605 replies to this topic

[xRatas]

Self-righteous in-breed hand-and-halfs. What's not to hate there?

[Ken Fury]

Koshirou, on 19 February 2013 - 11:40 AM, said:

Oh, and as for "liking" the Clans as in actually admiring their culture etc.:

Are you freakin' kidding me?

The sad part is, no they are not kidding.

[Koshirou]

CoffiNail, on 04 February 2013 - 06:21 AM, said:

Umm... the Clans had been in the writers minds from early on. I just finished reading Wolves on the Border, which takes place WAY before the Clans.

... but was published just a few months before Lethal Heritage. So was the Wolf's Dragoons sourcebook. So the only thing we can infer from this is that the guys at FASA planned the Clans around late 1988 to early 1989.
Which in any case is not relevant. A bad idea is not made better by having been around early.

None of the early descriptions of Wolf's Dragoons (in The Spider and the Wolf and Tales of the Black Widow) gave any indication that the Clan lore had been fleshed out by that point. And in these works, all the Dragoons behave in a decidedly non-Clanlike fashion.
The mystery of the Dragoons' origin was present from the very start, sure. So was the connection to Kerensky. But this could have played out in a number of ways.

In any case, this whole thing makes the Dragoons just one more element of the setting which doesn't make any sense. The Dragoons supposedly came from Clan Space with thousands of Clan Warriors, and presumably tens of thousands of members of other castes. And none of the various intelligence services of the Inner Sphere, which would naturally have been curious as to where the Dragoons came from, ever got one of these people to spill the beans, be it by force, by bribery or by other means? Seriously?

[shasta girl]

I think the clans have good looking mechs.

[Gammanoob]

Orgasmo, on 19 February 2013 - 11:01 PM, said:

There is no "honour" in dueling an opponent in so called "fair" combat with mechs three centuries ahead in technology. It's like a medieval knight in plate armor wielding a steel longsword against a peasant with a pitchfork. Victor Steiner-Davion, under the Clans' own rules, handed them their ***** on a plate.

Hey, it is the time honored tradition of Knights, Samurais and most warriors in history.

Pick on those weaker than you, challenging them to fight you in ways you know that you have the advantage, break your own code of honor when the enemy in desperation breaks said rules and then claim it was a fair fight.

Edited by Gammanoob, 20 February 2013 - 07:47 PM.

[Damion Wolf]

There are a lot of people who don't seem to know much about the Clans in here.

[Brenticus]

For me, it’s not so much that I hate the clans. I actually like them. It’s more that I can’t fully back any group that fights so far removed from a Total War mindset. Now, I realize that the BT setting is one where true Total War does not exist, but the IS is much closer to it than the Clans are, so between the two, that is what they represent to me.

IMO, war is something far too dangerous, and its stakes are far too high (especially when it comes to things like the Clan invasion- something that can change everyone’s entire way of life) to pull any punches at all. My thought is that, in the end, when lives are on the line, you owe it to your people to do literally everything in your power to protect them and destroy the enemy.

That’s why I don’t like the Clans (or rather why I like them but can’t back them). The IS is bad enough with their attitude towards war, but the Clans are even further removed from a Total War mindset. This limited kind of warfare has an appeal to be sure, and it has genuine advantages. It makes the Clans sort of romantic in a way, but I feel that they are too impractical for me to fully endorse or root for.

Basically, the IS is just closer to my own mindset.

[Pariah Devalis]

I like reading the well thought out reasons on this thread. And by well thought out, I mean replies that are not just some variation of "HUEHUETWINKS, HUEHUETARDS, HUEHUEPOWERCREEPASSHATS." I find it interesting, personally, to understand how other people view the same items in completely different lights.

Edited by Pariah Devalis, 26 February 2013 - 07:15 AM.

[Skylarr]

Damion Wolf, on 24 February 2013 - 10:09 AM, said:

There are a lot of people who don't seem to know much about the Clans in here.

Both IS and Clanner. I do not mind the guy who is RPing and in every post acts the same way. It is the ones who cannot get their facts straight.

[Dan Nashe]

In 3025 the game was about mechwarriors. A company of mechs meant something. You as a pilot were one 12th or 1/4 th of the centerpiece of the story. Mechs were rare, the tech was lost. A mechwarrior was a knight. His mech the armor that he inherited from his father.

Enter the clans. A la Napolean, the inner sphere bands together... to combat this new technically superior foe the inner sphere is transformed from medievql kingdoms to modern nation states. They don't field lances anymore, battles are fought my multiple Regimental Combat Teams. That's one regiment of mechs (112 sh depending on command structure) three regiments of vehicles (1000 ish), 5 regiments of infantry and supporting artillery battalions and aerofighter wings.

Now you're no longer Sir. Galahad, your just another mechjock.

