72 replies to this topic

[Bishop Steiner]

Kargush, on 13 February 2017 - 01:57 PM, said:

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

Blake is a deceiver, sent to mislead people from the path of Urbielightenment.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Been at work today and finally got back and read the replies. I'm more interested in the Jihad than before now. I enjoy seeing mass shake ups in series. Having a constant side vs side (IS vs Clan for example) or just staying in one time period (3025 forever) gets very boring to me. I like seeing a constant movement ahead and large changes. This may also have something to do with me not being against powercreep, as I see it as keeping the game semi fresh by at least adding an arms race so you're fighting the same enemy but at least the explosions are prettier each time.

[Carl Vickers]

Wasnt the Jihad thing basically a universe reset for BT?

Something like. oh crap, its gone too far, clans suck and screwed everything up so lets nuke and reset the whole thing.

[Adridos]

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 01:51 PM, said:

(I can already guess at the types of people who would willingly go Blakist, and they're the kind of people I will probably enjoy turning into molten slag.)

I mean, it's obvious. Everyone digs those cool robots these guys have.
Really though, Celestials are pretty much up there with MW4 originals like Uziel as far as design goes and don't really need a bucket-full of makeup by Alex to look presentable today.

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 03:59 PM, said:

I think that's what the Dark Age was intended to be.

Dark Age is the end result while Jihad is the stepping stone. The era was only fleshed out retroactively. I.e. the (literal) nuking Carl mentions.

Edited by Adridos, 13 February 2017 - 04:03 PM.

[a gaijin]

I hate the Jihad era for exactly same reasons the others before me have posted.

Basically the BattleTech story started going downhill after the Twilight of the Clans series. I got through the FedCom Civil war novels as well. They really should have just stopped at Endgame.
Everything after (storylines and "plots") was so crappy I lost interest in the BattleTech novels entirely. After spending so much time immersed in it you can't really imagine the disappointment.
Battletech and MechWarrior is really a story that needs to go from 3005 until 3067, ending there with "an uneasy but hopeful peace."
Everything after is just poop.

I hope all future MW games either center on the 4th Succession War, The Clan War of Refusal between Wolf and the Jade Falcons, or if single player, the Clan Invasion.
I say "single player" for the Clan Invasion because after experiencing this, I don't think MW multiplayer games with two different tech bases is a good idea at all.
It gets frakked up in the dog and pony show called "game balance" which in the end pleases no one.

[Spheroid]

The idea that the Inner Sphere's greatest minds would help a bunch of religious nutcases is beyond the breaking point of plausibility.

Intelligentsia are generally more ethical and law abiding than society at large. What would WoB offer techheads? Unproven Wobbie c-bills? I guess they could higher nothing but sociopaths, but can effective research teams be composed of nothing save those personality types? What does the collaborative process look like? Seems like you are limiting your prospective workers to a vastly unfavorable ratio against that of your future opponents.

Normal Comstar has existed for 300 years, the great houses the better part of a millennia . Why would one leave family friends and a pension at NAIS to go work for the wobbies? What would the job interview even look like? Large organization seeks expert in banned weapons of mass destruction? How would keep the intended work secret?

Assuming people are allowed to enter and leave work contracts freely I don't see how they would have filled the quota. It is not similar to authoritarian governments of the 20th century the citizens lived in or were enveloped by the oppressive regieme, WoB by necessity had to recruit from non-members.

Also WoB went from nothing to superpower in ten years. How? Moving people takes time. Each instellar jump takes weeks or months from point A to B. Great distances may require multiple jumps. However WoB relocated not once but twice in a short period of time. First to Gibson in the FWL and secondly to Terra in 3057.

The schism from Comstar was not orderly as when companies break up but a floodgate of emigrants. How did WoB insure that the correct ratio of personal left to staff the new organization? Maybe the accountants were not as zealous as mechwarriors, perhaps a surplus of techs existed which exceeded the available of supply of mechs. Again since the divorce was unplanned the necessary inefficiency of the organizational structure would delay viability for quite some time.

Also orgaizations cannot form overnight do to simple interia of human interactions, as social networks and managerial pecking order takes time to sort out. Nothing in the real world becomes an instution under ten years, it requires orgaztional expertise of varying lengths of employment. A situation again that would have been problematic given unplanned creation of WoB and its necessary size required to declare war on every major and minor power in known space.

Edited by Spheroid, 13 February 2017 - 06:14 PM.

[Carl Vickers]

Are you comparing a Sci-fi novel to what happens in real life, bravo.

[Spheroid]

@Carl Vickers: I fail to see a problem with making Aristotelian critiques of plot. Those Greek plays were fiction as well.

Edited by Spheroid, 13 February 2017 - 06:01 PM.

[Carl Vickers]

Spheroid, on 13 February 2017 - 06:00 PM, said:

@Carl Vickers: I fail to see a problem with making Aristotelian critiques of plot. Those Greek plays were fiction as well.

