25 replies to this topic

[Thundercles]

So, since urban combat seems to be all the rage these days, how do you think MWO will deal with Article V of the Ares Convention? Understandably, they're more of a guideline than a rule with all the gray area that this entails in this age, but you can only deem so many battles "extreme circumstances" before someone catches on. Additionally - will there/should there be penalties for excessive collateral damage in "serious" territorial matches?

Granted, until we see what sort of structure the game is going to take it would be tough to guess what sort of sanctions might be employed. The impression that I get is that it would operate a lot like some of the other planetary leagues... the game itself handles the combat, while details such as economics and geopolitical borders, unit strength and disposition, etc. would be handled separately... though this remains to be seen.

Either way, it was just something that crossed my mind, and I thought I'd see if anyone else had an opinion.

Ares Convention info: http://www.sarna.net...Ares_Convention

[CoffiNail]

Ares convention was tossed out the window with the first succession war

[Cattra Kell]

Simple!
1. Evacuation of city
2. line up your mechs in rows
3. engage
4. ????
5. profit!
6. John Wayne into the sunset

In all seriousness though I think you bring up a good point. The Ares Convention is serious business and I think something about it should be considered such as punishment collateral damage if you do too much of it. Would be cool to see it in game somehow but the practicality of it in a game setting could be questioned. Then again "Mechwarrior: Online" could be simulation pods and Battle-Cam recordings like they say for all the other games as far as canon goes.

Edited by Cattra Kell, 30 November 2011 - 12:59 PM.

[Dihm]

CoffiNail, on 30 November 2011 - 12:55 PM, said:

Ares convention was tossed out the window with the first succession war

This man knows his stuff.

Informal rules came about in the Third Succession War, where they sort of used some aspects of the conventions. They fought over industrial buildings but TRIED not to kill civilians or manufacturing.

Edited by Dihm, 30 November 2011 - 01:10 PM.

[Arctic Fox]

CoffiNail, on 30 November 2011 - 12:55 PM, said:

Ares convention was tossed out the window with the first succession war

The Ares Conventions were tossed out of the window as far back as the Reunification War. The only time they were in full recognition was in the latter part of the Age of War, and even then they were not obeyed all the time.

Besides that, the Ares Conventions don't outright forbid urban combat. Urban combat is allowed if a military objective lies within a city, and only attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure is outright forbidden.

[Haeso]

If I happen to get some civilian stuck on the foot of my 'Mech, I'm going to send his family the bill for what it cost me to have his remains scraped off. That's what I think of your Ares Convention.

Edited by Haeso, 30 November 2011 - 01:13 PM.

[Thundercles]

I presume you are referring to Ian Cameron's proclamation that the SLDF would not abide by the Conventions. Did this more or less spell the end of its legitimacy for the rest of the Sphere? I get the impression that whether officially supported or not, violation of the Conventions were still pretty heavily frowned upon, and could earn a Merc company some black marks.

[Rogal Dorn]

I think as long as you aren't blowing up apartment high-rises for giggles and grins then all's fair. After all, cities are natural fortifications for units on the defensive.

[Arctic Fox]

Thundercles, on 30 November 2011 - 01:20 PM, said:

I presume you are referring to Ian Cameron's proclamation that the SLDF would not abide by the Conventions. Did this more or less spell the end of its legitimacy for the rest of the Sphere? I get the impression that whether officially supported or not, violation of the Conventions were still pretty heavily frowned upon, and could earn a Merc company some black marks.

The Ares Conventions were largely ignored by all sides in every conflict from the Reunification War, before which they had been officially shelved by the Star League, to the Second Succession War. Some of the concepts came back into unofficial use during the Third Succession War, but this was less a return to the Conventions being recognized and more an attempt by the houses to limit the devastation of the First and Second Succession Wars, and as far as I know nobody was in any way constricted to operating under its rules (Though Mercenaries would obviously have to avoid things like attacking civilians if they want anyone to hire them).

Edited by Arctic Fox, 30 November 2011 - 01:40 PM.

