220 replies to this topic

[Timuroslav]

Ashla Mason, on 20 October 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

Forgive me if I've come across as being too pro-clan, but I was looking at this from a hypothetical "How would the clans go about taking the IS?"

Frankly, one of the great truths of the battletech universe is the absurdity; no one can maintain a truce for more then a decade with their neighbors without going to war, and it is functionally impossible to sieze and hold signifigant amounts of territory in a relatively short time span without a massive edge of some sort.

That having been said, the idea that the clans are somehow "doomed" in the long term is ridiculous.

The Topic is Could* not how.......hence the forum name.

[Ashla Mason]

Timuroslav, on 20 October 2012 - 02:46 PM, said:

The Topic is Could* not how.......hence the forum name.

Without examing the how it is impossible to determine the could.

[Timuroslav]

Touche

[tankermottind]

Ashla Mason, on 20 October 2012 - 01:57 PM, said:

Forgive me if I've come across as being too pro-clan, but I was looking at this from a hypothetical "How would the clans go about taking the IS?"

The answer is "they can't". It's like asking "How could Imperial Japan have gone about defeating the US?" The only answer is that they couldn't; all possible strategies would end in failure.

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Frankly, one of the great truths of the battletech universe is the absurdity; no one can maintain a truce for more then a decade with their neighbors without going to war, and it is functionally impossible to sieze and hold signifigant amounts of territory in a relatively short time span without a massive edge of some sort.

I find the most absurd thing that these royal dynasties haven't all been booted from power. These royal families have held onto power for far longer than any historical dynasties, don't have any real rivals to power, and endure through screwups that in the real world cost entire dynasties their heads.

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That having been said, the idea that the clans are somehow "doomed" in the long term is ridiculous.

Why? All animals, including humans, require a degree of genetic diversity to maintain a significant population. The trueborn Clan warriors are a closed gene pool; every trueborn is a direct descendant of a handful (sarna.net says 800 Bloodnames) of warriors. Then they remove not only any warriors who dishonor themselves from this gene pool but often their relatives (dozens of Ghost Bear warriors were purged after the annihilation of Clan Wolverine because they were conceived from genetic stocks taken as booty from Wolverine). Thus the pool gets smaller and smaller and inbreeding depression from the lack of genetic diversity intensifies. Eventually this will result in the trueborn population becoming non-viable and the centerpiece of Clan society collapsing. The Clans may persist with a mostly or purely freeborn population but they will not be the Clans as we know them.

[Saint Scarlett Johan]

Negative. The IS wages total war; meaning the clans must wage total war. The clans lack both the tactical and strategic ability to wage total war. Without the ability to wage total war, the clans could not hold Terra. Historically proven time and time again anyone who takes military history knows this. War is waged to the lowest common denominator, which is why asymmetrical warfare works so well.

And in total warfare, quantity > quality. Then clan invasion has so much American Civil and WW2 influence it isn't even funny.

[PaintedWolf]

Perhaps Post-Society using a LOT of biological, genetic and information warfare. If they act like The Society, it is very possible. The Society was far more adept then Word of Blake. That Mech the Osteon is ridiculously OP. But that would be a totally different kind of "Clans" then what we see today, and would require miracle bio-tech.

Edited by PaintedWolf, 20 October 2012 - 05:50 PM.

[Aaron DeChavilier]

The clans never had a ghost of Ol Kerensky's chance of holding the Inner Sphere. The numbers are so stacked against them it isn't really funny. It took Kerenksy himself the entire SLDF and 13 years to fight his way from the periphery to Terra during the fall of the first Star League and that was with most Houses standing aside and abstaining from the conflict.

[dal10]

^ugh... more canon names...

[Monsoon]

No, they would never be able to hold the entire IS. All you'd end up with is world after world of guerrilla warfare, freedom fighter/terrorist actions, etc. Leaders would be assassinated, scientists bombed. Think occupied Europe during Third Reich (apparently the 4-letter word for this is censored) expansion, now spread that across the IS, where even the closest planet is at least a week away in travel. The Clans would never be able to subjugate every world, and as discontent spread and any news of success reached other worlds, new emboldened people would rise up.