Its called fiction for a reason.

[JasonIIC]

The Jihad era and Dark Age were just a crappy Deus Ex Machina device because FASA and the writers realized they'd taken halfway decent characters and factions and made them completely one dimensional. You always knew what Victor, Sun Tzu, Katherine and all the others were going to do. It's the real downfall of the universe, really. There were some cool things added retroactively (The Ghost Bears rampage through Kurita space to get to WoB was cool), but really it was a disappointment all around.

The real thing that bothered me was the complete downgrade in tech and scope when you got to the dark age. I get that they wanted to get to the 3025 roots, but the idea that some crazy (and up to that point, unknown) splinter religious group could get their hands on enough nukes to bomb the entire UNIVERSE back 200 years is stupid. Like Energy Draw stupid.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

theJason, on 13 February 2017 - 08:04 PM, said:

The Jihad era and Dark Age were just a crappy Deus Ex Machina device because FASA and the writers realized they'd taken halfway decent characters and factions and made them completely one dimensional. You always knew what Victor, Sun Tzu, Katherine and all the others were going to do. It's the real downfall of the universe, really. There were some cool things added retroactively (The Ghost Bears rampage through Kurita space to get to WoB was cool), but really it was a disappointment all around.

The real thing that bothered me was the complete downgrade in tech and scope when you got to the dark age. I get that they wanted to get to the 3025 roots, but the idea that some crazy (and up to that point, unknown) splinter religious group could get their hands on enough nukes to bomb the entire UNIVERSE back 200 years is stupid. Like Energy Draw stupid.

The Dark Age stuff sorta makes sense to me. The WoB ended up shutting down the HPG network and isolating many planets entirely. Its sort of like if the internet and telephones all stopped working for everyone. Technology would slow in growth entirely and some cut off places that relied on imports would end up set back decades.

That and nukes kinda destroying quite a few places to further slow growth.

[jjm1]

BattleTech is a lot like Dune where we are our own worst enemy and cant be trusted with our own technology and where cultures diverge over time. But it never went full Dune, its major plot events are pretty much all about keeping walking tanks relevant.

[visionGT4]

Best thing about the jihad was the wobbie plan to take off and nuke the clan home worlds from orbit (and poison the atmosphere for good measure) - which as we all know, is the only way to be sure.

Ironic that it would have been clanners killing clanners i guess thats called karma.


Re Dragoons they needed to be nuked.... who's side were they actually on anyway?

[The Lighthouse]

Star Commander Horse, on 13 February 2017 - 05:02 PM, said:

I hate the Jihad era for exactly same reasons the others before me have posted.

Basically the BattleTech story started going downhill after the Twilight of the Clans series. I got through the FedCom Civil war novels as well. They really should have just stopped at Endgame.
Everything after (storylines and "plots") was so crappy I lost interest in the BattleTech novels entirely. After spending so much time immersed in it you can't really imagine the disappointment.
Battletech and MechWarrior is really a story that needs to go from 3005 until 3067, ending there with "an uneasy but hopeful peace."
Everything after is just poop.

Yeah, so we can just retcon every stuffs after 3067, and continue on infighting between great houses.

5th Succession War without technological degradation would be far more interesting.

[Kargush]

[xengk]

Kargush, on 13 February 2017 - 01:47 PM, said:

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

[Zergling]

The Jihad happened because the writers wrote themselves into a corner, and didn't have anything else they could do that wouldn't have been a repeat of earlier storylines.

[Karl Streiger]

Spheroid, on 13 February 2017 - 05:35 PM, said:

The idea that the Inner Sphere's greatest minds would help a bunch of religious nutcases is beyond the breaking point of plausibility.

Intelligentsia are generally more ethical and law abiding than society at large. What would WoB offer techheads? Unproven Wobbie c-bills? I guess they could higher nothing but sociopaths, but can effective research teams be composed of nothing save those personality types? What does the collaborative process look like? Seems like you are limiting your prospective workers to a vastly unfavorable ratio against that of your future opponents.

Normal Comstar has existed for 300 years, the great houses the better part of a millennia . Why would one leave family friends and a pension at NAIS to go work for the wobbies? What would the job interview even look like? Large organization seeks expert in banned weapons of mass destruction? How would keep the intended work secret?

Assuming people are allowed to enter and leave work contracts freely I don't see how they would have filled the quota. It is not similar to authoritarian governments of the 20th century the citizens lived in or were enveloped by the oppressive regieme, WoB by necessity had to recruit from non-members.

Also WoB went from nothing to superpower in ten years. How? Moving people takes time. Each instellar jump takes weeks or months from point A to B. Great distances may require multiple jumps. However WoB relocated not once but twice in a short period of time. First to Gibson in the FWL and secondly to Terra in 3057.

