72 replies to this topic

[Battlemaster56]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 February 2017 - 08:57 AM, said:

they really don't get too much focus..they get some secondary mention during operation Bulldog from the Twilight of the Clans (and a few parts of the last bit of the FedCom Civil War, like in Endgame), the rest is mostly reference from the Sourcebooks and TROs.

Ok so not much on them then.

[C E Dwyer]

Dakota1000, on 13 February 2017 - 04:25 AM, said:

Ah, I never had an xbox to play that.

I owned an Xbox I just hated the look of the mechs and chose to not buy it

[Bishop Steiner]

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 08:59 AM, said:

Phelan Kell/Wolf/Whatever is the epitome of "wasted potential for an interesting character" though.

Yeah, after the whole Blood of Kerensky trilogy, he went from plot armor Mary Sue to cardboard cutout of a supporting character. Really... Once Joanna toasted Natasha Kerensky, the rest of the storylines involving Clan Wolf went from MEH to outright So what? Ranna was never more than window dressing. Carew and Evantha could have been, but were largely forgotten. Vlad? Cookie Cutter Villain.

Now Joanna... that is a character who stayed pretty interesting throughout her entire arc. Never understood the slobbering over Aidan Pryde, either. A rather bland and flavorless offering, throughout his arc (Joanna, Horse and Marthe were always far more interesting)

[Battlemaster56]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 February 2017 - 09:05 AM, said:

Yeah, after the whole Blood of Kerensky trilogy, he went from plot armor Mary Sue to cardboard cutout of a supporting character. Really... Once Joanna toasted Natasha Kerensky, the rest of the storylines involving Clan Wolf went from MEH to outright So what? Ranna was never more than window dressing. Carew and Evantha could have been, but were largely forgotten. Vlad? Cookie Cutter Villain.

Now Joanna... that is a character who stayed pretty interesting throughout her entire arc. Never understood the slobbering over Aidan Pryde, either. A rather bland and flavorless offering, throughout his arc (Joanna, Horse and Marthe were always far more interesting)

Alright now I want to pick up the books about this and get opinion for myself.

[Bishop Steiner]

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 08:08 AM, said:

EDIT 2: Also, Davion/FedSuns are the most Mary Sue of Mary Sues and the most Plot Armored of ALL.

Not sure I follow that. They were written as the "good guys" initially..but even then, most of the writers beside Stackpole never shied away from the fact the Fox celebrated his wedding by launching a war that killed billions. T

hen, talking about Mary Sues, Theodore Kurita deflects the whole War of 3039 invasion through hubris and bluff..... T

hen Hanse Davion kicks it from too much exertion with the Child Bride he married, that bride gets assassinated by her own daughter...

then the crown prince blunders pretty much everything, leading to the FWL and CC invading and taking back all the gains his father had made, and the Lyran half seceding from the FedCom. Following that, he crusades about and gets more military success against the Clans, while unrest continues to simmer at home.. then he goes off to play soldier and "conquer the clans"... and his bad trope evil sister steals the whole realm.

Following that, we get a civil war that tears both realms asunder, and ends with the AFFS at about half it's former strength. Only thing saving it from further adventurism at that point... was, ironically,

.......the Jihad. The FedSuns get screwed about as hard as anyone during this time period...

Then chugs along, a shadow of it's former self, until Grey Monday

Where it falls prey first to Liao predation, then get's all but conquered by House Kurita.

For a Mary Sue... sure seems like the FedSus got nutpunched a whole hell of a lot, IMO.

[McMurl]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 February 2017 - 07:30 AM, said:

...the image you are requesting does not exist or is no longer available.

Well.... if a picture is worth a thousand words, I feel a little shortchanged.

Really? shows up for me...

[Bishop Steiner]

McMurl, on 13 February 2017 - 09:21 AM, said:

Really? shows up for me...

really really

checked on 3 browsers, and 3 different devices, and judging by the likes on my post, several other posters have found it likewise.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 13 February 2017 - 09:28 AM.

[Fobhopper]

As a fan of Clan Nova Cat and House Davion, I am not particularly excited for what happens timeline wise. Clan Nova Cat gets betrayed, tries to get their **** together and then gets betrayed yet again (kurita can burn in hell). And Davion pretty much gets their **** kicked in for the next few decades because nobody can seem to tell their ******* from the elbow and falls for literally every goddamn trap and ploy from every faction and pretty much nobody gives a **** about them ever again, the end. **** the jihad era and everything afterwards.

-signed by someone who is really ******* salty about what happens to Clan Nova Cat.

[Adridos]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 February 2017 - 07:06 AM, said:

First you have the old School Inner Sphere Grognards (of which I sort of am one), who hate anything post 3039, and even better it should be 3025 Eternally. So this represents the Apex of CheezeTech and MarySue Storytelling to them.

Wasn't the Dark Age actually invented to appeas the 3025 fans?
Take stuff from a developing pace into a status quo of lackluster technology, no real warfare beyond skirmishes, some mystery and so on. The problem being that to go back to the 3025 glory days, a lot of things had to taste the dirt.
"When you chop wood, splinters fly", as the saying goes.

[Fobhopper]

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 09:49 AM, said:

Clan DUDE WEED LMAO. (I kid, I kid. The Nova Cats are/were actually pretty ok, and Goliath Scorpion is just as bad about the drugs-and-mysticism schtick, IIRC)

You mean the only Clan that was actually interested in rebuilding the SDLF more than just lip service. You know, the clan that put its money where its mouth is when it came to rebuilding the glory days of a unified humanity, only to get betrayed by the clans and then betrayed by Kurita.