[John Clavell]

the Ares Convention was indeed tossed out the window. However some units did respect and stand by the Ares Convention. Wolf's Dragoons was one of them.

[verybad]

If I am losing:
The Ares Conventions MUST be adhered to by the ruthless enemy. Unfortunatly as freedom fighters, our noble actions have resulted in a small number of innocents killed, but they gave their lives for a good cause!

If I am winning:
The terrorists that have infiltrated this area are killing innocents, in order to protect the innocents, we must destroy the city. The innocents gave their lives for a good cause!

[Thundercles]

Fair enough, all around. I was just wondering what sort of repercussions violations of the tenets of the Convention would have in 3048. I realize that there aren't going to be any IS police coming by to cuff me for violating any of them in a time of war. I wondered if there would be any sort of hit to a unit's reputation for violating any of the 'rules' these days, and whether it would simply be a fluff thing, or if there were any examples where it could cause operational effects. (Funding issues, refusal of harbor, etc.)

If nothing else, this has helped me put together a better perception of how long the Conventions lasted, and how seriously they were taken.

[Threat Doc]

Armageddon Unlimited WILL do our best to adhere to the tenets of the Ares Conventions and the proper role of honor in our lives.

[Alistair Steiner]

Mmm, I like this. Yeah, every time I saw "focus on urban combat," a little voice in the back of my head whispered, "But what about the Ares Convention?" Glad to see someone else bringing this up. I'd like for it to be a factor, as well as full-/semi-/non-evacuated cities playing a role in it. If there's warning, the civilians can get out, thus reducing collateral damage, but the garrison has time to set up. A warning as you land means less deaths, but the roadways may be crowded (crunch). Otherwise, you hit with a surprise attack, resulting in less-ready garrison troops, but significantly higher deaths. So, it's all grey-and-grey morality, but you can shift the sliding scale one way or the other, if there's any sort of honor/infamy implemented. Heck, the guys who laugh maniacally as they knock over buildings full of people just to complete an objective (or just for the heck of it) would still have people hiring them. Some more shady groups (or most Capellan leadership) would probably prefer a group that uses terror as a tactic.

tl;dr: I would try to abide by it, and I think it should be implemented, but not as a penalty. Simply as a way of playing, morality-wise.

[Dayuhan]

This is an excerpt from the Battletech Sourcebook Mercenaries Handbook 3055 regarding the Ares Conventions for those interested in where this information is coming from:

Quote

In 2112 a horrific battle in the Tintavel system on the Capellan/Free Worlds border provided the catalyst for the boldest attempt ever to limit the horrors of war - the so-called Ares Conventions. A study commissioned by the Capellan government shortly after the battle revealed the gruesome reality that 78 percent of all the casualties documented during the fighting were civilians. The report so appalled Capellan Chancellor Aleisha Liao that she called the leaders of occupied space to a summit on the world of Ares.

. . . . { Several paragraphs skipped }

Largely overlooked, ignored, or conveniently forgotten during the fury of the First and Second Succession Wars, the Ares Conventions seemed, for a while at least, to have lost any true meaning. Although not the first overt violation of the conventions, the execution of more than 52 million civilian inhabitants of Kentares IV by DCMS was certainly the most horrible display of contempt for human life witnessed amidst the general savagery. The Kentares massacre exposed the greatest weakness of the Ares Conventions: that any leader, at any time, could declare them suspended. Rather than band together to crush the armies of such a violator, other states simply suspended the Conventions in turn.

- Conventions of War, p. 7-8.

Honors of War

Quote

Eventually the prospect of losing vital technologies and the continuing human cost of war led the Successor States to develop a loose set of rules of warfare during subsequent centuries. Commonly referred to as the honors of war, they constituted a code of conduct that binds all who call themselves warriors. These honors do not exist on paper, or in any other physical record. They arose out of a rarely acknowledged understanding among fighting forces that unlimited warfare could eventually lead to a technological dark age or even the end of humanity. Every achievement made by any Successor State would be swept away, all human accomplishments obliterated by human folly.

