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Zaodai posted:I'd love to see that from a gameplay standpoint. The goon hivemind having their masterstroke turn into "Rocks fall, everyone dies." "Clanners hotdrop, everyone dies"?
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Mar 5, 2011 10:35
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PoptartsNinja posted:Aside from Vlad killing their entire leadership pool, you mean? Yeah but that's nothing like what happened to the Widowmakers when Nicholas Kerensky was killed in an act of Khan-on-Khan "treachery". He was obviously a more important figure to the Clans as a whole, but that was also allegedly an accident. By comparison, the Falcons got off scott-free. Also Vlad probably would have done that anyway, because he's an rear end in a top hat. [Edit- My real point is, the whole thing about the Falcons avoiding Absorption because of Vlad was stupid and they should have gotten obliterated, like you say the IS would. It was really an uncharacteristic moment and I think it had a lot to do with the Jade Falcons being a fan favorite. I mean, the only reason the Falcon Khans died is because Vlad killed them when they went for Absorption themselves, it wasn't even a Clan-mandated penalty despite a treacherous zellbrigen violation that left a Khan dead.] an oddly awful oud fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Mar 5, 2011 |
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Mar 5, 2011 11:32
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Zaodai posted:If you murdered their khan with dishonorable trickery, the remaining clan units would go apeshit, and they'd probably say "gently caress our force bid, DEPLOY EVERYTHING". Your talking about a situation where Widowmaker has orbital supremacy and Natasha Kerensky on the ground. Everyone is already dead anyway. Might as well do some harm before we go.
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Mar 5, 2011 19:37
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paragon1 posted:Your talking about a situation where Widowmaker has orbital supremacy and Natasha Kerensky on the ground. Everyone is already dead anyway. Might as well do some harm before we go. A glorious last stand, prefferably by a Kurita group, would be pretty awesome. So what if the players lose?
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Mar 5, 2011 19:40
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paragon1 posted:Your talking about a situation where Widowmaker has orbital supremacy and Natasha Kerensky on the ground. Everyone is already dead anyway. Might as well do some harm before we go. ... Wouldn't any Clan (or House, for that matter) need ships in orbit to deploy troops?
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Mar 5, 2011 19:43
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Zaodai posted:... Wouldn't any Clan (or House, for that matter) need ships in orbit to deploy troops? They wouldn't necessarily be the only ones. If Natasha were shot down and the planet's owners had a space presence, they could theoretically match a "deploy everything!" maneuver, thus avoiding a curb-stomp battle. You have to consider that this event is more likely late in the war, too.
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Mar 5, 2011 20:03
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Maybe, but pound for pound Clan troops are better in both skill and organization than IS troops (barring ComStar), so they'd probably get to the combat zone first. On top of that, the IS usually isn't ferrying in troops. It's the clans show up and fight whatever the IS had on world, if memory serves. The Great Houses rarely held troops in reserve or bid forces against the Clans. They pretty much throw what they have out there at the start. My memory of events isn't as good as it used to be, but the only times I recall IS forces actually submitting a batchall were Tukayyid and the IS force that attacked the Clan homeworlds. It's incredibly unlikely the IS would have the reserves on world (or in orbit) to match the unbid units a Clan strike force would have on hand.
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Mar 5, 2011 20:28
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Zaodai posted:Maybe, but pound for pound Clan troops are better in both skill and organization than IS troops (barring ComStar), so they'd probably get to the combat zone first. On top of that, the IS usually isn't ferrying in troops. It's the clans show up and fight whatever the IS had on world, if memory serves. Actually, your right. My original ship-drop comment was basically a reaction to how overpowered Karensky stats were. "What do we have to do to kill this bitch, drop a meteor on her?" I'm not even sure why I made the second related comment. 
