Well, the Inner Sphere worldview of the Clan rules of engagement were modified by the scope at which they were introduced. In the initial Clan invasion, Clan Wolf was the only Warden clan, with the rest of the clans being Crusaders (who believed in conquering the Inner Sphere). Ghost Bear eventually becomes Warden and Wolf eventually becomes Crusader after Tukayyid, but during the initial invasion you had some of the most fanatic Clans leading the charge. Even Clan Steel Viper, added later along with the other "next in line" Clans, was pretty fanatic about Clan superiority. Clan Wolf and Nova Cat were a bit more flexible.
Post-Tukayyid, a lot of things changed within the Clans to make zellbringen more of an inter-Clan ritual and less of a weakness to exploit. But during the scope of the initial invasion and during the battle of Tukayyid itself, this advantage (along with C3 computers and combined arms) was one of the few things you could exploit as the Inner Sphere.
I personally love playing Inner Sphere versus Clan engagements on the tabletop, as you have to rely on tactical advantages and positional superiority to take out every Clan 'Mech. The best is when the Clan side isn't actively enforcing zellbringen, and you win anyway because they play their weapon-boat Omnimechs as if they were using the rules of engagement anyway, and eat artillery/missile fire to their deaths. Also, Gauss Rifles don't care if you are Clan or Inner Sphere, if you roll boxcars.
Taking a look at this at the moment: http://static.mwomercs.com/ (the ARG somebody posted just a few posts back).
Doesn't seem to work, at least for me. White background with white text, so I have to highlight everything to see anything at all. Any ideas what's wrong or if it's supposed to be that way? I have only the barest tolerance for ARGs as it is; I really, really hate when devs play games with info instead of just releasing it.
Apparently it only works with Chrome. Nobody seems to have extracted anything especially interesting out of it, though.
Well, the Inner Sphere worldview of the Clan rules of engagement were modified by the scope at which they were introduced. In the initial Clan invasion, Clan Wolf was the only Warden clan, with the rest of the clans being Crusaders (who believed in conquering the Inner Sphere). Ghost Bear eventually becomes Warden and Wolf eventually becomes Crusader after Tukayyid, but during the initial invasion you had some of the most fanatic Clans leading the charge. Even Clan Steel Viper, added later along with the other "next in line" Clans, was pretty fanatic about Clan superiority. Clan Wolf and Nova Cat were a bit more flexible.
Post-Tukayyid, a lot of things changed within the Clans to make zellbringen more of an inter-Clan ritual and less of a weakness to exploit. But during the scope of the initial invasion and during the battle of Tukayyid itself, this advantage (along with C3 computers and combined arms) was one of the few things you could exploit as the Inner Sphere.
I personally love playing Inner Sphere versus Clan engagements on the tabletop, as you have to rely on tactical advantages and positional superiority to take out every Clan 'Mech. The best is when the Clan side isn't actively enforcing zellbringen, and you win anyway because they play their weapon-boat Omnimechs as if they were using the rules of engagement anyway, and eat artillery/missile fire to their deaths. Also, Gauss Rifles don't care if you are Clan or Inner Sphere, if you roll boxcars.
Wolf was absolutely not the only Warden clan. They were the only Warden clan participating in the invasion. Coyote, for example, was staunchly warden as well and possibly helped structure the way Wolf snuck control of the invasion in an attempt to reign in the Crusader clans. And Wolf didn't really go Crusader, per se. A good chunk of the clan turned inner sphere and abandoned the half of the clan that was crusader, which was then taken over by Jade Falcon.
As to the comment about Sarna: Yeah, nothing is a "definitive" source. There was a LOT of source material thrown out. Sarna pulls mostly from a lot of RPG documents that went into more detail than some of the other stuff. Really depends on what you consider "definitive."
Well, duh, they weren't the only Warden clan (My quote: "In the initial Clan invasion, Clan Wolf was the only Warden clan" could be interpreted ambiguously, I guess). And Warden/Crusader status did not necessarily factor into how well a Clan sticks to the rules of engagement.
The point wasn't "WHO'S CRUSADER NAO??" The point is that the scope of the Clan invasion narrows the concept of zellbringen at that point in time to the handful of clans that actually invaded. Because of this, the IS was allowed to exploit it to a greater degree (along with other weaknesses, such as cutting off supply lines), mostly because the invaders were aggressive saber-rattlers.
Actually, I wonder how well a batchall process would work for a theoretical clan player, having to underbid against other stars for the right to actually play a match
Taking a look at this at the moment: http://static.mwomercs.com/ (the ARG somebody posted just a few posts back).
Doesn't seem to work, at least for me. White background with white text, so I have to highlight everything to see anything at all. Any ideas what's wrong or if it's supposed to be that way? I have only the barest tolerance for ARGs as it is; I really, really hate when devs play games with info instead of just releasing it.
Apparently it only works with Chrome. Nobody seems to have extracted anything especially interesting out of it, though.
...this is a fair approximation of how I imagine ComStar's systems actually working, or at least how they imagined them working when BT was created in the 1980's!
In the grim future of the 31st century, there is only COMMAND LINES.
HPG technology couldn't be too intuitive and user-friendly or they never would have been able to maintain their monopoly.
In any case, I really don't have the patience for ARGs, but it's nice to see them making an effort.
One, the Succesor States are vast empires covering dozens if not hundreds of planets. Standardizing production over such distances can't be easy.