Also with the introduction of the clan forced renaissance and industrial revolution (over 15 years)...

Secondly clans promoted really lopsided power gaming. My Warhawk 3c made the atlas look like a big fat fish in a barrel. Everything from classic battletech was rendered irrelevant.

By 3060 the clans were irrelevant again (throw 5 RCTs at a clan and its over). But warfare was irrevocably changed in a way that made the game less interesting.

Then we have player problems. Start a discussion about mech design and inevitably everyone is either putting clantech on their IS mechs or just getting clan mechs. The elite inner sphere units were all clantech. Technology separation fell apart.

Battletech was Never realistic, ever. Still isn't (hint, warships win. Life is cheap. Exterminate the locals and you don't even need a garrison!). But the feel of it has changed dramatically and the clans were for many the impetus of that change.

And yes. The madcat (timberwolf), ryoken (stormcrow), masakari (warhawk) and Daishi (Dire wolf) are the best mechs in the game (the best fast mech is open to some debate. I say dragonfly, although its technically a medium). They are so unquestionably the best that its annoying when some kid just wants his super optimized mad cat .... not because it has any real flavor, but because its the best). (I actually agree that the mad cat is the best mech of all time-but I'd rather play with battlemasters and warhammers and phoenixhawks and all the wonderful variety that comes from old school.

TL; DR: Dislike of the clans is really veiled dislike of where the whole universe went after 3050.

An entirely unrelated issue is what will the clans do to MWO. First of all, what will be the reason to ever pilot anything but one of the best clan mechs. Every clan weapon is also literally better than the inner sphere version in every way. People are legitimately worried PGI might not balance this correctly. (Especially since they have announced 1:1 time progression.. Once clantech is in the game it will be available forever). Second, some mechs with good pilots can already one shot enemies in this game. What happens to gameplay when they can carry more weapons and move faster while dealing 50-100% more damag at longer range?

Its not hopeless. PGI might do lots of things. But there are also a thousand ways to screw it up... and that makes some of us really nervous.

[Dan Nashe]

P.S. I actually like the clans if done well. I'm usually a big defender of villains that are more powerful individually but have exploitable weaknesses. But it takes a lot of willpower to keep your inner munchkin in check.)

[Princeps Yarema]

MischiefSC, on 03 February 2013 - 09:01 AM, said:

-Snip-

You're kinda stretching it a bit. Look at the current involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US has, in total, about 400,000 personnel in it's entire armed force. A fraction is deployed. The death toll, after nine years, is some 6,000 Coalition soldiers vs. 4 million. Equipment and training does make a significant difference. Look at OP Restrepo - it was located in the Korengal valley, the deadliest valley in all of Afghanistan, occupying a main route of ingress from Pakistan. Who was guarding it? Basically a single platoon, 20-30 men. Their base as at the bottom of the mountain, meaning their foes had the high ground, all the time. They attacked, like you said, when the men were in the chow line, at night, in the morning, etc. But OP Restrepo never fell. They survived, and inflicted horrendous losses on the enemy.

Now replace those 30 soldiers with 30 Elementals. It's kinda hard to set up IED's when your enemy doesn't use roads, and instead jump packs everywhere. Same goes for targeting them with dumb-fire RPG's.

[Runenstahl]

The topic is: "Why do people DISLIKE the clans". Seems a lot of posters in this thread DO like 'em. So why post in here ?

Anyways, here's my reason to dislike them:

I really liked the "original" Battletech Universe (3025). The whole idea of "losttech". Many "named" mechs have actually malfunctioning parts that simply can't replaced for either lack of money or simply lack of access to the technology. It's a struggle to salvage enough spare parts to keep your unit running... the setting combined giant robot warfare with some king of post-apocalyptic downwards spiral in terms of technology. I REALLY liked that.

During the introduction of the clans this whole setting was changed: the inner sphere makes giant leaps forward in terms of technology and the clans are just over the top in all areas. From one moment to the next is wasn't "how do I keep my machine from falling apart" anymore, but "how do I make my machines faster, tougher and give it more firepower". That broke nearly everything of what made battletech interesting for me and the major "fault" for this goes to the introduction of the clans.

Like I said, that's MY reason to dislike them. I'm not saying that liking them is wrong. Everybody can have his own opinion. I just wish that BT would have stayed with an inner sphere losttech setting.

[Grizley]

To be fair, nobody with access to warship tech will fight a total war for long. The same way that nobody with the ability to deliver nukes will fight a total war for long.

Either you find a way to limit the conflict or you completely eliminate the enemy in a very very short period of time.

Total war between two clans that both have a fleet more than capable of killing every living thing on a planet in a matter of hours and no technology to prevent the same from happening to them? Not going to happen.