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Mar 5, 2011 20:35
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Zaodai posted:Maybe, but pound for pound Clan troops are better in both skill and organization than IS troops (barring ComStar), so they'd probably get to the combat zone first. On top of that, the IS usually isn't ferrying in troops. It's the clans show up and fight whatever the IS had on world, if memory serves. So how the hell did IS win?
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Mar 5, 2011 20:39
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:So how the hell did IS win? They didn't. ComStar did, on Tukkayid, after making it a no-holds-barred match with all the chips in.
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Mar 5, 2011 20:51
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:So how the hell did IS win? A combination of cheating, massive numbers and abusing the Clan's extreme overconfidence.
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Mar 5, 2011 20:56
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LeschNyhan posted:They didn't. ComStar did, on Tukkayid, after making it a no-holds-barred match with all the chips in. That, and ilKhan Ulric Kerensky deciding to fight ComStar there in the first place as a way to put the brakes on the crusader clans.
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Mar 5, 2011 20:57
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:So how the hell did IS win? ComStar broke out all their LostTech caches, and most of the Clans (except Wolf, I think?) were grossly underestimating the quality of their opponents. Since the Clans had to bid against each other to see who would get to drop first (and thus claim the most honor from their assured victory against lowly freebirths) the early Clan waves were relatively underpowered. Additionally, because 6 Clans were attacking, they fought as individuals. Where as the 12 (14? I forget) Armies of the ComGuard all worked together. When one objective had been successfully defended, ComStar moved the remaining troops from that area to strengthen other objectives. When one Clan was defeated, they simply retreated what was left, which often wasn't much, back to their dropships and got the gently caress out of dodge. Plus ComStar had some very high tech logistics technology that allowed them to coordinate armies on a global scale, which was basically unheard of in Battletech. It was still a very bloody, destructive battle, and a shitload of units on both sides were wiped out entirely.
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Mar 5, 2011 21:17
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One thing that has always disappointed me is that no Mechwarrior game ever depicted that battle that I'm aware of. Which is too bad. Something on that scale would have made a fantastic campaign.
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Mar 5, 2011 21:30
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Polaron posted:One thing that has always disappointed me is that no Mechwarrior game ever depicted that battle that I'm aware of. Mechwarroior 2: Mercenaries did cutscene it.
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Mar 5, 2011 21:34
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Zaodai posted:ComStar broke out all their LostTech caches, and most of the Clans (except Wolf, I think?) were grossly underestimating the quality of their opponents. Since the Clans had to bid against each other to see who would get to drop first (and thus claim the most honor from their assured victory against lowly freebirths) the early Clan waves were relatively underpowered. This was half the victory right there. The Clans went in with minimal force and expecting the battle to be over in maybe six hours - they left behind whole galaxies of veteran warriors and had basically no logistics in place. ComStar went in with every mech, tank, gun and soldier they could scrape up, positioned themselves in the most defensible terrain they could and dragged it out until they crushed the Clan attackers under a tidal wave of bodies. I forget which one it was, but one Clan basically marched in with almost all ammo-based weapons and brought no reloads at all since they figured they wouldn't need 'em. Tukkayid was the height of Clan arrogance.
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Mar 5, 2011 21:47
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Polaron posted:One thing that has always disappointed me is that no Mechwarrior game ever depicted that battle that I'm aware of. The games in general don't really do the Really Big Battles, with- as far as I know- a single exception; the final mission of MW2:Mercs on Luthien does a good job of making you feel like you're part of a single huge battle, even though you're still dealing with the same tight limits for polygons-on-screen. After that, the MW4:Mercs Solaris Grand Championships are probably the next biggest fights.