Actually, the logistics involved in supplying spare parts and such over those kinds of distances would be just another argument in favor of standardization, IMO.
And things like ammunition appear to be pretty standard, AFAIK.
Eh, I doubt they "really" are. I think ammo is just standardized as a convenient abstraction because nobody wants to keep track of a thousand different ammunition types. Easier to treat, for example, all AC/10 ammo the same, even if there are sources that refer to one AC/10 firing single 120mm shells and another firing bursts of smaller rounds, etc.
Still, I can't think of any novel were it actually comes up that they have ammo for one type of autocannon, but not another.
As for zellbringen, it is pretty widely inconsistent between sources honestly. Like, there's a core idea about sticking to one on one engagements and not using melee combat that usually adhered to, but then you look at shit like Legend of the Jade Phoenix and shooting your sibkin in the back in the middle of a Trial of Position is totally kosher.
But maybe that's just Jade Falcons being fucking nuts.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
One, the Succesor States are vast empires covering dozens if not hundreds of planets. Standardizing production over such distances can't be easy.
Actually, the logistics involved in supplying spare parts and such over those kinds of distances would be just another argument in favor of standardization, IMO.
That's not actually what happened historically in wartime economies, a STZ factory T34 is different to a CTZ factory T34 in enough details that parts were not transferable between individual tanks. You'll get this during the peacetime 80s with Czechoslovakia T72s having better fit and finish than Russian manufactured T72s but have downgraded armour fillers.
Different M4 built at different factories across the US were different enough that they received designations such as M4, M4A1, M4A2, M4A3, M4A4, denoting different engines (diesel, petrol), different armour welded/cast and the Army was terribly careful at making sure units received the same types as replacements and parts.
Germans are worse where the Alkett and Vomag factories manufacturing the the Jadgpazer IV/70 are actually different vehicles sharing only the chassis and gun. Vomag was a purpose built chassis, alkett just welded a box on top of a chassis that should have mounted a PIV turret.
This is before you get into issues such as individual factory variance within such as pacific car and Foundry M4a1 cast armour being softer than M4a1 cast armour from Pressed steels factories which obstinately are the same "tank" but end up having different protection values because the individual factories have different quality control.
These factories were in the same countries with various levels of centralised control and procurement. I don't think galaxy spanning "empires" would be very successful at standardising across factories separated by actual space and drawing on raw materials from different planets.
Bastable on
Philippe about the tactical deployment of german Kradschützen during the battle of Kursk:
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Yes, all that is a point fairly made, but what you're describing is variance occurring due to unintentional manufacturing process quirks and corner-cutting expediency. In BattleTech, we see militaries producing many different types of equipment all filling the same role by choice.
We're not talking about, for example, Hunchbacks made on one planet having slightly better-shielded comms than those made on another, or certain specific production runs of Marauder having weak knee actuators because there was a shortage and they had to subcontract out to another company to supply them - although I'm sure things like that probably "happen" in the BT universe or would if the rules delved far enough into minutiae to cover them.
No, to make an analogy to your example, I contend that what happens in the BattleTech universe would be like the US Army during World War II willingly ordering full production runs of, say, five other types of medium tank in addition to the M4, all with roughly comparable performance and basically the same battlefield role, and having them all coming off the lines and in service concurrently, and mixed together in units at the lowest organizational level.
Yes, all that is a point fairly made, but what you're describing is variance occurring due to unintentional manufacturing process quirks and corner-cutting expediency. In BattleTech, we see militaries producing many different types of equipment all filling the same role by choice.
We're not talking about, for example, Hunchbacks made on one planet having slightly better-shielded comms than those made on another, or certain specific production runs of Marauder having weak knee actuators because there was a shortage and they had to subcontract out to another company to supply them - although I'm sure things like that probably "happen" in the BT universe or would if the rules delved far enough into minutiae to cover them.
No, to make an analogy to your example, I contend that what happens in the BattleTech universe would be like the US Army during World War II willingly ordering full production runs of, say, five other types of medium tank in addition to the M4, all with roughly comparable performance and basically the same battlefield role, and having them all coming off the lines and in service concurrently, and mixed together in units at the lowest organizational level.
No, the Star League would usually deploy things much more rationally - lances or companies of the same mech. And as TRO 2750 shows there were relatively few designs. There are several reasons for modern-day heterogeneity.
a) Scarcity - you use every mech you have out there on the field, even if it means you don't have a rational supply system.
b) Many different buyers - the star league, successor house militaries, planetary militia, nobles, mercenaries, and periphery states. They all have different budgets and purchasing requirements.
c) Lots of worlds - with many different buyers and, pre-succession wars, lots of supply, many people were making mechs and tanks. Consider for example all the different kinds of tanks put out in the last 50 years on planet earth. The Inner Sphere has trillions and trillions of people and even in a battered state there were plenty of factories. With different decision-makers at each factory, corporation, procurement office, you'll see lots of designs, some of which duplicate sometimes.
d) Salvage - lots of non-standard designs appear from roughly three centuries of battlefield salvage, defections and mercenary travel.
I think you also assume a lot about deployment. Just because there are many different kinds of mechs doesn't mean they're equally distributed. Many models are heavily weighted in one house. What you didn't discuss with that davion RAT you sent was that on a 2d6 roll, the distributions are unevenly weighted. So certain of those mechs (falconers, caesars, jagermechs, cataphracts) are much, much more common than some family heirloom outliers.
