605 replies to this topic

[Wales Grey]

Zharot, on 20 March 2013 - 04:34 PM, said:

Yeah but he isn't mentioned as much.

(Chiefly because his brother was some sort of controlling dictator who put a strong emphasis on mutable oral histories that could be changed to suit his narrative instead of keeping any sort of track of the historical record.)

The out-of-universe explaination for this is that his character wasn't really fully explored in any depth until Operation Klondike/Wars of Reaving. :V

[Kaio-Kerensky x10]

Wales Grey, on 20 March 2013 - 04:43 PM, said:

The out-of-universe explaination for this is that his character wasn't really fully explored in any depth until Operation Klondike/Wars of Reaving. :V

Retcons? In Battletech? Well I never!

[Wales Grey]

Zharot, on 20 March 2013 - 04:47 PM, said:

Retcons? In Battletech? Well I never!

It's not a retcon if it doesn't directly contradict previously written mateirals!

-Catalyst Games Lab

Edited by Wales Grey, 20 March 2013 - 04:48 PM.

[Uncle Totty]

Wales Grey, on 20 March 2013 - 03:42 PM, said:

Nicolas Kerensky, at no point in his lifetime, could ever be unironically described as "a good guy with a dark past". Someone already did the **** comparison, so I think I can describe your reply here as: "Big deal, Adolf ******'s policies got a bunch of people killed and resulted in the systemic oppression of millions, he only did it because he was actually a good guy with Germany's best interests at heart."

I was talking about Clan Wolf/CWiE, not Nicolas Kerensky.

[Wales Grey]

Nathan K, on 20 March 2013 - 04:49 PM, said:

I was talking about Clan Wolf/CWiE, not Nicolas Kerensky.

Okay, change "Adolf ******" to "The **** Party (but the nice ones!)".

Edited by Wales Grey, 20 March 2013 - 04:52 PM.

[Kaio-Kerensky x10]

Nathan K, on 20 March 2013 - 04:49 PM, said:

I was talking about Clan Wolf/CWiE, not Nicolas Kerensky.

Ah, yes. Clan Wolf, notable for such sympathetic characters as Vla- uh. I mean, Nata- wait, no.

[PaintedWolf]

Koshirou, on 19 March 2013 - 12:27 PM, said:

Feudalism doesn't work that way. It works, in fact, in exactly the opposite fashion: Vassals provide military service in exchange for the grant of land/economic resources from their lord and his support. Disarmed vassals would defeat the whole purpose. That's a super-simplified, distilled version, but it captures the gist of it.

Yeah I know. All these people here act like the Successor States were liberal democracies, bustling with free trade and equal opportunity. They can't even imagine how horrible it would be to be born a peasant in a Successor State, probably never to aspire to more then a dirt farmer, and that's if you are lucky. There is a good chance one could simply be born to a backwater world where the infrastructure is barely hanging by a thread, and securing basics like food, water or shelter to survive the alien environment is a constant chore.

The Clans are not very good, but one point which can be made is they tend to take better care of their civilians then the Successor States. The Clans do strive to keep their civilians out of any actual fighting.

Edited by PaintedWolf, 21 March 2013 - 07:50 AM.

[Uncle Totty]

Zharot, on 20 March 2013 - 04:59 PM, said:

Ah, yes. Clan Wolf, notable for such sympathetic characters as Vla- uh. I mean, Nata- wait, no.

Hey! You're gonna hurt some one with all that irony!


Edit: Romano Liao *cough-cough*

Edited by Nathan K, 23 March 2013 - 09:07 AM.

[Koshirou]

PaintedWolf, on 21 March 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

There is a good chance one could simply be born to a backwater world where the infrastructure is barely hanging by a thread, and securing basics like food, water or shelter to survive the alien environment is a constant chore.

Not really, no. As I've said before: Canonically, the average population of the an Inner Sphere planet is in the billions. Even under perfectly Earthlike conditions, you cannot feed such a population on a medieval level of technology, infrastructure or industry. Most IS planets basically need to be industrialized to at least 20th century levels.

I should also note that canonically, the life of the average IS citizen is entirely untouched by war. The 4th Succession War, a terrible even allegedly, killed 100,000,000 people (I'm not sure how, but let's go with it), which amounts to 1/60,000th of the IS population. It would be like a war that killed 100,000 people on our world. And while this would of course be terrible for the people actually affected by it, on a global scale almost nobody would notice - wars with such casualty figures have happened many times in the last few decades. The BTU is actually a lot more peaceful, it would appear, than early 21st century Earth.

[Kaio-Kerensky x10]

PaintedWolf, on 21 March 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

The Clans are not very good, but one point which can be made is they tend to take better care of their civilians then the Successor States. The Clans do strive to keep their civilians out of any actual fighting.

The Clans also buy and sell and bet and trade their lower castes like chattel. When the owners of a group of lower castemen aren't useful any more or their owners are just on the political outs, they are either left to die or executed en masse.

Lower castemen in Clan society are literally slaves.

Edited by Zharot, 21 March 2013 - 11:28 AM.

[Thorn Hallis]

PaintedWolf, on 21 March 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

The Clans are not very good, but one point which can be made is they tend to take better care of their civilians then the Successor States. The Clans do strive to keep their civilians out of any actual fighting.

Every Successor State strives to keep their civilians out of fighting.

[PaintedWolf]

Thorn Hallis, on 21 March 2013 - 12:58 PM, said:

Every Successor State strives to keep their civilians out of fighting.

Sure.

[captaincabbage]

Obviously in terms of game balance, most people hate (or at very least are wary of) the introduction of the Clan mechs, due to the extreme imbalance they're going to cause when they're eventually released.