The only remote hope for success would be a hands-off conquest (let's say a Warden Wolf approach). Even then, too many people would still have strong nationalistic ties and rail against any change of leadership (much like the Isle of Skye still rages against the Lyran government.)

Edited by Monsoon, 20 October 2012 - 09:39 PM.

[Jaroth Corbett]

OP you made a HELL of a good thread here. I love this kind of discussion because we get both sides. Playing the what if game though can work to either sides' advantage however we each highlight the points that make our argument the stronger. This is going to be long so please bear with me.

Ashla Mason, on 19 October 2012 - 08:18 AM, said:

You seem to have forgotten that the bears also transplanted their entire society to their IS holdings; I believe that the actual invasion force they had at there disposal was closer to 4 or 5 galaxies and the other clans had comparable forces at their disposal.

Also: the clans were able to engage in some truly brutal crackdowns when they had evidence of partisan antics, and that tends to end resistance very, very quickly.

True but the Bears moving to the IS comes a lot later in the timeline than when I suspect the OP is referring to.

Ashla Mason, on 19 October 2012 - 09:50 AM, said:

Which is why the jade falcons were forced to flee the inner sphere, never to return...

Maurdakar, on 19 October 2012 - 11:02 AM, said:

No the clans could not, by any account.

Most of the fan-boy clanners aren't invested enough in the Lore to get their details or facts straight.

The Clans had the element of surprise early on, and the I.S. didn't recognize the threat they posed right away. The Clans simply blitzkrieg-ed down world after world, many of which were poorly defended. That said nearly all the major clans participated in the invasion so they did not have a huge backbench to draw from. Fan-boys also like to mention how the clanners could have been really clever or politically apt, they could have been, but they were not, because their clanners, and what makes them so great at fighting is their meat-head culture.

As for invading over the course of centuries, there's just no way. Once the I.S. had their pants on and the technology gap closed the fights against clanners were nearly even. Again you could argue the clans could change their culture, but these arguments don't count, because your no longer talking about the Clans. Dreamed up neo-clans may have a shot but they are not "the Clans" as we discuss them.

All of this said once the Clans fought an intelligent general with an entrenched position and similar technology they got obliterated, embarrassingly destroyed on all fronts.

Don't let people who have bought into the romanticism of the Clans or I.S. fool you. The most likely outcome was the one we were left with; small clan controlled territories that don't really expand too much because any invasion would be against other clanners, or right into heavily entrenched, expertly trained, and well-equipped I.S. positions.

I reject what you say totally & I think I am invested in the lore enough to do so.

True the Clans had the element of surprise, but that would not last long. People did send reports on what was happening. On the contrary, there was a HUGE backbench to draw from. As mentioned before, Klondike had ALL the Clans attacking. Even if it was not all the Clans had it been all the Crusader Clans the outcome would be different which is most likely why it was NOT written like that. During the YoP the FWL got blackmailed into providing mechs & supplies to the SS that were facing the brunt of the invasion. Any student of military history will tell you that destroying/crippling/seizing an enemy's supply lines is the secondary or in some cases the primary, means of achieving victory. If the FWL had Clan forces on their doorsteps, that whole deal would never had occurred.

You tried to flay us with talk of "not invested in the lore" blah blah blah, when clearly you need to read the damn thing. The Clans were soaked in politics because to reach to the mid & high level in the Clan you had to be both a good warrior AND a good politician. Ulric noted sadly to someone ( I am in work now & do not have access to the source material so I cannot quote the title) that Clan politics were just as bad as in the IS or worse, something along those lines. When I get back home, I will give it to you verbatim.