Furthermore, random distributions likely aren't probative either. If you check out the Liao 3025 house book for example, you'll see that units have 1-4 common or preferred mechs - even if at the successor-house level there's a smattering of designs, you'll see designs concentrated in units for logistics reasons. Even the RAT you shared indicates that, because only one of those designations - A through F - apply to one unit. So an A level unit only has nine potential heavy designs - Cataphract, Caesar, JagerMech, Cestus, Falconer, Penetrator, Rakshasha, Gallowglas, and the Helios. That's overstating it b/c A level units have the most chassis options, but lets' engage in some back of the envelope math and extrapolate, and say at most then a unit has 36 designs in it. Assuming an even distribution from a regiment with command company, that's 3-4 mechs per chassis per regiment. Maybe it makes more sense to have it at 8-12, but it's not that crazy. And it would likely be less than an even distribution.
Yeah, I think in reality you'd probably see something much more like omnimechs - or at least only 2-8 chassis with different weapons profiles. But assuming that isn't feasible for some reason then what's going on isn't that weird.
No, the Star League would usually deploy things much more rationally - lances or companies of the same mech.
According to some sources, true.
And as TRO 2750 shows there were relatively few designs.
TRO2750 is by no means comprehensive of everything in use during Star League times, though. You're forgetting the majority of the TRO3025 'mechs have models dating back at least that far, and there are scads of 'mechs in later sourcebooks that had fluff text to place their original models in the Star League era as well. Even the Star League tables on the PDF you linked reflects this to some extent.
I think you also assume a lot about deployment. Just because there are many different kinds of mechs doesn't mean they're equally distributed. Many models are heavily weighted in one house. What you didn't discuss with that davion RAT you sent was that on a 2d6 roll, the distributions are unevenly weighted. So certain of those mechs (falconers, caesars, jagermechs, cataphracts) are much, much more common than some family heirloom outliers.
Sure, some designs are much more common than others. That doesn't change my point. I would argue that the tables are simplifying the variety that probably exists based on other sources and the real outliers don't even make it on the tables at all.
Yeah, I think in reality you'd probably see something much more like omnimechs - or at least only 2-8 chassis with different weapons profiles. But assuming that isn't feasible for some reason then what's going on isn't that weird.
Sure, but I would argue that all of the reasons for why it's not feasible, though some are to an extent valid, are made up after the fact to try to justify that militaries in the BT universe have a ridiculous variety of equipment - the real reason for it being that, again, you can't have too many giant war robots in your giant war robot game. There's a need to keep things fresh in a tabletop game just as much as there will be in a video game - and thus TRO after TRO full of shiny new 'mechs, which will (hopefully) eventually lead to patch after patch adding shiny new 'mechs to MWO. 8-)
Gaslight on
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
No, the Star League would usually deploy things much more rationally - lances or companies of the same mech.
According to some sources, true.
And as TRO 2750 shows there were relatively few designs.
TRO2750 is by no means comprehensive of everything in use during Star League times, though. You're forgetting the majority of the TRO3025 'mechs have models dating back at least that far, and there are scads of 'mechs in later sourcebooks that had fluff text to place their original models in the Star League era as well. Even the Star League tables on the PDF you linked reflects this to some extent.
I think you also assume a lot about deployment. Just because there are many different kinds of mechs doesn't mean they're equally distributed. Many models are heavily weighted in one house. What you didn't discuss with that davion RAT you sent was that on a 2d6 roll, the distributions are unevenly weighted. So certain of those mechs (falconers, caesars, jagermechs, cataphracts) are much, much more common than some family heirloom outliers.
Sure, some designs are much more common than others. That doesn't change my point. I would argue that the tables are only simplifying the variety that probably exists based on other sources and the real outliers don't even make it on the tables at all.
I just don't think the deployment scheme is "insane" because chassis types are concentrated more than the RATs would suggest. The more important point about the Star League is that they would deploy units uniformly in lance-company size chunks for the reasons you describe. Lots of the 3025-era mechs were not used in front-line SL formations and were brought out of mothballs or second-line deployments to serve in the succession wars out of necessity.
I agree that there's more diversity out there than the RATs, and units will have weird outliers - but that's a function of necessity in part, the proliferation of manufacturers in part, and is less crazy-sounding when you realize even if there's a wide variety of units they are deployed in a concentrated fashion. A successor state, given its size and complexity, isn't like the United States fielding a bajillion different medium tank designs in WWII, it's like the allies in WWII each fielding a variety of tanks.
kaliyama on
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
The Star League was around for a long time. More than enough to account for many designs having been made as new better models were invented.
It's also possible that it's not cost efficient to change a mech factory from one chassis to another. So if you have a factory that produces Atlases, and you come up with a new idea for something called a Zeus, you just build a whole new factory because it's cheaper. And thus the Atlas factory is still there ready to keep making Atlases.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
The Star League was around for a long time. More than enough to account for many designs having been made as new better models were invented.
It's also possible that it's not cost efficient to change a mech factory from one chassis to another. So if you have a factory that produces Atlases, and you come up with a new idea for something called a Zeus, you just build a whole new factory because it's cheaper. And thus the Atlas factory is still there ready to keep making Atlases.
The real issue is that the Inner Sphere was barely able to maintain its factories, let alone build new ones. As a result there were only a handful of new mech designs produced in the 2nd-4th succession wars, and the new designs were mostly produced by retooling existing lines. I think maybe it would have made sense to everybody to convert all of the Atlas lines to making Zeuses or visa versa, but they lacked the technological ability to do so.