[Brenticus]

Grizley, on 26 February 2013 - 12:49 PM, said:

To be fair, nobody with access to warship tech will fight a total war for long. The same way that nobody with the ability to deliver nukes will fight a total war for long.

Either you find a way to limit the conflict or you completely eliminate the enemy in a very very short period of time.

Total war between two clans that both have a fleet more than capable of killing every living thing on a planet in a matter of hours and no technology to prevent the same from happening to them? Not going to happen.

There is validity in a MAD kind of mindset, but I still subscribe to Total War- at least during the big wars (like the Clan invasion and not some border disputes, etc.). But that's just me speaking for my own choice. The limited warfare of BT and extremely limited (by comparison) warfare of the Clans makes sense within its own universe. I just like to root for the guy closer to my own opinion on the best way to do things.

In the end, I just like what I see as the more practical side.

[Kenyon Burguess]

the inner sphere houses are bad dictatorships...the clans are space Nazis. I think the Wobbies had the right idea in nuking everyone and everything to clear it all out.

[Anony Mouse]

Stormwolf, on 03 February 2013 - 03:52 AM, said:

The Clans are actually less of a threat to the civilians since they fight away from civilian targets. The entire aspect of Clan warfare revolves around keeping them alive so they may serve the Clan that conquered them.

But its not as if they would hesitate to fire on civilians if it met their needs. See Turtle Bay.

Stormwolf, on 03 February 2013 - 03:52 AM, said:

The Inner Sphere is far less forgiving, they have been known to massacre entire populations. Guys like Hanse Davion are the worst of the lot, he gleefully announced that he'd invade the Capellan Confederation at his wedding. Quite a number of people had to die or get crippled for life for his wedding present.

Every House is capable of great benevolence and malevolence, except maybe Liao, it depends on which side of the border you're sitting on as to which any given act is seen as. The Clans however are entirely self serving, from the individual clanner all the way up to the society as a whole, they're entirely fixated on their own goals, to hell with anyone elses ambitions or beliefs. Furthermore they are fascist, socialist bigots, which is the main reason I dislike them in general, though they do make for a good villain.

Stormwolf, on 03 February 2013 - 03:52 AM, said:

The feudal societies of the Inner Sphere have people who are born into positions of power. They view themselves as a better type of breeding. The Clans on the other hand test people the second are born to see how they can serve the Clans.

Trust me, in the BT universe it pays to have the biggest badass for a leader.

This is a biased statement. Yes most successor houses operate under some form of nobility (technically the purple eagle nation isn't, though it may as well be). heres the catch though. In any of the great houses, you are born and you can opt to do stuff. Could be this stuff, could be that stuff, maybe you shoot for this stuff and fail so miserably all you can do is that stuff but its still a result of you're decision making processes. In the Clans you are born with the sole intent to be a Warrior, if you fail to be a warrior than you auto-fail at life, and will spend the rest of your existence performing an assigned task (no free will here) while at the same time being **** on by everyone because any caste but warrior caste means you're sub-human, also if you have parents, **** you freebirth! Bigotry anyone?

[guardian wolf]

Bishop Steiner, on 03 February 2013 - 05:43 AM, said:

test tube baby space-N-A-Z-I-S bent on galactic domination with all the personality of a Styrofoam brick.....

what's not to love?

(Cool toys tho)

*sighs* How many times must I say this.... CRUSADER MINDSET

MischiefSC, on 03 February 2013 - 06:59 AM, said:

The clans are The Great And Glorious Order of the Gary Stu in battletech.

They took a gritty, brutal game about the ruthlessness of humanity in warfare and introduced the super smart, super warrior clone babies of honor in combat, then gave them super-tech.

Any modern military, and I'm talking 21st century here, would have kicked the s**t out of the clans. It's a relative handful of soldiers with incredibly difficult to maintain battlefield weapons. Shoot them while they sleep, poison their food and water, sabotage their supply lines. What I find so insultingly stupid is that the IS keeps fielding mechs against them. Retreat from every field and save your gear. Do it with infantry, spies and assassins. Mechs or not the Clans wouldn't last 3 weeks in Afghanistan.

But no, some FASA development guy has to live out his compensation fantasy and crap all over an otherwise awesome game. The Clans are stupidly overpowered and then provided alongside some stupid behavioral nerfs to create this false sense of dichotomy.

I hope the Clans only make it into MWO as NPCs that we team up against. I fear however that it's not going to be the case. You'd be hard pressed to force a regular human to play as absolutely stupidly as a clanner would have to.

First off Clan Hell's Horses, look them up. Second off, Clan Wolf. Notice, how both were of the Warden philosophy, and didn't want the Invasion in the first place. We fought a trial of Refusal to try and stop it, and then fought a Refusal War to stop the second. Now, look at how Clan Wolf made so much progress. Their supply lines were much better than even the IS's, and also remember Wolf made it much better on the people, another reason why they didn't try all the aforementioned sabotaging.

