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Cythereal posted:*shrug* I'm a fan of both settings (within reason for BattleTech), and it felt like a reasonable comparison. Oh. Fair enough. Having been around other places, seeing 40K and Battletech mentioned in the same breath, and in a compare/contrast context, means I'm liable to jerk-a-knee when it happens. From the looks of it we're both approaching similar ends from different angles. I'm pretty sure everyone here looks at Battletech and thinks "what could have been." It's the entire premise of the thread, for starters. VVVV EDIT: Yeah, it's a bit disappointing that the flow of Battletech's timeline reads a bit less like the grand unfolding of history across nations and more like a soap opera. That has something to do with the nature of the fiction-and-summits model of the line itself, I think. The developers set an "event" to center around and assemble their writers to write around that, and the writers of novels tell stories from a more personal perspective than something big and sweeping. Whereas real history slowly builds on itself in ways it takes a lot of dedicated study to untangle, Battletech history seems written from a top-down perspective. Less history of historians, more history as written by a gaggle of novelists. Runa fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 01:32
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T.G. Xarbala posted:From the looks of it we're both approaching similar ends from different angles. I'm pretty sure everyone here looks at Battletech and thinks "what could have been." For me, there's also an element of coming into this with a degree in history and seeing "16th (or thereabout) century Europe with giant robots? Sign me up!", then learning more about the setting and facepalming. I'd have been down for the Clans turning into an analogue of the Crusades (mix and match which BattleTech group is which historical group at your discretion), seeing a ComStar version of the Reformation and attendant Protestant schism, the Cythereal fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 01:39
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Cythereal posted:I'd have been down for the Clans turning into an analogue of the Crusades (mix and match which BattleTech group is which historical group at your discretion), seeing a ComStar version of the Reformation and attendant Protestant schism, the  All this stuff happened
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Aug 22, 2011 01:45
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Der Waffle Mous posted:
Did it? Eh. Oh well. Short version: start with the Star League as the Roman Empire and work everything out from there.
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Aug 22, 2011 01:49
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T.G. Xarbala posted:Well Written Essay on Battletech fluff Hey, if its not too much of an aside, could you post a summary of what happened during the wars of reaving?
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Aug 22, 2011 01:54
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CalvinandHobbes posted:Hey, if its not too much of an aside, could you post a summary of what happened during the wars of reaving? Steel Vipers are dumb and a lot of people pay for it.
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Aug 22, 2011 02:19
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KnoxZone posted:Steel Vipers are dumb and a lot of people pay for it. Um... Could you go into a little more detail than that, Knox?
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Aug 22, 2011 02:36
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CalvinandHobbes posted:Hey, if its not too much of an aside, could you post a summary of what happened during the wars of reaving? Short story? KnoxZone posted:(An apt description) Long version? Well, avert ye eyes if ye wish to avoid spoilers. Basically, all the tensions between Homeworld and Invader Clans comes to a head and the Clan-supremacist sentiment starts causing the Homeworlders to view the Invaders as inferior and "failures." Fighting starts to break out and the situation deteriorates, in no small part due to the Invader Clans becoming more and more lax with zell thanks to having been shown the merits of bastardry by the Spheroids. But conflict doesn't erupt on a truly catastrophic scale until a proclamation of new policy by the new IlKhan suddenly changes the game. He decides to Reave the Bloodnames of all Clans who partook in the invasion of the Inner Sphere, partly to galvanize the Homeworlders behind his Clan and partly to remove the powerful Invaders as an influence in the Grand Council. This goes even worse than you'd think. In the middle of all the fighting, a cabal of scientists across inter-Clan lines called "The Society" decides that the IlKhan went too far and threatens to rob the scientist caste of their rightful authority over that most sacred of resources, the Clans' genetics program. They start an outright rebellion and the resulting mass warfare and genocide, from both Society forces and Clan loyalists, depopulates a distressingly large chunk of the Homeworlds and renders many worlds in the already scarce Cluster too toxic to sustain life. (The Society's existence and goals had been hinted at throughout various sourcebooks and I'm fairly certain they've been an underground factor since the introduction of the Protomech.) When the dust settles, some Clans were absorbed or outright annihilated. Heck, some got annihilated after the official "wars of reaving" ended thanks to politics and the perception that, among the Clans, the kiddie gloves had come off. Others left for the Inner Sphere for good, with only Clan Diamond Shark having any real presence in the Homeworlds and even then a secret one. (For all the jokes about Clan Watch being the Keystone Kops, Diamond Shark Watch is actually startlingly effective.) By 3085 there's only four real Homeworld Clans left, including a new Clan formed from the remnants of a new-Invader who chose to stay behind. The Invader and surviving new-Invader Clans are now the dominant Clan presence in human space since they escaped the horrors of the Great Fuckup. And the not-Exiled Wolves are actually kinda cool. Though, arguably the true mastermind of the whole affair was Clan Star Adder. Also once again the Eridani Light Horse did not make it out alive. This seems to happen to them a lot. Yet apparently they still exist.  EDIT: Good point. CIA doc it is. Even if you read the spoilers, go ahead and buy the book guys. If you're patient, hardcopy ought to be out by the end of August and all the cool kids will be getting it. 