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Mar 5, 2011 21:48
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Tempest_56 posted:A combination of cheating, massive numbers and abusing the Clan's extreme overconfidence. If Tukkayid was cheating then the clan invasion's use of superior strategic mobility to pick and choose short, decisive engagements most certainly was as well. Tempest_56 posted:I forget which one it was, but one Clan basically marched in with almost all ammo-based weapons and brought no reloads at all since they figured they wouldn't need 'em. Tukkayid was the height of Clan arrogance. Most famously that was Clan Diamond Shark but everyone but Ghost Bear, Jade Falcon and Wolf made the same mistake and the Jade Falcons got all their supply depots blown up anyway. atelier morgan fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Mar 5, 2011 |
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Mar 5, 2011 21:49
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UberJew posted:Most famously that was Clan Diamond Shark but everyone but Ghost Bear, Jade Falcon and Wolf made the same mistake and the Jade Falcons got all their supply depots blown up anyway. No, no. Diamond Shark didn't gently caress up. Diamond Shark knew exactly what they were doing: trolling the gently caress out of the Clan Invasion by committing bullshit forces they knew couldn't win. It helped to purge the ranks, and it trolled the gently caress out of the Crusader Clans.
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Mar 5, 2011 21:55
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The MW4:Mercs mission where you take out the Overlord dropship is also pretty big.
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Mar 5, 2011 21:57
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ShadowDragon8685 posted:No, no. Diamond Shark didn't gently caress up. Given that they would have lost their entire command structure (and even then didn't the merchants end up taking control of the clan?) if not for the suicidal bravery of their hated freeborn warriors it wasn't entirely intentional
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Mar 5, 2011 22:00
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:So how the hell did IS win? ComStar stopped the Clans on Tukayyid. That, and there was simply no chance for the Clanners to truly win because in a drawn-out war the IS would just bury them under sheer numbers. The Clans never even came close to having enough troops to get the job done. Operation Bulldog was pretty much the inevitable result of it all. The whole premise of it was to take every Smoke Jaguar cluster (clan-equivalent to a battalion) and just drop 2+ regiments on it. The Clan invasion was pretty much doomed before it even began, the question was only how far they'd get. The funny/tragic thing is that they fully expected the Successor States to just roll over and submit the moment the first Clanner set foot on Terra and proclaimed the new Star League. 
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Mar 5, 2011 23:30
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Tempest_56 posted:I forget which one it was, but one Clan basically marched in with almost all ammo-based weapons and brought no reloads at all since they figured they wouldn't need 'em. Tukkayid was the height of Clan arrogance. Too bad this didn't really make in-game sense, since Clan energy weapons are way better than ammo-based ones in any event.
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Mar 5, 2011 23:54
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:So how the hell did IS win? The Clans Homeworlds, where they manufacture all their gear, is a 13-month trip each way, and none of their plants produce as much as Hesperus or Irian, let alone Terra. It was really a matter of grinding them down. Plus, while Clan troops are individually good, their leadership doesn't compare to the IS. The really great leaders are always House; the Clans don't really know anything about waging war on an IS scale at this point.
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Mar 6, 2011 00:06
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Defiance Industries posted:Plus, while Clan troops are individually good, their leadership doesn't compare to the IS. The really great leaders are always House; the Clans don't really know anything about waging war on an IS scale at this point. It doesn't help that the clans have a tendency to assign "old" (as in, around 40 years) warriors to Hunchback IIC and telling them to charge gloriously to their deaths. This tend to lead to a lack of experienced warriors and the way clan warrior culture is structured, clanners tend to be quite individualistic, in general.
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Mar 6, 2011 00:37
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I figure this would be a fine place to canvass for interest: Would I be able to get five (maybe ten including backups) goons to play http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3966/the-succession-wars if I ran a game in this forum? It is pretty similar to Axis and Allies in some ways, only it is the Succession Wars. I should add that the rulebook is scanned and posted on that same site, since the publisher has been out of business since the first bush presidency.
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Mar 6, 2011 00:54
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Everyone involved, make sure your orders are in. I want to read about robots and space mexicans and see you all fail gallantly to save the hostages.