The schism from Comstar was not orderly as when companies break up but a floodgate of emigrants. How did WoB insure that the correct ratio of personal left to staff the new organization? Maybe the accountants were not as zealous as mechwarriors, perhaps a surplus of techs existed which exceeded the available of supply of mechs. Again since the divorce was unplanned the necessary inefficiency of the organizational structure would delay viability for quite some time.

Also orgaizations cannot form overnight do to simple interia of human interactions, as social networks and managerial pecking order takes time to sort out. Nothing in the real world becomes an instution under ten years, it requires orgaztional expertise of varying lengths of employment. A situation again that would have been problematic given unplanned creation of WoB and its necessary size required to declare war on every major and minor power in known space.

in one of those novels prior to the civil war it is mentioned that WoB did use a huge chunk of the financial output of the FWL for their own usage. at this time it must have overtaken the Lyran Alliance as economy leader of the IS

Plus several contracts with the periphery, confed capella and the chaos march plus supporters through out the inner sphere (black dragon) gave them the financial might of a great house plus the production capabilitys of the FWL and the mothballed production centers on terra.

most WoB designs were some centuries old or were based on old blue prints and prototypes - so there was also the ability to shorten the production cylce

of course they "retconed" the hidden planets but that shouldn't have even been necessary - with 10 years you can train a hell lot of people and the Blake protectorate was big enough to have an almost endless pool of potential soldiers.

So you have a huge pile of "money" - for spare parts like Ultra ACs or the lateste ER Lasers if you don't can produce them on your self.
You have some costs for training and maintenance but you have hardly costs for maintaining a standing army. Look the march militias, the troops and the clan border all those units need to be ready all the time 24/7 - this was not true for the WoB army prior to the Third Transfer

[Bishop Steiner]

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 10:02 AM, said:

Yes, but drugs and mysticism too. (I'm sorry, but drugs and mysticism feels really bizarre and out-of-place in the BT setting.)

Could be worse. Could be Cloud Cobra, who fail at even being remotely interesting and are pretty much doomed to utter obscurity and being the "lol religion" Clan. Could be Blood Spirit, who I don't think anyone really gives a **** about for any reason. Could be Fire Mandrill, whose only claim to fame is being so incredibly fractious that they never get anything of note done.

Clan Fire Mandrill, the House Marik of Clan Space.

Thank Goodness my two favorite clans are not so boring. Clan Ghost Bear, and Clan Goliath Scorpion. Playing a CJS Seeker opens up limitless RPG possibilities.

[Bishop Steiner]

Spheroid, on 13 February 2017 - 05:35 PM, said:

The idea that the Inner Sphere's greatest minds would help a bunch of religious nutcases is beyond the breaking point of plausibility.

Intelligentsia are generally more ethical and law abiding than society at large. What would WoB offer techheads? Unproven Wobbie c-bills? I guess they could higher nothing but sociopaths, but can effective research teams be composed of nothing save those personality types? What does the collaborative process look like? Seems like you are limiting your prospective workers to a vastly unfavorable ratio against that of your future opponents.

Normal Comstar has existed for 300 years, the great houses the better part of a millennia . Why would one leave family friends and a pension at NAIS to go work for the wobbies? What would the job interview even look like? Large organization seeks expert in banned weapons of mass destruction? How would keep the intended work secret?

Assuming people are allowed to enter and leave work contracts freely I don't see how they would have filled the quota. It is not similar to authoritarian governments of the 20th century the citizens lived in or were enveloped by the oppressive regieme, WoB by necessity had to recruit from non-members.

Also WoB went from nothing to superpower in ten years. How? Moving people takes time. Each instellar jump takes weeks or months from point A to B. Great distances may require multiple jumps. However WoB relocated not once but twice in a short period of time. First to Gibson in the FWL and secondly to Terra in 3057.

The schism from Comstar was not orderly as when companies break up but a floodgate of emigrants. How did WoB insure that the correct ratio of personal left to staff the new organization? Maybe the accountants were not as zealous as mechwarriors, perhaps a surplus of techs existed which exceeded the available of supply of mechs. Again since the divorce was unplanned the necessary inefficiency of the organizational structure would delay viability for quite some time.

Also orgaizations cannot form overnight do to simple interia of human interactions, as social networks and managerial pecking order takes time to sort out. Nothing in the real world becomes an instution under ten years, it requires orgaztional expertise of varying lengths of employment. A situation again that would have been problematic given unplanned creation of WoB and its necessary size required to declare war on every major and minor power in known space.

Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Lenin, ol Adolf, Mussolini, Mao Zedong were all part of the intelligentsia.

Probably Not, on 13 February 2017 - 08:41 PM, said:

Well, I mean, he's right. When you strip away the fusion engines and pew-pew lasers and such, you're dealing with things that have parallels in the real world and should be at least somewhat plausible. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. The Blakist Jihad was an incredibly poorly conceived addition to the plot. An "asspull", if you will.

After watching the US Presidential Election, it seems less far fetched than ever.