Like, the Valkyrie line on New Avalon can spit out 130 Valkyries a year in 3025, but from the OG 3025 TRO: "the continued operation of Corean Enterprises depends upon several other key industries. Components such as fusion reactors and sensor helmets are still produced by completely automated plants, using technology that is no longer understood. These old and worn plants often break down, which means the day may come when it is no longer possible to repair malfunctioning equipment. When the supply of ultra-high technological parts needed by each 'Mech runs out, Corean Enterprises will be forced to end production.
One, the Succesor States are vast empires covering dozens if not hundreds of planets. Standardizing production over such distances can't be easy.
Actually, the logistics involved in supplying spare parts and such over those kinds of distances would be just another argument in favor of standardization, IMO.
That's not actually what happened historically in wartime economies, a STZ factory T34 is different to a CTZ factory T34 in enough details that parts were not transferable between individual tanks. You'll get this during the peacetime 80s with Czechoslovakia T72s having better fit and finish than Russian manufactured T72s but have downgraded armour fillers.
Different M4 built at different factories across the US were different enough that they received designations such as M4, M4A1, M4A2, M4A3, M4A4, denoting different engines (diesel, petrol), different armour welded/cast and the Army was terribly careful at making sure units received the same types as replacements and parts.
Germans are worse where the Alkett and Vomag factories manufacturing the the Jadgpazer IV/70 are actually different vehicles sharing only the chassis and gun. Vomag was a purpose built chassis, alkett just welded a box on top of a chassis that should have mounted a PIV turret.
This is before you get into issues such as individual factory variance within such as pacific car and Foundry M4a1 cast armour being softer than M4a1 cast armour from Pressed steels factories which obstinately are the same "tank" but end up having different protection values because the individual factories have different quality control.
These factories were in the same countries with various levels of centralised control and procurement. I don't think galaxy spanning "empires" would be very successful at standardising across factories separated by actual space and drawing on raw materials from different planets.
I imagine the M60s I saw in the ROCA (Taiwan) don't necessarily accept all upgrades made available to Patton tank. Especially the older ones. Those things didn't look so good.
Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries got it right. A clan AC/10 doesn't take IS ammunition. So suck it up.
Honestly, given what I've read, prior to the the Clan Invasion, I'd be shocked of the average IS AC/10 took a good 30% of the AC/10 ammunition available.
Synthesis on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 2012
Frankly, that's exactly the kind of stuff I'm glad didn't ever come up. There's nothing like drowning something in so much minutiae that everything becomes completely non-functional because you need a staff of people to keep track of it. IS and Clan ammo types not being compatible covers the whole "tedious details" angle just fine.
Though strategically, making your mechs use a slightly different ammunition than an invading force would use would be advantageous; you could use all their captured ammo for their captured mechs, but you control the supply of ammo for any mechs they capture. And if they refit, that's a costly procedure unto itself, further depriving them of war resources.
I think the variant that uses LLs instead of PPCs just adds more heatsinks.
Correct.
The 3050 Marik variant has two large pulse lasers, two medium pulse lasers, and an LB-10X. It also jumps. It's not bad. My personal favorite 3050 variant is the Steiner one, though. Still light on armor, but packs two ER PPCs, two medium pulse lasers, and a guass rifle. Nasty.
Yeah I remember there being some quality Marauder variants out there. I suppose with the way the rules are setup the game will have the pulse lasers and double heatsinks from the start, which is probably the popular way to go but makes me sad. The 3025 tech is a completely different animal from the 3050/Star League tech, and it would be awesome to see the progression. I am curious as to how they will represent the improved accuracy of the pulse lasers, or if they'll just give them more damage instead as a way of compensating for the difference between board game and video game rules.
Yeah, it wouldn't be possible for them to tweak with accuracy considering how they're handling direct fire weaponry. My guess would be +damage as well.
Actually, they could implement the accuracy bonus- just shorten the beam time. Same damage, now dealt to a more specific location.
I think I'd favor doing something to increase the ratio of time spent firing to time spent recharging, whether that be done by firing in actual pulses or just reducing the recharge time (or some combination). Balance them to do a little more DPS than regular lasers at the cost of heat efficiency, and with shorter range - all of which is consistent with the tabletop rules. That would make them pretty good weapons for fighting lights and fast mediums, as you'd get more total beam time directed at your (small, agile, hard to hit) target. The shorter range and worse heat efficiency should make them less attractive for use against bigger, slower targets, though.
I am figuring the early level 2 tech like double heat sinks and pulse lasers will be in the game from the start (reports from the beta bear that out, I believe) but will be more expensive/difficult to acquire.
Yes, all that is a point fairly made, but what you're describing is variance occurring due to unintentional manufacturing process quirks and corner-cutting expediency. In BattleTech, we see militaries producing many different types of equipment all filling the same role by choice.
We're not talking about, for example, Hunchbacks made on one planet having slightly better-shielded comms than those made on another, or certain specific production runs of Marauder having weak knee actuators because there was a shortage and they had to subcontract out to another company to supply them - although I'm sure things like that probably "happen" in the BT universe or would if the rules delved far enough into minutiae to cover them.
No, to make an analogy to your example, I contend that what happens in the BattleTech universe would be like the US Army during World War II willingly ordering full production runs of, say, five other types of medium tank in addition to the M4, all with roughly comparable performance and basically the same battlefield role, and having them all coming off the lines and in service concurrently, and mixed together in units at the lowest organizational level.