MischiefSC, on 03 February 2013 - 09:01 AM, said:

Assassinations, sabotage, IEDs and that sort of warfare has been going on since there have been people in some form or another. We just have better media coverage of it now and western states are seeing it more. Ask the Soviets what they thought of Afghanistan in the 80s, they dealt with suicide bombers and IEDs.

The dramatic advantage of that is the war of attrition and that's where the clans would get walked all over. yes, they had infantry but not many. Same with mech warriors. Too few. Dealing with invasions of tiny nations of a few million people involves more soldiers and personnel then any of the clans fielded - how are they supposed to take and hold planets?

Let me put it to you this way - if, for example, the Clans showed up and invaded Earth with 50,000 soldiers how would that go? Mechs and Elementals or not. You don't sleep in your mech or your armor. Snipers, suicide attacks, carefully placed IEDs and sabotage and solid organization of the same would make a slaughter of it.

Spread that out among hundreds of worlds, heck even dozens of worlds. Each clan couldn't take and hold even a single planet not to mention a dozen. Too few.

It's this illusion that you can only fight people when they're ready to fight and in their mech/armor/whatever. No, you sneak one person who looks like a freeborn janitor in and he steals a crate of LRMs and detonates them in the Elementals barracks. Or he poisons the bottled water the Trueborn mechwarriors are getting. Or he just blows up their food and water supplies. Now they have to take what they can locally and that's a great way to get poisoned.

Honestly? It's this illusionary idea that just because someone is a tough soldier he is ALWAYS, at any time and no matter what, a match for 10 other people.

It doesn't work like that. A pair of 2 man sniper teams would kill half the elite mechwarriors of the clan force while they were in the chow line one morning, then fade and do it again next week.

That's what irks me about the whole thing. That in order to make it realistic at all you have to have this enforced stupidity where, really, all the KILLING only takes place in mechs and such. That nobody has to eat, go to the bathroom, get out and walk around, chat with friends or have down-time.

The Clans are a deus ex machina. They are utterly artificial in construct and only function in the fiction by pretending that somehow all the ways that any civilization out of the bronze age would kick their behinds just doesn't happen.

Remember what Smoke Jaguar did to that village after that happened? They went door to door, and if the perpetrator didn't surrender him/herself, which in and of itself is a coward move in this situation, they blew up the house, and went to the next one doing the same thing.

Stormwolf, on 03 February 2013 - 01:01 PM, said:

The Clans have better gear, the IS has the numbers.

IMO, the only viable matchup for MWO would be 5 Clan mechs vs 8 IS mechs.

Not really, the IS did not have numbers. In fact, their numbers were so spread out, that their numerical advantage was negated. Even then when the IS made a counteroffensive, which should have been doomed from the start, their numbers were not higher in any sense, its just that the Clans fielded less due to bidding.

[Koshirou]

Princeps Yarema, on 26 February 2013 - 12:18 PM, said:

Now replace those 30 soldiers with 30 Elementals. It's kinda hard to set up IED's when your enemy doesn't use roads, and instead jump packs everywhere. Same goes for targeting them with dumb-fire RPG's.

One problem with that analogy is that - if you use canonical troop and population numbers - you would not have 30 Elementals for one pass in Afghanistan. You would have at best one Elemental against the entire country. Or differently put, you'd have a single provisional garrison Cluster to pacify a world with billions of inhabitants and sufficient technology to equip thousands of light tank and infantry regiments.

Pre-Clans, you could cobble together a halfway plausible background for the BattleTech universe if you:
a) Assumed lower population numbers, in the millions or tens of millions, for most planets (see the Galtor Campaign) and possibly hundreds of millions for the "hubs".
Assumed that BattleMech forces are strictly a very small elite, whose role in an invasion is to strike as a highly mobile spaceborn armored spearhead, secure a landing zone and prepare shipping in masses of conventional forces to hold the ground. In the following ground campaign, BattleMechs would again use their superior mobility and highly concentrated force to strike at key points.

Post-Clans. actually post-4SW already, the invasion style where you land a few dozen Mechs on a planet of billions, the defender meets you with a few dozen Mechs on his own, you duke it out and the winner somehow controls said planet of billions, was set in stone along with the population numbers. There is no way to reconcile this with anything resembling the most basic of military or indeed common logic.

Just ask yourself the following question: Do you think that ~30 Clan 'Mechs and ~100 Elementals could conquer and control all of 2013 Earth's nations at once, with said nations all acting against the Clans? If you do, I'd be interested in your explanation just how that is supposed to work.

TL;DR: I don't like the Clans and other plot elements developed along with them because they destroyed the last hope of the BattleTech universe making any ******* sense.

Edited by Koshirou, 27 February 2013 - 08:59 AM.

[Damion Wolf]