This would and could have been avoided if MWO had started it's journey in Clan territory, but here we are in IS space with our quite frankly outclassed IS mechs and weapons, just awaiting the Clans to come in with their Clam weaponry and awesome Omnimechs to tear us all a new one.

[Dakkaface]

IrrelevantFish, on 03 February 2013 - 12:44 AM, said:

As a fan of the BT universe, I hate the Clans because I find it impossible to suspend my disbelief when it comes to Clan social structure. I only have a cursory knowledge of psychology and my Battletech lore is extremely rusty, but from what I remember, the Clan ruling class consists almost entirely of brave, honor-bound psychopaths (good luck finding even one of those IRL) reared in a manner almost guaranteed to give a child complex PTSD, who are also chest-pounding warmongers with a deep love of science.

(Having said that, I quite liked the addition of the Clans to the lore. I just wish their inner workings had been left a mystery and the history told solely from the perspective of the Inner Sphere. IMO, the more the Clans were explained, the sillier they got.)

Pretty much this. I like the Clans, I'm a Nova Cat by allegiance, but I liked them better when they were culturally alien and bizarre to everyone from the Sphere.

[Tetatae Squawkins]

captaincabbage, on 21 March 2013 - 07:22 PM, said:

Obviously in terms of game balance, most people hate (or at very least are wary of) the introduction of the Clan mechs, due to the extreme imbalance they're going to cause when they're eventually released.

This would and could have been avoided if MWO had started it's journey in Clan territory, but here we are in IS space with our quite frankly outclassed IS mechs and weapons, just awaiting the Clans to come in with their Clam weaponry and awesome Omnimechs to tear us all a new one.

I don't hate clan hardware.

I just don't like the whole 'I am not only going to RP as a clanner, but I will also vehemently defend their fascist, incestuous, eugenically altered and racist society as some perfect model for a real civilisation.'

Sure, that does not describe all clans in the modern timeline. But the clans were never anything more than a bunch of soldiers who blindly followed their commander and almost ended up killing each other to the man until they reverted to a tribal society who happened to have a lot of advanced giant robots.

[Reported for Inappropriate Name]

success breeds hate and envy.

[Tetatae Squawkins]

Battlecruiser, on 22 March 2013 - 07:16 AM, said:

success breeds hate and envy.

Inbreeds funny looking people.

[Jimskiavic]

crabcakes66, on 22 March 2013 - 06:39 AM, said:

I just don't like the whole 'I am not only going to RP as a clanner, but I will also vehemently defend their fascist, incestuous, eugenically altered and racist society as some perfect model for a real civilisation.'

Well if you're RPing that you're a Clanner, then of course you'd have to defend it - because that's what your 'character' believes.

[PaintedWolf]

Koshirou, on 21 March 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

I should also note that canonically, the life of the average IS citizen is entirely untouched by war.

Quote

During the next 250 years, civilization was hammered from its 28th Century peak down to 21st Century technology on many worlds and to more primitive states on others - and hundreds of worlds had their populations exterminated all together. The cause for this warfare was a matter of feudal succession to the throne of the fallen Star League hence the four wars of this period were called Succession Wars, while the five Great Houses were said to rule Successor States.

• The First Succession War, 2786-2821
  
• The Second Succession War, 2830-2864
  
• The Third Succession War, 2866-3025
  
• The Fourth Succession War, 3028-3030

Despite hundreds of billions of deaths, the first three Succession Wars resulted in little change to the map after the First Succession War divided the Terran Hegemony between the five Successor States.

http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Inner_Sphere

Canon notes that many worlds had trouble securing even basics like water. This loss of technology was then made more intense by Operation Holy Shroud: http://www.sarna.net...ion_Holy_Shroud

crabcakes66, on 22 March 2013 - 07:43 AM, said:

Inbreeds funny looking people.

You do realize that Feudal Lords and Royalty are renown for inbreeding right? Indeed if you look at a lot of family lineages you see a lot of Steiners, Davions, and Liaos hooking up with a lot of Steiners, Davions and Liaos.

At least the Clans have made genetic modification a science, meaning they have greatly reduced the chances of negative mutations arising to near zero. Like I said, the feudal system is not the Renaissance Fair you seem to think it is.

Edited by PaintedWolf, 23 March 2013 - 05:34 AM.

[PaintedWolf]

Koshirou, on 21 March 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

I should also note that canonically, the life of the average IS citizen is entirely untouched by war.

Quote

The war lasted thirty-four years and was a horrific and brutal affair. The Ares Conventions went largely ignored during the conflict and hundreds of millions of civilians lost their lives. The Successor Lords used every means at their disposal to assail their enemies, including biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.

http://www.sarna.net..._Succession_War

Quote

Hardest hit were planets that relied upon water purification technology to make them habitable. Many of these facilities became military targets and residents of these planets needed to import water or locate elsewhere. Unfortunately for many, trade was seriously disrupted during this period and water ships were few and far between. By the end of the war, water-rich planets were as valuable as they had been at the beginning of humanity's expansion to the stars.

http://www.sarna.net..._Succession_War

Quote

Thanks to brutal nature of the conflict and the efforts of ComStar's Holy Shroud, by the end of the Second Succession War in 2863, the level of technological knowledge in the Inner Sphere had slipped drastically. Several areas of knowledge and understanding had been lost, including vital technologies such as hyperpulse generators and faster-than-light (FTL) drives used in JumpShips. House forces were forced to cannibalize parts to effect repairs, rather than being able to manufacture replacements. People of the Inner Sphere knew "how" to use the technology, but they didn't understand it nor could they replicate its creation. The technology was more akin to magic than science for most people. Only three years later, the Inner Sphere would once again erupt in conflict - the Third Succession War.