets is not the same thing as subduing 5 worlds. As already said, the Clans in their entirety only had 110,000 warriors of all sorts in 3062 (Warriors of Kerensky). If the warriors were in proportion to the broader population in 3050 (backtracking using the numbers from Warriors of Kerensky), we are talking only 80,000-85,000. If we give some leeway for losses not having been recovered by 3062, I think you are still only looking at maybe 85,000-90,000. That means the Clans had perhaps 45 warriors to hold each planet in the Inner Sphere. That just does not seem realistic in the slightest considering that includes elementals and pilots.

And that is assuming that the Clans could have taken all of the worlds to begin with, which I really doubt.

[XV88 Broadside]

Hunson Abadeer, on 08 July 2012 - 07:58 PM, said:

Taking and holding ~2,000 planets is not the same thing as subduing 5 worlds.

And that is assuming that the Clans could have taken all of the worlds to begin with, which I really doubt.

That's a fair assessment, but consider the Clan perspective. The Clans didn't plan on subduing the entire Inner Sphere to start with. The Clans showed up to blitz Terra in order to prove who was the bestest best of the best. I think once the IlClan had been determined, then conquest/subjugation of the IS could take place, although I'm pretty sure the Clans rolled in thinking that they would rule the IS if they held Terra.

Clearly, that did not work out for them

Those numbers seem awfully low, however. It seems like each House army would number in the millions as a combined arms force, and I would expect the combined Clans to have the capacity to field at least as many as a single House army. Maybe the sourcebook dropped a couple zeros....

[Hunson Abadeer]

XV88 Broadside, on 09 July 2012 - 12:01 AM, said:

That's a fair assessment, but consider the Clan perspective. The Clans didn't plan on subduing the entire Inner Sphere to start with. The Clans showed up to blitz Terra in order to prove who was the bestest best of the best. I think once the IlClan had been determined, then conquest/subjugation of the IS could take place, although I'm pretty sure the Clans rolled in thinking that they would rule the IS if they held Terra.

Clearly, that did not work out for them

Those numbers seem awfully low, however. It seems like each House army would number in the millions as a combined arms force, and I would expect the combined Clans to have the capacity to field at least as many as a single House army. Maybe the sourcebook dropped a couple zeros....

I don't really think that number is low. Invading Clans showed each of the invading Clans with <1,000 'Mechs as did the Wolf Clan Sourcebook and Jade Falcon Sourcebook. Adding aerospace pilots and Elementals still translates into a pretty small military overall.