The Germans actully did this during the war.
41 you have in tank coy's PIII, P38, P35, PIV,
By 44 med tank coy's have StuG III/IV, Jadpz IV/70 (a), PIV, Panther. they even manage to mix them down at section level with the smaller and smaller battlegroups they ran.
The soviet union in the 80s ran with T64/72/80. The broken up soviet union (Russia/Ukraine)and the pact members such as Poland and chezh still have varying capabilities of building various flavors of T64/72/80/84/90. All variants and iterations of Soviet procurement requests for small 125mm tank with auto loader.
I think the blaknisation of tanks and factories of the SU/PACT mirrors on a smaller scale the profusion of types you see in the IS. This is even more apparent with all the updated reserve equipment they have floating around like the 55s 62s and even 69 era T34s (these things were used in Bosnia in the 90s).
Philippe about the tactical deployment of german Kradschützen during the battle of Kursk:
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
Yes, all that is a point fairly made, but what you're describing is variance occurring due to unintentional manufacturing process quirks and corner-cutting expediency. In BattleTech, we see militaries producing many different types of equipment all filling the same role by choice.
We're not talking about, for example, Hunchbacks made on one planet having slightly better-shielded comms than those made on another, or certain specific production runs of Marauder having weak knee actuators because there was a shortage and they had to subcontract out to another company to supply them - although I'm sure things like that probably "happen" in the BT universe or would if the rules delved far enough into minutiae to cover them.
No, to make an analogy to your example, I contend that what happens in the BattleTech universe would be like the US Army during World War II willingly ordering full production runs of, say, five other types of medium tank in addition to the M4, all with roughly comparable performance and basically the same battlefield role, and having them all coming off the lines and in service concurrently, and mixed together in units at the lowest organizational level.
The Germans actully did this during the war.
41 you have in tank coy's PIII, P38, P35, PIV,
By 44 med tank coy's have StuG III/IV, Jadpz IV/70 (a), PIV, Panther. they even manage to mix them down at section level with the smaller and smaller battlegroups they ran.
The soviet union in the 80s ran with T64/72/80. The broken up soviet union (Russia/Ukraine)and the pact members such as Poland and chezh still have varying capabilities of building various flavors of T64/72/80/84/90. All variants and iterations of Soviet procurement requests for small 125mm tank with auto loader.
I think the blaknisation of tanks and factories of the SU/PACT mirrors on a smaller scale the profusion of types you see in the IS. This is even more apparent with all the updated reserve equipment they have floating around like the 55s 62s and even 69 era T34s (these things were used in Bosnia in the 90s).
It doesn't change the essence of what you say, but only Russia and Ukraine had the ability to manufacture T-64 and T-80s (being technological descendants--Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Russia, anyway). At Omsk and Kharkiv, if I'm remembering right. I might have been misunderstanding you, but the T-64 and T-80 weren't exported until post-1992, and even then, not that widely exported outside the CIS (mostly Cyprus, with a few models in South Korea). I only know this because the T-80U is a favorite of mine from a technology/historic standpoint. Plus the ones Cyprus has looked far more badass then they have any right to, heh.
Otherwise, Bast hit the nail on the head, I think. To this day, if I'm not mistaken, a number of T-72 factories still exist, but they all depend on inventories of parts manufactured in Russia proper (no longer in Ukraine, though they do have reserve stocks, not to mention large numbers of complete, unused tanks), which they actually get with few problems in relation to how many tanks they want to update or, in a few very rare cases, actually manufacture (importing modernized models, including old "export" variants, from Russia is still way more common). And we're talking about Eurasian, where aside from the USSR becoming the CIS, the borders have very barely changed. Poland is still Poland. It does not include West Belarus. Czechoslovakia split, as did Yugoslavia, but there's not much else.
Meanwhile, the IS seems to have hilarious numbers of factory worlds on the major house borders, which change hands more than a few times over the course of a century or more. Plus, at least from what I remember, the culture/society of the IS seems to, for a long time, have a strict rejection of any sort of modern, practical, exam-based bureaucracy on a house-wide level (even House Liao, the "Chinese" house, falls behind in this, and China invented the exam-based professional bureaucracy) in the same way they reject combined arms warfare from the 20th/21st century until war forces them to adopt it. There's a very anti-bureaucratic attitude at the top (not the local planetary, I think), but those might be outdated sources I'm thinking of. It's a logistical nightmare, right?
I think the Lyrans are actually the most advanced logistically, being the rich merchant empire country and loving to solve every problem by throwing assault mechs at it.
But yeah, consider that until the Fourth Succession war, everyone believed that a systemic military advance across space was impossible.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I am figuring the early level 2 tech like double heat sinks and pulse lasers will be in the game from the start (reports from the beta bear that out, I believe) but will be more expensive/difficult to acquire.
According to the released equipment list, practically every technology that should be allowed in this time will be. I'd imagine all the advanced equipment will be limited in access somehow.
I'm so psyched for this game I decided to replay MW4 Mercs. I'm impressed with how well the game holds to canon, honestly. One of the Lyran endings is actually going and getting the Wolves to bail Katrina out at the end (and it's a bitch of a mission that I ended up cheesing with a Marauder II using just a Railgun and a Plasma Cannon). And they all seem to be foreshadowing the Jihad at the end.
On the one hand, I want MWO to be so successful it actually makes it to the Jihad era.