Runa fucked around with this message at 02:50 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 02:39
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T.G. Xarbala posted:Stuff I would probably spoiler tag all that at the very least. Some people might actually want to purchase the book without it being spoiled (even vaguely) ahead of time. KnoxZone fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 02:42
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KnoxZone posted:I would probably spoiler tag all that at the very least. Some people might actually want to purchase the book. Actually, the synopsis T.G. Xarbala gave makes me want to buy that book.
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Aug 22, 2011 02:49
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T.G. Xarbala posted:*people gently caress things up* Well... it's true to BattleTech's premise that people in charge do dumb things and everyone pays the price when they do, I suppose.
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Aug 22, 2011 02:51
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T.G. Xarbala posted:It's inevitable that a warrior society without real war would break down into petty politics and bloody reprisals. Note that even the real-world samurai, whose culture promoted honor to the utmost, were in the end just as vulnerable to human failings as individuals and as a society as anybody else was. That the Clans also had the idea of superiority to the Inner Sphere "barbarians" as a cultural touchstone also smacks of supremacist sentiments found in real-world history. That they directed their exterminations inward first is a result of their own culture's internal stressors coming into play. Japanese supremacy and atrocities that came about because of it, was mostly directed outwards. God drat it. Sorry. The timeline is: As with Europe, warrior class raised up by the landowning class, trading their loyalty and arms for food and shelter. Often tied to feudal-like lords (oft imperial governor positions gone hereditary), but also came from peasant collectives and the religiously (and untaxed) held land was also protected by warriors. The monasteries were about as cutthroat and corrupt as the medieval Catholic church, e.g. pretty drat and not terribly unrepentant (after all, they were doing divine work...) These men were rough, tough, and ready to take any advantage they saw fit. The introduction of firearms was accepted with open arms, though the strings the Europeans attempted to enforce on this trade grated some, but mostly the peasants who didn't like to see their temples burnt and replaced with churches just because Lord So-and-so was having a dick waving competition with his neighbors. Then, after the sengoku jidai (more or less, the Warring States Period, because Japan doesn't get to invent anything, just steal poo poo from China or the Europeans and just do it more efficiently) and after the unification and after an aborted attempt to invade Korea was turned back by Chinese numerical superiority and then some Korean ingenuity. Then they had another loving civil war over who got to puppeteer the shogun's only heir, then Tokugawa set up and turned the samurai class into hereditary administrators. Then all this dickery about bushido and the samurai way and loving flower arranging sprang up, to fill the gaping void left where the huge balls of manly dickishness used to lie. Before that 'honorable suicide' was much less about the family name than avoiding painful vindictive torture and denying your foe the pleasure of killing you himself. Goddamn. Sorry. Samurai bullshit gets on my nerves. [/part Japanese history major] Edit: Then, yes, after that the Japanese got this huge ego boner for the rest of East Asia and decided to keep emulating the Europeans and get their colonial rape on.