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Mar 6, 2011 01:06
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Tempest_56 posted:Tukkayid was the height of Clan arrogance. Tukayyid was only the second time someone truly dug in and tried to repel the Clans (the first was on Luthien, and while technically they held it was more of a pyrrhic victory IIRC). what really turned the tide for the IS there were 2 things: Anastasius Focht and the Com Guard. Focht understood the clans and was something of a strategic genius himself, so he was betting that the Clans (who had only lost a handful of battles at this point) would jump for one quick 'all or nothing' fight; thinking that they only had to show up, stomp one more enemy, and then the IS would just let them take Terra (it's a good question whether that would have actually happened had the Clans carried Tukayyid, though). As mentioned earlier, the Clans think in terms of short pitched battles, and don't tend to have large logistics trains. Focht new this, and used that knowledge. The second ace was the Com Guard, a force fielding mostly Star League-era mechs which, while not quite as advanced as Clan-tech, were still much more capable than the majority of the rest of the Inner Sphere's militaries. ComStar had entire armies stockpiled in hidden bunkers on Terra, and pulled ALL of them out for this fight. Not just mechs, either - Com Guard units were all mech/armor/infantry integrated. And they had centuries of ammo stockpiles to lean on. So the strategy (in general, wide swaths) was to bunker up, let the Clans pound on the Com Guards, and hope that the Clans ran out of manpower and materiel first. There was more, as mentioned earlier with the way the Com Guards would reinforce other detachments when/of a certain objective was secured, but in the end it was just a meatgrinder for both sides.
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Mar 6, 2011 01:27
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Mukaikubo posted:I figure this would be a fine place to canvass for interest: Would I be able to get five (maybe ten including backups) goons to play http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3966/the-succession-wars if I ran a game in this forum? It is pretty similar to Axis and Allies in some ways, only it is the Succession Wars. I should add that the rulebook is scanned and posted on that same site, since the publisher has been out of business since the first bush presidency. I would totally be down with this. I have never played TSW before, but I had never played anything other than the old original A&A when I played in the A&A LP, and I did ok there  Hanse Davion will face a firing squad on Capella!
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Mar 6, 2011 01:31
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Mukaikubo posted:I figure this would be a fine place to canvass for interest: Would I be able to get five (maybe ten including backups) goons to play http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3966/the-succession-wars if I ran a game in this forum? It is pretty similar to Axis and Allies in some ways, only it is the Succession Wars. I should add that the rulebook is scanned and posted on that same site, since the publisher has been out of business since the first bush presidency. I actually have a copy of this, but have never been able to assemble a group - boardgamers don't like player elimination and Battletechers would rather just play that. I'd certainly be down to try.
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Mar 6, 2011 01:42
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Zaodai posted:... Wouldn't any Clan (or House, for that matter) need ships in orbit to deploy troops? You'd think so, but not really. Jumpships actually stay out of the bulk of a solar system's gravity well at either the very top (zenith point) or bottom (nadir point) of a star system (There're also 'pirate points', although some authors totally misunderstand what they actually are). Dropships really aren't great combat vehicles, they're big and vulnerable and don't like to stay in orbit long because they lack the centrifugal grav decks that most (big) Jumpships have. They're designed for one purpose: to get a cargo to and from a Jumpship as quickly as possible. They don't hang around in orbits. Warships, on the other hand...
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Mar 6, 2011 01:47
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PoptartsNinja posted:You'd think so, but not really. Jumpships actually stay out of the bulk of a solar system's gravity well at either the very top (zenith point) or bottom (nadir point) of a star system (There're also 'pirate points', although some authors totally misunderstand what they actually are). I should have said "in-system", but the question I was answering was regarding orbital superiority so that's how I phrased my response. Regardless, the clans would have more troops on standby and the IS units generally wouldn't have anything additional in system to deploy to stop it, which was more my point.