On the other hand, that means acknowledging the Jihad is a thing that exists.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
I lost track of the Mechwarrior fiction before the Jihad came up. How bad was it?
I lost track of the Mechwarrior fiction before the Jihad came up. How bad was it?
Not only does every established character start acting like an idiot, but Word of Blake has legions of secret armies and secret space ships and shit, enough to fight and beat literally every faction in the setting. Any complaint about other factions being Mary Sues basically pales in comparison to the Wobbies ability to defy all reason and logic.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
hey now, I ran a Wobbie unit in a few leagues back in the day. :P We also played up the jihadist mentality a good bit, to the point where we were quite dissapointed when they removed high explosives in mercs.
The Jihad really wasn't too bad in theory, it was how they worked out everything afterward that was... left lacking. Disabling the hpg uplink, using nukes, etc. was a nice way to shake up the area after all the Clans stuff was all but settled, but it was too much of a change to a well-established IP to take all at once.
I want to see how they continue working the stories and such up to and following launch. I think it'd be awesome to see some of the advances and such made by the players rolled up into the lore of the game.
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Post-Tukayyid, a lot of things changed within the Clans to make zellbringen more of an inter-Clan ritual and less of a weakness to exploit. But during the scope of the initial invasion and during the battle of Tukayyid itself, this advantage (along with C3 computers and combined arms) was one of the few things you could exploit as the Inner Sphere.
I personally love playing Inner Sphere versus Clan engagements on the tabletop, as you have to rely on tactical advantages and positional superiority to take out every Clan 'Mech. The best is when the Clan side isn't actively enforcing zellbringen, and you win anyway because they play their weapon-boat Omnimechs as if they were using the rules of engagement anyway, and eat artillery/missile fire to their deaths. Also, Gauss Rifles don't care if you are Clan or Inner Sphere, if you roll boxcars.
Apparently it only works with Chrome. Nobody seems to have extracted anything especially interesting out of it, though.
Wolf was absolutely not the only Warden clan. They were the only Warden clan participating in the invasion. Coyote, for example, was staunchly warden as well and possibly helped structure the way Wolf snuck control of the invasion in an attempt to reign in the Crusader clans. And Wolf didn't really go Crusader, per se. A good chunk of the clan turned inner sphere and abandoned the half of the clan that was crusader, which was then taken over by Jade Falcon.
As to the comment about Sarna: Yeah, nothing is a "definitive" source. There was a LOT of source material thrown out. Sarna pulls mostly from a lot of RPG documents that went into more detail than some of the other stuff. Really depends on what you consider "definitive."
The point wasn't "WHO'S CRUSADER NAO??" The point is that the scope of the Clan invasion narrows the concept of zellbringen at that point in time to the handful of clans that actually invaded. Because of this, the IS was allowed to exploit it to a greater degree (along with other weaknesses, such as cutting off supply lines), mostly because the invaders were aggressive saber-rattlers.
...this is a fair approximation of how I imagine ComStar's systems actually working, or at least how they imagined them working when BT was created in the 1980's!
In the grim future of the 31st century, there is only COMMAND LINES.
HPG technology couldn't be too intuitive and user-friendly or they never would have been able to maintain their monopoly.
In any case, I really don't have the patience for ARGs, but it's nice to see them making an effort.
Still, I can't think of any novel were it actually comes up that they have ammo for one type of autocannon, but not another.
As for zellbringen, it is pretty widely inconsistent between sources honestly. Like, there's a core idea about sticking to one on one engagements and not using melee combat that usually adhered to, but then you look at shit like Legend of the Jade Phoenix and shooting your sibkin in the back in the middle of a Trial of Position is totally kosher.
But maybe that's just Jade Falcons being fucking nuts.
That's not actually what happened historically in wartime economies, a STZ factory T34 is different to a CTZ factory T34 in enough details that parts were not transferable between individual tanks. You'll get this during the peacetime 80s with Czechoslovakia T72s having better fit and finish than Russian manufactured T72s but have downgraded armour fillers.
Different M4 built at different factories across the US were different enough that they received designations such as M4, M4A1, M4A2, M4A3, M4A4, denoting different engines (diesel, petrol), different armour welded/cast and the Army was terribly careful at making sure units received the same types as replacements and parts.
Germans are worse where the Alkett and Vomag factories manufacturing the the Jadgpazer IV/70 are actually different vehicles sharing only the chassis and gun. Vomag was a purpose built chassis, alkett just welded a box on top of a chassis that should have mounted a PIV turret.
This is before you get into issues such as individual factory variance within such as pacific car and Foundry M4a1 cast armour being softer than M4a1 cast armour from Pressed steels factories which obstinately are the same "tank" but end up having different protection values because the individual factories have different quality control.
These factories were in the same countries with various levels of centralised control and procurement. I don't think galaxy spanning "empires" would be very successful at standardising across factories separated by actual space and drawing on raw materials from different planets.
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
We're not talking about, for example, Hunchbacks made on one planet having slightly better-shielded comms than those made on another, or certain specific production runs of Marauder having weak knee actuators because there was a shortage and they had to subcontract out to another company to supply them - although I'm sure things like that probably "happen" in the BT universe or would if the rules delved far enough into minutiae to cover them.
No, to make an analogy to your example, I contend that what happens in the BattleTech universe would be like the US Army during World War II willingly ordering full production runs of, say, five other types of medium tank in addition to the M4, all with roughly comparable performance and basically the same battlefield role, and having them all coming off the lines and in service concurrently, and mixed together in units at the lowest organizational level.