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Aug 22, 2011 02:56
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landcollector posted:Actually, the synopsis T.G. Xarbala gave makes me want to buy that book. How about this? (It is one of the big set pieces in the WoR, and one of the best; it is the opening short fiction as well. It is a big-but-not-major component of what goes down, and I will not do it justice, but use to decide if you want to be spoiled or not.) So, the Grand Council decides to formally abjure Clan Wolf- Vlad Ward's wolf, that is, not the exiled. Vlad Ward's considered, reasoned response to that is to tell the Grand Council that they are being idiotic assholes. The Council threatens violence- Vlad tells them to come and get it. Then he hot drops two clusters of battlemechs into the bloodshrine of the Kerensky genetic heritage inside the capital and basically dares everyone to do a thing about it. The other clans go completely berserker. This is the great desecration of one of their holy of holies. The Wolves throw zellbrigen out the door and begin massacring the clanners that come to throw them out one by one using teamwork, combined arms tactics- fighting like Spheroids. This pisses the clanners off EVEN MORE. Fighting escalates, basically every Warrior with as much as a pistol is making to throw the Wolves off. They are giving as good as they got, the fighting is damaging other bloodshrines and turning the Kerensky chapel into rubble. Eventually, after three days of fighting the Wolves are worn down by superior numbers and nothing else. They blow the entire Kerensky shrine to dust and ashes around the last of their broken, failing mechs. Because if they can not have Kerensky's legacy, nobody can. Postscript: At a Council of Invading Clans (they form their own council, with hookers and blackjack... on TUKAYYID  ) Marthe Pryde basically chews Vlad out for destroying the holiest genetic heritage in the Clans... and Vlad smirks and plops a briefcase with Kerensky's giftake on it on the table and enjoys the biggest Magnificent Bastard moment of his life. Because all that fighting I just described? Was an elaborate cover for some Wolf operatives to infiltrate every Wolf shrine and smuggle out their founders' genetic material to be sure the Wolves lines would continue on in the inner sphere.And that is why I cannot hate Vlad Ward anymore. His... regrettable interest in Katrina Steiner aside. Mukaikubo fucked around with this message at 03:21 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 03:12
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Mukaikubo posted:And that is why I cannot hate Vlad Ward anymore. His... regrettable interest in Katrina Steiner aside. Wow. That's some impressive dickery, from a man who embodies dickery. Also, all of a sudden, his interest in Katrina Steiner becomes clear. He wants to breed superdickery into the Clan Wolf lineage (possibly even doing so the old-fashioned way.) To do that, he will need the genetic heritage of one of the most ruthless, cold-blooded, despotic dicks in the Sphere.
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Aug 22, 2011 03:22
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Khan Vlad Ward may have been a bastard but drat if he ain't a magnificent bastard. With this book, I can't help but respect him.TheJJ posted:*The real deal about Japan* Hah! Thank you, sir, for the clarification and corrections. This only further justifies my dislike of both the Combine and Clan cultures.
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Aug 22, 2011 03:38
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Mukaikubo posted:And that is why I cannot hate Vlad Ward anymore. His... regrettable interest in Katrina Steiner aside. Aww, don't be a hater. Katherine Wolf is a proud warrior of Clan Wolf now. She passed her Trial of Position with ease!
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Aug 22, 2011 03:39
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He'd be better served jerking Sun-Tzu Liao into a cup. Sun-Tzu WON, after all.
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Aug 22, 2011 03:41
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T.G. Xarbala posted:Khan Vlad Ward may have been a bastard but drat if he ain't a magnificent bastard. With this book, I can't help but respect him. Oh don't get me wrong, the Tokugawa system was incredible as far as governments go. Very stable, tightly controlled, power actually remained in the hands of the shogun and his descendants. That's drat near unique in human history (and only possible in isolation...) And the Japanese wabi-sabi, beauty in transience is an original art style that I think outclasses some of the gaudy Chinese styles of the time (such that aethetics can be better than each other. The point is, Japan did manage to get its own cultural identity at some point that was outside the all consuming maw of the Middle Kingdom.) Plus, whores! It's just that you have to remember our popular image of the samurai is about as realistic as the popular image of the European knight. Well, the popular image circa Knights of the Round Table, before GRRM took a poo poo all over chivalry. the JJ fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 04:09
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Mukaikubo posted:How about this? (It is one of the big set pieces in the WoR, and one of the best; it is the opening short fiction as well. It is a big-but-not-major component of what goes down, and I will not do it justice, but use to decide if you want to be spoiled or not.)  Wow, that truly is the embodiment of Magnificent Bastardry. Now I want to buy it even more!