You can keep your centuries & put them under a Precentor's robe because they I.S. had their "pants on" as you say & got it beaten off of them. Go read Era Report 3052. Before I get to my main point let me digress. How did the IS start working together? How did they get their technological upgrades to begin with? The technologically advanced Clans were bound by a set of rules that necessitated the entire set of frontline troops to go all the way back home after the death of their war leader. The WAR leader who died during WAR. Plot armor. I wrote a rebuttal for this somewhere on this forum & when I get a chance, I will paste it here for you. So anyway during this YoP it was not even the House leaders who tried to unify, it was a damn mercenary group, who by the way in case you forgot, came from the very enemy they were fighting.

Also this unity was not complete as the CC pissed on everybody who was getting their ***** handed to them (read what Romano Liao said & tell me if I am wrong, I DARE you) & the Fox had to blackmail Thomas Marik to get the FWL to help. Imagine that? Thomas asked him if he would sentence his child to death over this & the Fox said YES. They could not agree on a cup of tea. So please try that **** on somebody who has NOT read the lore. The Clans were beaten with inferior technology before. Remember Wolcott? Yes an intelligent general in an entrenched position can beat the Clans, true. The problem was, victories like that were FEW and far between. Even when they got a tech upgrade they still got their ***** kicked. Era Report 3052 confirms this. You cannot argue with the source material.

It did not happen because it was not WRITTEN to happen like that. The Clans return. The Clans invade. The Clans win! The Clans take Terra. THE END? What then?

PaintedWolf, on 19 October 2012 - 11:23 AM, said:

2 Things need to be kept in mind:

1- As soon as the Clans take Terra the entire rest of the IS will put all their differences aside and work against them.

2- We are talking over 2000 inhabited planets that we know off, and TRILLIONS of people.

The DCMS alone has 700 BILLION people. I do not think the scale or magnitude of such an undertaking can ever be underestimated. I mean, that many people using muskets could probably take out the Clans. They gotta sleep sometime, and this is assuming their own repressed Castes do not side with the rebels--and trust me realizing something like 2 TRILLION people on thousands of planets are all against you at once is gonna make some of them question their loyalties, especially if these people are more like them.

Also keep in mind when the Clans are starved or resources or backed into a corner they tend to get really nasty. This will also divide their own and unite the Inner Sphere.

I honestly wondered if it was possible, maybe I think over several generations with very, very careful planning. But we are talking such a vast numbers discrepency here.

As for the Pentagon worlds during Klondike, that was 5 worlds. 5 worlds of relatively small populations vs THOUSANDS of worlds with TRILLIONs of people. And keep in mind there are MILLIONs of Stars in the IS for rebels to hide.

As Marx notes, Changes in Quantity can lead to changes in Quality. The English showed this with the long-bow used en masse, and I'm pretty sure the Clans would find this out when they realize just how big of a place the IS is.

You really think when the GH were watching their territories shrink world by world, day by day (their OWN place) & they could not come to a proper agreement in the YoP that magically, when terra gets taken, all past differences would be put aside? Well I am sure whatever planet you are on, you believe that. Here on Earth, I think not.

The Clans are not pirates. They are not set up primarily for raids. Yes they did AFTER Tukayyid but from the OP it seems he is talking about the height of the invasion. The Clans land on a planet, smash the **** out of the defenders, SEIZE the world, that means that the infrastructure as well as the populace becomes their own, then the frontline troops move on to the next target. Sure you are going to have rebellions, but this is not Star Wars & your cute fuzzy Ewoks are not going to take out a force that just decimated the real warriors in their mechs, fighter jets, tanks, APCs, hoevertanks etc. Obviously the level of resentment is dependent on how said world is taken & handled. As shown in the source material, worlds conquered by Clan Wolf moved along, mostly smoothly while the jade Falcons fared worse & of course the overly-aggressive Jaguars took things to a whole new level & had the worst revolts.