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Mar 6, 2011 01:49
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Zaodai posted:I should have said "in-system", but the question I was answering was regarding orbital superiority so that's how I phrased my response. Regardless, the clans would have more troops on standby and the IS units generally wouldn't have anything additional in system to deploy to stop it, which was more my point. Pretty much. That was largely because the Inner Sphere didn't realize they didn't have to commit everything, and so always commited the entirety of their forces. Really, they could've pit their (one, lone sniper) against the Clans' pretty much anything unaugmented and had quite a few more 'defensive victories'. ... Then again, the Clans did take a world with a game of football.
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Mar 6, 2011 01:56
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PoptartsNinja posted:You'd think so, but not really. Jumpships actually stay out of the bulk of a solar system's gravity well at either the very top (zenith point) or bottom (nadir point) of a star system (There're also 'pirate points', although some authors totally misunderstand what they actually are). Yeah? As they've come up a bit in some of the books I've read, can you expound a bit on pirate points?
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Mar 6, 2011 02:08
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PoptartsNinja posted:... Then again, the Clans did take a world with a game of football. I don't remember this.  ZeeToo posted:Yeah? As they've come up a bit in some of the books I've read, can you expound a bit on pirate points? The zenith and nadir jump points are waaay distand from any planets in the system (being above or below the plane of that system's ecliptic), this is a good thing because it minimizes/removes gravity from stellar objects from the jump equation. It's possible to jump to a point closer in the system (and thus enable dropships to get from the jumpship to the planet faster) but the claculations quickly become exponentially harder to make, and if you screw them up, well... nobody's really sure what happens then, because generally the jumpship just doesn't reappear. WarLocke fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Mar 6, 2011 |
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Mar 6, 2011 02:08
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WarLocke posted:I don't remember this. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Far_Country 
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Mar 6, 2011 02:33
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Boogle posted:http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Far_Country Yeah, we don't talk about that. 
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Mar 6, 2011 02:38
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Mukaikubo posted:I figure this would be a fine place to canvass for interest: Would I be able to get five (maybe ten including backups) goons to play http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3966/the-succession-wars if I ran a game in this forum? It is pretty similar to Axis and Allies in some ways, only it is the Succession Wars. I should add that the rulebook is scanned and posted on that same site, since the publisher has been out of business since the first bush presidency. This looks pretty neat. Reminds me a little of that old MMO that got killed.
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Mar 6, 2011 02:44
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WarLocke posted:I don't remember this. Sheliak, a planet in Rasalhague, had no 'Mechs or militia, so they challenged the Ghost Bears to a game of football. It didn't end well. ZeeToo posted:Yeah? As they've come up a bit in some of the books I've read, can you expound a bit on pirate points? Yeah, I can. The Zenith and Nadir point are reliably close to the planets in a system, since they're at the top or bottom, you always have the same distance to travel. Pirate Points are 'closer', but they aren't in orbit. They're just as far from the system's sun as the Zenith and Nadir point, because any closer is death. They are 'closer' to a system's planets only because they are closer to the same plane as the system's planets. It should also be noted: a poorly computed pirate point could potentially be farther away from a system's planets than the Zenith or Nadir point; which is why they're rarely used.  VVV Yeah, that's exactly what happened. IIRC, the final score was something like 60-3. I'd have to dig out my old invading clans sourcebook to know for sure. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 03:02 on Mar 6, 2011 |
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Mar 6, 2011 02:44
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PoptartsNinja posted:Sheliak, a planet in Rasalhague, had no 'Mechs or militia, so they challenged the Ghost Bears to a game of football. It didn't end well. God, now I am imagining some random Rasalhaque guys playing against redacted. That really wouldn't end well.  quote:Pirate Points are 'closer', but they aren't in orbit. They're just as far from the system's sun as the Zenith and Nadir point, because any closer is death. They are 'closer' to a system's planets only because they are closer to the same plane as the system's planets. It should also be noted: a poorly computed pirate point could potentially be farther away from a system's planets than the Zenith or Nadir point; which is why they're rarely used. Well screw me, I guess was one of those dudes that had it all wrong. 
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Mar 6, 2011 02:55
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