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Aug 22, 2011 04:11
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KnoxZone posted:Aww, don't be a hater. Katherine Wolf is a proud warrior of Clan Wolf now. She passed her Trial of Position with ease! The only thing Katherine Wolf has going for her moving from the Lyran Alliance to Clan Wolf is that instead of surrounding herself with inept social generals piloting mobile oppression palaces, she actually has competent mechwarriors and their superiors to use in her plots.  But did the authors actually take advantage of this? Of course not.
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Aug 22, 2011 04:57
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Currently assembling forces for the three most popular options. I'll close voting once I'm sure I've given everyone enough time. The next four to five people on the list should prepare themselves. Edit: It looks like Mary Annette, A good poster, XavierGenisi, Hauki, and (very likely) Dolash are up for the next mission; with probable alternates Octatonic, Raverrn, and Paragon1. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 04:59
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PoptartsNinja posted:Currently assembling forces for the three most popular options. I'll close voting once I'm sure I've given everyone enough time. The next four to five people on the list should prepare themselves.  How I have waited for this day!
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Aug 22, 2011 06:00
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Rick_Hunter posted:The only thing Katherine Wolf has going for her moving from the Lyran Alliance to Clan Wolf is that instead of surrounding herself with inept social generals piloting mobile oppression palaces, she actually has competent mechwarriors and their superiors to use in her plots. What constitutes a mobile oppression palace, may I ask?
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Aug 22, 2011 06:21
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Rick_Hunter posted:The only thing Katherine Wolf has going for her moving from the Lyran Alliance to Clan Wolf is that instead of surrounding herself with inept social generals piloting mobile oppression palaces, she actually has competent mechwarriors and their superiors to use in her plots. WARS OF REAVING SPOILERS (sorry, I promise this is the last one I will post for at least a month) but Katherine Wolf... uh. Yeah. About that. They bring closure to that particular thread. Every Wolf pretty much hates and distrusts her and Vlad has to fight more than a few trials of grievance over listening to her. Vlad basically fixes a Trial of Position to make his bondsman a warrior; Katherine gets a Warhawk, and her opponent gets an Ice Ferret. Katherine fires four cERPPCs at once. They all hit. She shuts down. But that Ice Ferret is a crater. CONGRATULATIONS MECHWARRIOR KATHERINE!!! And then when Vlad gets assassinated, Katherine is shuffled off in disgrace and very quickly to a solahma 'honor guard' unit guarding the Wolves' genetic legacies. The end! No moral. Mukaikubo fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 06:24
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Mukaikubo posted:WARS OF REAVING SPOILERS (sorry, I promise this is the last one I will post for at least a month) but Katherine Wolf... uh. I wanted so hard not to have to say this, but...... Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. They spent all that time setting her up in a perfect position to pull off some epic bastardry, and then that? That... That... It's like they foisted the whole plot thread off onto someone who didn't even want to deal with it. PTN, please promise me that nothing that lame shall happen here. Let the blood and coolant flow!
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Aug 22, 2011 06:36
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It's kind of nice that not every Inner Sphere bondsman becomes a powerful and influential member of their new clan (especially Katherine because she's a psycho bitch).
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Aug 22, 2011 08:13
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ShadowDragon8685 posted:I wanted so hard not to have to say this, but...... Just FYI, she still manages to hijack the Clan's breeding program to create herself a son who later leads a war against the Lyran Commonwealth. Not that it makes sense why she'd be able to do that, because it's been clear from Day 1 that Vlad was the only person in the Wolves who didn't despise her.