The honors, based on the original Ares Conventions, apply these original rules as closely as possible in all situations.

- Conventions of War, p.8.

Edited by Dayuhan, 30 November 2011 - 04:36 PM.

[Firefly]

You can adhere to the Ares Convention and that's all fine and dandy, but when you encounter opponents who do not adhere to the Ares Convention and will win at any cost, don't complain. At the end of the day, this is a video game.

[VEDRFOLNIR]

While the Ares Conventions were by and large ignored (as others have posted), a modified version of the Conventions came back in force as the Successor States lost so much ability to produce the advanced technology that their whole society depended on.

For example, attacking HPG stations was a major no-no... any Successor State that does so will immediately find themselves under a Comstar Interdiction, where EVERY HPG station in the realm shuts down and no further interstellar communications are possible (as happened to the Federated Suns in the 4th Succession War).

Another example would be orbital shipyards - there are so few left that under no circumstances would an attacker destroy one. The same prohibition extends to JumpShips - because there are so few locations capable of building them, JumpShips are considered inviolate.

As for city combat - well, it seems that the dictum to 'be careful' really only applies if a city has high-technology production facilities. Otherwise... sucks to be them!

[Kargush]

Rules no longer in effect and thrown out the window are no longer rules.

[Rhinehart]

Actually in the books a great many of the rules of the Ares Conventions had come to be accepted by many sides of the conflicts as essential. Violation of these concepts could and did often result in units being struck from the rolls of House Armies and considered outlaws and sometimes in outright Disposession.

This is illustrated among other places in the Gray Death Legion Novel The Price of Glory. This mercenary group was framed for the destruction of a city of five million inhabitants, an act so utterly abhorrent, even in or perhaps especially because of their history of warfare that they were black listed by every nation in the Inner Sphere. Ironically it was Comstar, the supposed defender of civilization using a Free Worlds League General as a puppet to conceal the presence of a Star League Memory Core on the planet Helm, which had just been granted to the Legion as a landhold for service to the Free Worlds League. The Gray Death Legion exposed the plot recovered the Core and began disseminating it throughout the Inner Sphere,leading to a quiet rennaisance in several areas of military and civillian technology. This is the source of many Star League era Mechs and systems that came back into production in the Inner Sphere around the time of the Clan Invasion. This also led to a higher level of distrust of Comstar among many nations of the Inner Sphere, most notably the Federated Suns and the Lyran Commonwealth, which eventually led to their circumventing a Comstar interdiction by using rediscovered fax machine technolgy to coordinate strikes against the Draconis Combine and others.

While the Ares conventions may not have technically been in force, canon makes it clear that many average citizens, soldiers and more at least a few Inner Sphere leaders regarded at least some of the provisions as inviolate. In the Novel Day of Heroes a veteran Aerospace pilot in the forces of the Free Skye Rebellion hesitates to attack the jumpship Invidious because this is a violation of the Ares Convention. This hesitation causes several of his fighters to be destroyed when the jumpship enters hyperspace while they are in proximity to it.

In fact after Clan Smoke Jaguar destroyed the city of Edo on Turtle Bay they were reviled by a great many an the inner sphere for violating the Ares conventions, though it was often mistakenly believed that they had used atomics rather than naval bombardment. (This is discussed by Thomas Marik and Sir Paul Masters in the book Ideal War.)

So it can be seen that while the Ares conventions may not have been strictly in force, the idea of them was still one that mattered to a great many in the inner sphere.

[Rhinehart]

(In Character)For myself as a Mechwarrior I have to say that I would and will not ever seek to violate the Ares conventions by attacking civillain targets, including populated cities. If such a mission is offered to me I will decline it, unles it can be demonstrated that failing to act would result in potentailly even a greater loss of civillian life.(I.E. a madman in a city must be stopped before he can set off a nuke, but I wouldn't think battlemechs would be the optimum unit for that.)

Edited by Rhinehart, 01 December 2011 - 03:41 PM.