Again the number of worlds is irrelevant had ALL the Clans (or at least all the crusader clans) attacked at once as done in Klondike. Understand that each world the IS loses to the Clans is a blow. Planet X might be a key manufacturing planet for whatever GH they served. For each world that falls, the Clans get stronger as the IS gets weaker.You need to read the Crusader Clans Field Manual, the return to the IS has been regarded as a holy event by all the castes of all the clans, so no I do not think that would happen. They would not join in any rebellions.

I will reply to the other posters when I get home. The AC is killing me here. My fingers are freezing.

[tankermottind]

You're not getting it. You remind me of Donald Rumsfeld, who insisted (despite the arguments of the generals below him), that the United States could march in with its (vastly superior) military, crush ****** Hussein's military, kick ****** out of the president's chair, and take a seat. Mission accomplished, right? Wrong! We were there for almost ten years, despite a military-technological advantage the Clans could never dream of and almost ten times the population of Iraq (contrast the Clans, whose population is like a drop in the Pacific Ocean compared to the Inner Sphere). Even now Iraq is dangerously close to being a failed state and could well collapse in the future.

Military armies do not get stronger as they press deep into a large enemy territory. They get weaker. They have to leave behind large garrison forces to control the territories left behind (they do not just "move on"). Their supply lines become longer and more vulnerable to attack, making continued supplies uncertain. The troops become exhausted and lose morale, especially if there is a sizable resistance force harassing them. Enemy infrastructure is often badly damaged during assaults, and even if it is captured intact, there's no guarantee anyone would help the invaders use it.

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Sure you are going to have rebellions, but this is not Star Wars & your cute fuzzy Ewoks are not going to take out a force that just decimated the real warriors in their mechs, fighter jets, tanks, APCs, hoevertanks etc.

This actually happens in real life, not just Star Wars. The Taliban are making life very hard for the US military despite being armed with WWI-era bolt action rifles and homemade bombs. Mechs aren't capable of securing and garrisoning territory anyway. That's what infantry do. Infantry are squishy and vulnerable, and if you put them in Elemental armor they lose many of the qualities that make infantry useful because a man in a giant scary suit of power armor heavier than most horses cannot search houses, interview civilians (and expect them to talk), or do any work other than fighting.

Especially that interview part. Probably the most important thing US troops in Afghanistan do is talk to people. Gather intelligence, recruit supporters and informants, that sort of thing. The media phrase for this is "hearts and minds" and it's absolutely essential to defeating guerillas (since the defining feature of guerillas is that they are indistinguishable from civilians, you can't just kill them all).

The Clans lack the means, the men, or the will to defeat the Inner Sphere in asymmetrical warfare, and their invasion was a doomed venture from the start. Even if they tried to just take Terra and carve out a small Clan state around Terra to act as a hegemon to the other IS states using Comstar as a front and letting the Successor states remain as nominally sovereign clients (the most reasonable option), they'd still be unable to guarantee the safety of their logistical train to Clan space, especially since they sent it right through Kurita territory, and the Draconis Combine aren't known for being generous to enemies.

Not to mention that during the Myndo Waterly crisis and the Fourth Succession War FedCom in particular had many ways to get around ComStar hegemony.

EDIT: Why is the ex-president of Iraq's first name censored? Since when was that profanity?

Edited by tankermottind, 21 October 2012 - 06:59 AM.

[Jaroth Corbett]

No YOU are not getting it. The Clans take control of the IS supply lines AS WELL AS have their supply lines back to the Kerensky Cluster.
Operation Revival was a huge Trial of Possession broken up into a multitude of smaller Trials. For example, if the DC had a mech production plant on Planet X & they are expecting them to pump out 100 mechs for next week & the Ghost Bears seize it, IT IS THE GHOST BEARS MECH PRODUCTION PLANT NOW. They are not raiding, "Oh I see some cool stuff I can swipe, so I will take what I can, but leave the infrastructure in place for you to continue doing what you are doing." So not only does the DC not get the 100 mechs they were expecting the following week, the GB now have 100+ mechs added to their arsenal. CGB get stronger & the DC gets weaker.