No, the Star League would usually deploy things much more rationally - lances or companies of the same mech. And as TRO 2750 shows there were relatively few designs. There are several reasons for modern-day heterogeneity.
a) Scarcity - you use every mech you have out there on the field, even if it means you don't have a rational supply system.
b) Many different buyers - the star league, successor house militaries, planetary militia, nobles, mercenaries, and periphery states. They all have different budgets and purchasing requirements.
c) Lots of worlds - with many different buyers and, pre-succession wars, lots of supply, many people were making mechs and tanks. Consider for example all the different kinds of tanks put out in the last 50 years on planet earth. The Inner Sphere has trillions and trillions of people and even in a battered state there were plenty of factories. With different decision-makers at each factory, corporation, procurement office, you'll see lots of designs, some of which duplicate sometimes.
d) Salvage - lots of non-standard designs appear from roughly three centuries of battlefield salvage, defections and mercenary travel.
I think you also assume a lot about deployment. Just because there are many different kinds of mechs doesn't mean they're equally distributed. Many models are heavily weighted in one house. What you didn't discuss with that davion RAT you sent was that on a 2d6 roll, the distributions are unevenly weighted. So certain of those mechs (falconers, caesars, jagermechs, cataphracts) are much, much more common than some family heirloom outliers.
This table is much better and is probabilty-weighted.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/357573/3028-3050 Faction Assignment & Rarity Tables 8.2.pdf
Furthermore, random distributions likely aren't probative either. If you check out the Liao 3025 house book for example, you'll see that units have 1-4 common or preferred mechs - even if at the successor-house level there's a smattering of designs, you'll see designs concentrated in units for logistics reasons. Even the RAT you shared indicates that, because only one of those designations - A through F - apply to one unit. So an A level unit only has nine potential heavy designs - Cataphract, Caesar, JagerMech, Cestus, Falconer, Penetrator, Rakshasha, Gallowglas, and the Helios. That's overstating it b/c A level units have the most chassis options, but lets' engage in some back of the envelope math and extrapolate, and say at most then a unit has 36 designs in it. Assuming an even distribution from a regiment with command company, that's 3-4 mechs per chassis per regiment. Maybe it makes more sense to have it at 8-12, but it's not that crazy. And it would likely be less than an even distribution.
Yeah, I think in reality you'd probably see something much more like omnimechs - or at least only 2-8 chassis with different weapons profiles. But assuming that isn't feasible for some reason then what's going on isn't that weird.
According to some sources, true.
TRO2750 is by no means comprehensive of everything in use during Star League times, though. You're forgetting the majority of the TRO3025 'mechs have models dating back at least that far, and there are scads of 'mechs in later sourcebooks that had fluff text to place their original models in the Star League era as well. Even the Star League tables on the PDF you linked reflects this to some extent.
Sure, some designs are much more common than others. That doesn't change my point. I would argue that the tables are simplifying the variety that probably exists based on other sources and the real outliers don't even make it on the tables at all.
Sure, but I would argue that all of the reasons for why it's not feasible, though some are to an extent valid, are made up after the fact to try to justify that militaries in the BT universe have a ridiculous variety of equipment - the real reason for it being that, again, you can't have too many giant war robots in your giant war robot game. There's a need to keep things fresh in a tabletop game just as much as there will be in a video game - and thus TRO after TRO full of shiny new 'mechs, which will (hopefully) eventually lead to patch after patch adding shiny new 'mechs to MWO. 8-)
I just don't think the deployment scheme is "insane" because chassis types are concentrated more than the RATs would suggest. The more important point about the Star League is that they would deploy units uniformly in lance-company size chunks for the reasons you describe. Lots of the 3025-era mechs were not used in front-line SL formations and were brought out of mothballs or second-line deployments to serve in the succession wars out of necessity.
I agree that there's more diversity out there than the RATs, and units will have weird outliers - but that's a function of necessity in part, the proliferation of manufacturers in part, and is less crazy-sounding when you realize even if there's a wide variety of units they are deployed in a concentrated fashion. A successor state, given its size and complexity, isn't like the United States fielding a bajillion different medium tank designs in WWII, it's like the allies in WWII each fielding a variety of tanks.
i want more DOS functionality then.
try formating it
It's also possible that it's not cost efficient to change a mech factory from one chassis to another. So if you have a factory that produces Atlases, and you come up with a new idea for something called a Zeus, you just build a whole new factory because it's cheaper. And thus the Atlas factory is still there ready to keep making Atlases.
The real issue is that the Inner Sphere was barely able to maintain its factories, let alone build new ones. As a result there were only a handful of new mech designs produced in the 2nd-4th succession wars, and the new designs were mostly produced by retooling existing lines. I think maybe it would have made sense to everybody to convert all of the Atlas lines to making Zeuses or visa versa, but they lacked the technological ability to do so.
Like, the Valkyrie line on New Avalon can spit out 130 Valkyries a year in 3025, but from the OG 3025 TRO: "the continued operation of Corean Enterprises depends upon several other key industries. Components such as fusion reactors and sensor helmets are still produced by completely automated plants, using technology that is no longer understood. These old and worn plants often break down, which means the day may come when it is no longer possible to repair malfunctioning equipment. When the supply of ultra-high technological parts needed by each 'Mech runs out, Corean Enterprises will be forced to end production.
I imagine the M60s I saw in the ROCA (Taiwan) don't necessarily accept all upgrades made available to Patton tank. Especially the older ones. Those things didn't look so good.
Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries got it right. A clan AC/10 doesn't take IS ammunition. So suck it up.
Honestly, given what I've read, prior to the the Clan Invasion, I'd be shocked of the average IS AC/10 took a good 30% of the AC/10 ammunition available.
Though strategically, making your mechs use a slightly different ammunition than an invading force would use would be advantageous; you could use all their captured ammo for their captured mechs, but you control the supply of ammo for any mechs they capture. And if they refit, that's a costly procedure unto itself, further depriving them of war resources.
Steam ID: Obos Vent: Obos
Well, there's your answer. All their PPCs get stuffed into Awesomes.
But if the MAD shows up in MWO you'll be able to make that variant yourself.
Correct.
The 3050 Marik variant has two large pulse lasers, two medium pulse lasers, and an LB-10X. It also jumps. It's not bad. My personal favorite 3050 variant is the Steiner one, though. Still light on armor, but packs two ER PPCs, two medium pulse lasers, and a guass rifle. Nasty.
I think I'd favor doing something to increase the ratio of time spent firing to time spent recharging, whether that be done by firing in actual pulses or just reducing the recharge time (or some combination). Balance them to do a little more DPS than regular lasers at the cost of heat efficiency, and with shorter range - all of which is consistent with the tabletop rules. That would make them pretty good weapons for fighting lights and fast mediums, as you'd get more total beam time directed at your (small, agile, hard to hit) target. The shorter range and worse heat efficiency should make them less attractive for use against bigger, slower targets, though.
41 you have in tank coy's PIII, P38, P35, PIV,
By 44 med tank coy's have StuG III/IV, Jadpz IV/70 (a), PIV, Panther. they even manage to mix them down at section level with the smaller and smaller battlegroups they ran.
The soviet union in the 80s ran with T64/72/80. The broken up soviet union (Russia/Ukraine)and the pact members such as Poland and chezh still have varying capabilities of building various flavors of T64/72/80/84/90. All variants and iterations of Soviet procurement requests for small 125mm tank with auto loader.
I think the blaknisation of tanks and factories of the SU/PACT mirrors on a smaller scale the profusion of types you see in the IS. This is even more apparent with all the updated reserve equipment they have floating around like the 55s 62s and even 69 era T34s (these things were used in Bosnia in the 90s).
"I think I can comment on this because I used to live above the Baby Doll Lounge, a topless bar that was once frequented by bikers in lower Manhattan."
It doesn't change the essence of what you say, but only Russia and Ukraine had the ability to manufacture T-64 and T-80s (being technological descendants--Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Russia, anyway). At Omsk and Kharkiv, if I'm remembering right. I might have been misunderstanding you, but the T-64 and T-80 weren't exported until post-1992, and even then, not that widely exported outside the CIS (mostly Cyprus, with a few models in South Korea). I only know this because the T-80U is a favorite of mine from a technology/historic standpoint. Plus the ones Cyprus has looked far more badass then they have any right to, heh.
Otherwise, Bast hit the nail on the head, I think. To this day, if I'm not mistaken, a number of T-72 factories still exist, but they all depend on inventories of parts manufactured in Russia proper (no longer in Ukraine, though they do have reserve stocks, not to mention large numbers of complete, unused tanks), which they actually get with few problems in relation to how many tanks they want to update or, in a few very rare cases, actually manufacture (importing modernized models, including old "export" variants, from Russia is still way more common). And we're talking about Eurasian, where aside from the USSR becoming the CIS, the borders have very barely changed. Poland is still Poland. It does not include West Belarus. Czechoslovakia split, as did Yugoslavia, but there's not much else.
Meanwhile, the IS seems to have hilarious numbers of factory worlds on the major house borders, which change hands more than a few times over the course of a century or more. Plus, at least from what I remember, the culture/society of the IS seems to, for a long time, have a strict rejection of any sort of modern, practical, exam-based bureaucracy on a house-wide level (even House Liao, the "Chinese" house, falls behind in this, and China invented the exam-based professional bureaucracy) in the same way they reject combined arms warfare from the 20th/21st century until war forces them to adopt it. There's a very anti-bureaucratic attitude at the top (not the local planetary, I think), but those might be outdated sources I'm thinking of. It's a logistical nightmare, right?
But yeah, consider that until the Fourth Succession war, everyone believed that a systemic military advance across space was impossible.
According to the released equipment list, practically every technology that should be allowed in this time will be. I'd imagine all the advanced equipment will be limited in access somehow.
Hmm. Are they implying that they are going to reveal multiple mechs in June like they did in May? That'll be fun.
Also:
HMMMM.
On the one hand, I want MWO to be so successful it actually makes it to the Jihad era.
On the other hand, that means acknowledging the Jihad is a thing that exists.
Not only does every established character start acting like an idiot, but Word of Blake has legions of secret armies and secret space ships and shit, enough to fight and beat literally every faction in the setting. Any complaint about other factions being Mary Sues basically pales in comparison to the Wobbies ability to defy all reason and logic.
The Jihad really wasn't too bad in theory, it was how they worked out everything afterward that was... left lacking. Disabling the hpg uplink, using nukes, etc. was a nice way to shake up the area after all the Clans stuff was all but settled, but it was too much of a change to a well-established IP to take all at once.
I want to see how they continue working the stories and such up to and following launch. I think it'd be awesome to see some of the advances and such made by the players rolled up into the lore of the game.