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Aug 22, 2011 08:23
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Defiance Industries posted:Just FYI, she still manages to hijack the Clan's breeding program to create herself a son who later leads a war against the Lyran Commonwealth. Not that it makes sense why she'd be able to do that, because it's been clear from Day 1 that Vlad was the only person in the Wolves who didn't despise her. There is a small mention of how the new head of the wolf watch has spent an awful lot of time with Mechwarrior Kathrine, so she is not totally ostracised and to be truthful joining the watch would be ideal for a "warrior" of Kathrine's talents.
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Aug 22, 2011 08:43
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Heh, just looked through my bookcase and apparently I have this in it. Man why must all comics suck all the time.  On another note they did add Duncan Fisher (newly recorded) as an announcer in the new solaris mode of living legends. 
Pinguliten fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 08:57
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Just got back, I want to vote A 
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Aug 22, 2011 16:44
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ShadowDragon8685 posted:What constitutes a mobile oppression palace, may I ask? Outside ships (as in ocean-going vessels), mobile structures and DropShips? Closest thing would probably be the 100-ton Gürtelier MBT from TRO:3085, which is probably the heaviest armored combat vehicle you will find in the entire game system. (And is generally a really nasty tank.)
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Aug 22, 2011 17:06
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Definitely want to see some Solaris VII.
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Aug 22, 2011 17:20
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Magni posted:Outside ships (as in ocean-going vessels), mobile structures and DropShips? There's also the militarized versions of those ginormous crawlers that drag Dropships around spaceports.
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Aug 22, 2011 17:59
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also a Mobile Orbital Gun/Mobile Orbital Defense Laser might count as well. In addition to being used to bring down dropships they're also usually armed with several weapons to defend against ground attackers. Of course the only examples I have of such are the MOG from MechCommander 2 which had no ground-based defenses, and the MODL from Mechwarrior 4: Black Knight, which had several large pulse laser turrets.
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Aug 22, 2011 18:12
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Der Waffle Mous posted:There's also the militarized versions of those ginormous crawlers that drag Dropships around spaceports. Those fall under mobile structures.  @Angry_Ed: Jihad Hot Spots - Terra has the Rattler MkII anti-aerospace mobile fortress. 4670 tons heavy, with 3 sub-capital lasers and 3 Barracuda capital-missile-launchers. And a metric fuckton of smaller weaponry from Long Toms and Gauss Rifles to anti-missile systems. Also, it occupies seven hexes on the game board. The MkI was a Star League development and still under consturction when the Amaris Civil War broke out. The Wobbies just modified the original a bit and built several. Magni fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Aug 22, 2011 |
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Aug 22, 2011 18:53
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Magni posted:@Angry_Ed: Jihad Hot Spots - Terra has the Rattler MkII anti-aerospace mobile fortress. 4670 tons heavy, with 3 sub-capital lasers and 3 Barracude capital-missile-launchers. And a metric fuckton of smaller weaponry. Also, it occupies seven hexes on the game board. The MkI was a Star League development and still under consturction when the Amaris Civil War broke out. The Wobbies just modified the original a bit and built several.  That is...I don't even think excessive is the right word for it.
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Aug 22, 2011 19:17
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I played BT for a while when I was younger, but after I quit I remember someone saying something about FASA releasing rules for super-heavy mechs. I think that they went up to 200 tons or some game-breakingly absurd number.
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Aug 22, 2011 19:34
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Zeroisanumber posted:I played BT for a while when I was younger, but after I quit I remember someone saying something about FASA releasing rules for super-heavy mechs. I think that they went up to 200 tons or some game-breakingly absurd number. With mechs that heavy, you would likely run out of open crit slots long before hitting the weight limit (excepting super heavy weapons like Heavy Gauss Rifles).
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Aug 22, 2011 19:38
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ShadowDragon8685 posted:What constitutes a mobile oppression palace, may I ask? When I said that, it was tongue in cheek reference to the Lyran Alliance's preference for slow, heavy assault mechs designed to out last their opponents. Little did I realize there are actually 'mobile oppression palaces' in canon. Fun to read about, impractical for gameplay.
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Aug 22, 2011 20:14
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Huh... well, let's just pop on over to Sarna and see what all the fuss is about this Rattler thing- ... yeah, "mobile oppression palace" seems like an accurate description.
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Aug 22, 2011 20:20
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