Also for the love of God stop comparing this to real world scenarios because in the BT world mechs ARE made for garrisoning planets. That is why they have garrison forces for the IS, why one of the types of contracts a merc company can undertake is garrison



& why the Clans have PGCs. If you read both Warden & Crusader Field Manuals, you will see at least one, but in most cases more than one, Galaxy is assigned to be a garrison force. That is kinda WHY they made them. Infantry does play a huge part of it & where oh where on planet Earth do we have Elementals? You cannot compare the two.

The topic is Could Clans ever Hold the Inner Sphere? not Could the US successfully invade Iraq? FFS people stop it!

P.S. If I remind you of Donald Rumsfeld, you need to get your head examined. That guy was lost like Alice. I know what I am talking about & refer to the source material for backup.

Edited by Jaroth Winson, 21 October 2012 - 07:44 AM.

[tankermottind]

Armor units are not garrison troops. They're just not. They're physically incapable of doing door-to-door searches, interviews, interrogations, police work, and other essential functions of a garrison force. They can SUPPORT a garrison force, but you need real infantry, and a lot of them, to hold territory. For major planets with large cities and developed industry, you're looking at MILLIONS of troops per world (or even tens of millions) to ensure long-term stability. Waving your hand about "garrison duty" from a sourcebook does not change the essential properties of armor and infantry.

The Clans would need infantry without battle armor, infantry who can walk through doorways and not destroy floors and not look like big giant alien monsters so people will talk to them and respect them. However, dismounted infantry have the problem of being very vulnerable to bombs, small arms, and booby traps.

The Ghost Bears can walk up to a production plant and say "This is ours now". But can they make the employees go back to work? Can they get the electricity up and running? Is all the power infrastructure still standing? Can they make the employees of the power company go back to work? What about road and construction crews? What about water? Or fuel supplies? Can they get the refineries back up and running? What about the parts and tooling to make mechs and vehicles? What about the parts and tooling to make mech and vehicles that Ghost Bear warriors are actually familiar with and are trained on. A facility that makes Chargers (for example) would be very, very difficult to convert into a facility that makes Kodiaks, no Ghost Bear MechWarrior would want to pilot a IS Charger, and I doubt said MechWarrior would even be qualified to pilot one (for one thing, the controls and interfaces would likely be in Japanese!)

And while you're trying to make the infrastructure suit your purposes, the resistance will be doing their level best to blow it up. They'll be planting bombs on power stations, factories, warehouses, water mains, gas mains, etc., etc., killing important personnel, and generally making a huge mess.

[Jaroth Corbett]

tankermottind, on 21 October 2012 - 08:04 AM, said:

Armor units are not garrison troops. They're just not. They're physically incapable of doing door-to-door searches, interviews, interrogations, police work, and other essential functions of a garrison force. They can SUPPORT a garrison force, but you need real infantry, and a lot of them, to hold territory. For major planets with large cities and developed industry, you're looking at MILLIONS of troops per world (or even tens of millions) to ensure long-term stability. Waving your hand about "garrison duty" from a sourcebook does not change the essential properties of armor and infantry.

They might not be able to walk into a house with their amor, but with surveillance, anything coiming out of that house would get nailed. Also the Clans employ infantry who are NOT Elementals, just regular troops who CAN do those duties.

Quote

The Ghost Bears can walk up to a production plant and say "This is ours now". But can they make the employees go back to work? Can they get the electricity up and running? Is all the power infrastructure still standing? Can they make the employees of the power company go back to work? What about road and construction crews? What about water? Or fuel supplies? Can they get the refineries back up and running? What about the parts and tooling to make mechs and vehicles?

Uh yes they can. In places like the FRR there were people who did not care who was ruling them or if not, guess what? they ship in their own laborers, tech, scientists etc. Yeah me waving the sourcebook says, it is canon so your points are moot.

