Asym, on 06 January 2018 - 06:48 AM, said:
And, here we are. Many of us haven't studied Lore, nor played the TT game, nor played any of the other games (non-MW games) either and after reading this thread, I'm not sure balance is a logical goal?
Isn't the in-balance the whole point? Isn't the "opposite" approaches, a play on the Cold War warfare histories, the actual story that drives Clan and IS development and fielding of tactics and equipment?
Someone above alluded to that "at least we have a game to play...." In that, I agree, even with the imperfections that abound in some or many players minds.
In the end, since I can't argue the specifics, I'll leave this with: "If it ain't broke, why fix it?"
As for the Lore of Battletech the reason for the tech imbalances between the Clans and Successor States is how each culture experienced the 300 years apart.
The Inner Sphere experienced near constant warfare with the earlier conflicts being unrestricted warfare. It was the norm to literally attempt to cripple you enemy's technology base by destroying their means of production. Also during this period of unbridaled conflict many forms of technology became impossible or impractical to produce. The loss of inter stellar shipping also created issolation in many of the nations outer reaches and in general technology was not a constant across a single realm. You could be on one world in the Federated Suns and have access to all the modern amenities yet elsewhere in the same nation horse and buggie is the go to form of transportation and the only places with consistant electrical power are military outposts and Comstar facilities.
The situation became so bad in the Inner Sphere that the Successor Houses had to form a pact on how to conduct resticted warfare and set many items of technology as sacrosanct (like Jump ships). In the past there was a similar pact (the Ares Conventions) that was formed in the 25th century but utterly forsaken at the outbreak of the first Succession War.
To make the technilogical regression problem even worse factions within the Comstar order (basically if the phone company merged with the 15th century Vadican) were activley sabotaging attempts made by Inner Sphere scientist to recover lostech. Comstar agents even went as far as assassinations and false flag operations to destroy sites of technilogical development.
So the Inner Sphere had tech regression for much of the Succession Wars period and only recently began to regain some of it's lost technology when a Merc company (Grey Death Legion) discovered an intact Star League era memory core (containing detailed specs on several techs) on the planet Helm at the closing of the third Succession War. This "Helm Memory Core" as it became to be know was diseminated to all the major powers of the Inner Sphere and launch a technological renasaunce.
Meanwhile... The People who became the clans had fled the constant warfare resulting from the collapse of the Star League. Lead by the former head of the League military General Alexandr Kerensky. Kerensky assembled a fleet that composed nearly two thirds of the Star League military and scientists and made way beyond explored space.
Eventually this fleet would discover a region of space with a few bearly habitable worlds and named it the Pentagon worlds (the 5 star systems roughly formed a pentagon ). It wasn't long before Kerensky had a rebellion on his hands as the Pentagon worlds fell to rebel control. Kerensky again fled from the conflict with his remaining loyalists and soon discovered a region of space named the Kerensky cluster.
Kerensky's loyalist settled these worlds but shortly after establishing the colony Alexandr Kerensky died. His son Nicholas Kerensky took over the mantel of leadership and imediatedly formulated a plan to retake the Pentagon worlds. It was Good old Nicky who created the clans at this point forming up the remaining loyalist mechwarriors into 20 clans of 40 members each.
Each of the Pentagon worlds was to be captured by 4 clans. The paln was named operation Klondike and was launched 02/07/2821 and was ended with the total defeat of rebel forces on 05/26/2822.
From this point on the clans developed their unique culture as a product of having to survive on the resource poor worlds they inhabited (the Pentagon and Kerensky cluster worlds were bearly suitable for human habitation) The shortages of resources and close proximity to each other meant that any military conflicts between clans needed to be severely limited in scope and duration. So the clan customs of limited warfare were developed where it was "honorable" to deploy the fewest possible troops to accomplish an objective. And of course the various ritual combats used to resolve conflicts became the norm.
Due to the caste system imposed by Nicholas Kerensky the clans had a dedicated scientist caste that further refined military technologies. Since it became mandatory to accomplish more with fewer resources clan technology heavily focused upon micronising tech. Thus we have the more compact clan technologies like endo steel and ferro armor and compact XL engines and double heat sinks. It was a neccessity to make these items smaller because of the resource shortages to make them at all.
So in the lore there are your background reasons for tech dispairity.
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