[MechaBattler]

Like Colonel Driftwood used to say, it's not murder if they're Davions.

[Bishop Steiner]

Adridos, on 13 February 2017 - 09:49 AM, said:

Wasn't the Dark Age actually invented to appeas the 3025 fans?
Take stuff from a developing pace into a status quo of lackluster technology, no real warfare beyond skirmishes, some mystery and so on. The problem being that to go back to the 3025 glory days, a lot of things had to taste the dirt.
"When you chop wood, splinters fly", as the saying goes.

yes, and no.

It was an attempt to regain some of the scale of 3025. By the 3050-60s era campaign, Mechs weren't rare, and regiment on regiment was pretty much the norm. It went from being like WW1 in Space where Tanks (mechs in this case) were rare and game changing (but not near as effective as the legends about them) to WWII or the Cold War where it was not near as "romantic".

But it was also done to give a simplified game in the hope of recapturing the ADHD masses who were playing Pokemon or Playstation instead of RPGs and TT games.

[Jay Leon Hart]

Kasumi Sumika, on 13 February 2017 - 03:57 AM, said:

Didn't Mechassault series are placed during Jihad?

Those games were my only source on WoB until I found Sarna via MWO. I hate WoB so much

[Adridos]

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 10:53 AM, said:

Even the Clans weren't that intellectually lazy.)

Clans and WoB are the same kind of stuff. They were just inspired by different stories,
Except Clans also suffer from a big case of BUY OUR TOYS! syndrome even worse than modern Wh40k.

[Bishop Steiner]

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 10:31 AM, said:

Which, of course, was doomed to failure...

I think the actual problem is with the decline of TT gaming in general (where the heart and soul of BT really resides) and revolves more around FLGSes being increasingly difficult to find these days, but even that leaves me with other questions.

EDIT: Increasingly easy access to increasingly inexpensive 3D printers might be the spark of a renaissance for TT in general and BT in particular, though. We'll see. Doesn't really address the social aspect that the decline of FLGSes exemplify, but...

So true.

How many brick and mortar comic shops have we all seen go away in the last decade alone? Used to be the haven us geeks would congregate to, drink pop, eat junkfood, read comics and game. Now there is so little profit in these fields anymore that they seem few and far between.

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 11:11 AM, said:

Clans are more complex than Wobbies, as plot devices anyway. Clanners bring in some interesting/uncomfortable subjects like eugenics and caste systems and actually handle them... somewhat maturely. Certainly not as good as it could have been, and yes the Clan invasion was POWERCREEP as ****, but there was at least some kind of reason for it.

Wobbies are really not much more than religious zealot stereotypes. Very uninteresting, at least to me.

Clans developed some depth over time, but they were just the Mongol Horde redressed, originally. Just like you can find a LOT of historical wars and such pretty liberally borrowed from to form the backbone of much of the Inner Sphere lore. Back in CB we had some good long in depth topics going about this.

[Chados]

A year of leading the 17th Rasalhague Regulars against the LCAF back in Multiplayer Online Battletech on the GEnie service pretty much soured me on all things Steiner....forever. That would have been ca. 3025, of course. Third Succession War. Of course, my old unit just HAD to be one of the ones that went with the ronin.

e-e

Of course, I spent the previous four months in Ben-jammin' as a lance leader with the 9th Benjamin Regulars, so after fighting them in the Draconis Marches I'm not a big AFFS fan either....

If MWO had House military units I'd probably still be Kurita. Came close to joining one of theirs in '15 but at the time my rig was a potato and I hadn't reached "mediocre" in my skill set yet. Couldn't pass the skill test. Oddly, ended up in a Marik outfit that decided to go Clan Wolf. Still not sure how I became a bondswoman after all that!

[William Pryde]

Bishop Steiner, on 13 February 2017 - 09:05 AM, said:

Yeah, after the whole Blood of Kerensky trilogy, he went from plot armor Mary Sue to cardboard cutout of a supporting character. Really... Once Joanna toasted Natasha Kerensky, the rest of the storylines involving Clan Wolf went from MEH to outright So what? Ranna was never more than window dressing. Carew and Evantha could have been, but were largely forgotten. Vlad? Cookie Cutter Villain.

Now Joanna... that is a character who stayed pretty interesting throughout her entire arc. Never understood the slobbering over Aidan Pryde, either. A rather bland and flavorless offering, throughout his arc (Joanna, Horse and Marthe were always far more interesting)

Fully agree with you there. I initially liked Aidan Pryde because he was a good guy in a group constantly painted as the bad guys (my brother always picked the good guys - the Rebel Alliance, House Davion, Clan Wolf, etc. and left the bad guys for me. Turns out I usually beat him ). Rereading the Jade Phoenix trilogy, though, I realized how bland his character is compared to everyone that surrounded him.

[Bishop Steiner]

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 01:12 PM, said:

I wouldn't call CJF "bad guys". They tend to be jerks, but they're too proud to stoop to outright villainy, I think.

IDK...I'd call invading someone to force your culture on them counts as villainy..... especially when you are arrogantly certain that you are Homosapiens Parabellum, and that it is your "divine right".

Honestly, I can think of at least one infamous military that was rather similar, in the early to mid 20th Century.......

[Kargush]

Give praise to Blake, it is proper to praise Him.

[Kargush]

So you have not accepted your Lord Blake into your heart?