[tankermottind]

How many troops do they have? Billions? Tens of billions? These are the numbers we're talking about. To conquer and rule the entire Inner Sphere in 3050, the force required would be something like taking the entire Draconis Combine armed forces (orders of magnitude larger than the Clans) and augmenting them to Clan standards. You don't just need quality, you need quantity.

Also don't tell me the FRR didn't care about who was ruling them when they spent the past 700 years or so resisting Combine rule. The Combine never assimilated the Rasalhagians, despite an equipment AND numerical advantage. It was a huge ulcer in the Draconis Combine that slowly drained men, resources, and effort from the Combine until they gave up. The Ghost Bears only managed to successfully integrate the Rasalhagians by treating them benevolently, letting them run most of their own affairs (unlike the Combine) and providing protection against House Kurita, whom the Rasalhagians hated more than they hated Clan Ghost Bear, and the Smoke Jaguars. If Smoke Jaguar had invaded, it would have been a quagmire.

The Clans were very good at fast-moving blitzkrieg offensives, but such offensives are only the very beginning of a conquest. When it comes to actually ruling territory and "winning the peace", they couldn't handle much more than the small wedges of space they ended up occupying.

And despite all this, the FRR is a tiny power compared to the Great Houses. The challenges of trying to rule the Draconis Combine (the first Great House in their path) would be infinitely greater.

Counter-insurgency is not like conventional warfare. The rules are different. The forces are different. The goals are different. The win conditions are different. A guerilla force doesn't have to win a single battle to throw you out of their country. They just have to exhaust your will to fight, and since they're fighting for a homeland and not imperialistic ambitions, they can carry on harassing your forces, blowing up infrastructure, and creating mayhem for decades on end.

[Uncle Totty]

Could the Clans ever take and hold the IS? I do not think so.

Could Clan Wolf ever take and hold Tera? Hell yeah.

Could the Not-Named-Clan show up out of no where and try to kick there ***? I do not know.

All I can say is that I will be sleeping in my Timber Wolf tonight.

Edited by Nathan K, 21 October 2012 - 09:12 AM.

[Gremlich Johns]

tankermottind, on 21 October 2012 - 06:53 AM, said:

You're not getting it. You remind me of Donald Rumsfeld, who insisted (despite the arguments of the generals below him), that the United States could march in with its (vastly superior) military, crush ****** Hussein's military, kick ****** out of the president's chair, and take a seat. Mission accomplished, right? Wrong! We were there for almost ten years, despite a military-technological advantage the Clans could never dream of and almost ten times the population of Iraq (contrast the Clans, whose population is like a drop in the Pacific Ocean compared to the Inner Sphere). Even now Iraq is dangerously close to being a failed state and could well collapse in the future.

You are incorrect. The reason we were not able to kick Hussein's fanny out of the president's chair is because we were told to stop, that we had accomplished our goals. I am talking about the FIRST Gulf War, the one that I was in. Also, "we" were not there 10 years as you describe. Afghanistan, maybe, but not Iraq. "We" started sending people to Iraq in September 1990 and were largely out of Iraq by late summer. I got there in January 1991 and was out of Theater by the middle of May 1991.

The reason we are unable to inflict decisive power upon the opposing forces is because "we" are not being allowed to - negative world-wide opinion, don't cha know.

And as regards the OP, the Clans did not have to "hold" anything. Consider what the mission of the original SLDF was supposed to be - Keepers of the Peace. Consider what A. Kerensky's long term desire was. But, allowing that to happen does not sell a lot of books, only a few.

And the Clans would have never, in the Fiction, been able to succeed to a logical conclusion because they were never supposed to. If I had been writing the fiction, it would be a different story.

I would like to point out the paucity of pro-clans posters in the Clans threads and the possible reason you do not see many Clansmen posting in this thread, it's because the IS-oriented fan boys already have deep seated belief's on the matter and will never be swayed. Kinda like Democrats. And if you have a contrary view, however well positioned, regarding the Clans in a positive light, the "other side" will drown it out with ill-informed points of view calculated to reinforce their narrow-minded mindset. In any league that I have been in as a Clansman, the Clans are the dominant force and the IS players whither away because the mindset a Clans player has is one of superiority and it is reflected in the way they play the game. That tells me the fiction could easily have taken a different path than what is established in the canon writings.

It's fiction, consider the possibility if YOU wrote the BT stories. I prefer an alternate view and do not care whether you agree or not. You are just as welcome to your delusion as I am to mine.

Edited by Gremlich Johns, 21 October 2012 - 09:58 AM.

[tankermottind]

I wasn't talking about the Gulf War, I was talking about when we "freedomized" Iraq in 2003. We completely annihilated the Iraqi military with the greatest of ease, booted out Hussein, and took over the country...and then the actual war started. Almost nine years of bloodshed and terror for the Iraqis, at least 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians, and a weak, unstable state that is a "democracy" only on the most superficial level. And this "victory" was won by a country that had many, many more advantages than the Clans have over the Inner Sphere, by the most powerful fighting force the world has ever seen, barely able to contain a bunch of untrained terrorists with secondhand Kalashnikovs and homemade bombs. And our other experiment in nation-building, Afghanistan, looks set to fail altogether, leading to total chaos and a possible return of the Taliban to power. Go US!

And, as I said, the US has such a dismal track record with even more of a technological disparity than the Clans have, and, unlike the Clans, we have a decent number of forces to put on the ground. They don't even have that.

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the Clans are the dominant force and the IS players whither away because the mindset a Clans player has is one of superiority

Because idiotic internecine conflicts built into the system by their "glorious Founder", ritualized combat that has little to do with real war, a short-sighted eugenics program that severely limits their potential, a "warrior" mentality that leads many Clan MechWarriors to put their "honor" above the mission, and massive overweening self-importance are totally superior. Right.

Edited by tankermottind, 21 October 2012 - 11:39 AM.

[PaintedWolf]

Gremlich Johns, on 21 October 2012 - 09:48 AM, said:

No YOU are not getting it. The Clans take control of the IS supply lines AS WELL AS have their supply lines back to the Kerensky Cluster.

The IS will destroy their own supply lines just to hurt the Clans.

I think the entire Clan assumption is that IS forces will act rational.

Edited by PaintedWolf, 21 October 2012 - 02:33 PM.

[Gremlich Johns]

tankermottind, on 21 October 2012 - 10:20 AM, said:

Because idiotic internecine conflicts built into the system by their "glorious Founder", ritualized combat that has little to do with real war, a short-sighted eugenics program that severely limits their potential, a "warrior" mentality that leads many Clan MechWarriors to put their "honor" above the mission, and massive overweening self-importance are totally superior. Right.

You merely prove my point about IS-oriented players.

You term them as "idiotic internacine conflicts" because you cannot comprehend the environments which led to that societies creation, having nothing in your own life to gauge it by. That and perhaps because you are really only a video-game warrior. Your mis-perception has perhaps also been developed by frequent failures against more skilled Clan-oriented players who lorded their skill over you simply by besting you. If you truly understood why the society developed as it did (in the fiction), you might just "get it" and come over to the side of the Light. The eugenics program also had nothing to do with their Potential,Tactics, etc. it was just a way, in the long vision, to keep healthy genes available and to ensure survival of the population - which, as you should know, developed in extreme conditions. Again, some extrapolation is needed. Put yourself in a Clansman's boots - You cannot make a cogent argument until you do. The potential of the Clans writ large is largely untapped, constrained only by the current fiction that is canon.

PaintedWolf, on 21 October 2012 - 02:08 PM, said:

The IS will destroy their own supply lines just to hurt the Clans.

I think the entire Clan assumption is that IS forces will act rational.

the quote you quoted was not my quote