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GhostStalker posted:I googled Taney, but got nowhere enough detail. Someone please tell me how retarded this person was in canon. He was an incredibly inept strategist and lacked even the basic political instincts that people use to get through normal social interactions. However, he is an exceptionally good pilot and won all the fights he got into, so he became Khan by killing everyone who disagreed with him. It's what the entire Clan system of governance is based upon, the notion that the person who is the best at shooting a gun is the best at EVERYTHING.
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Nov 15, 2015 06:06
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Asa Taney was to anything other than piloting, what Roger Taney was to human rights.
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Nov 15, 2015 06:09
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PoptartsNinja posted:The reason Clan Ghost Bear uses so many Firemoths is to poo poo on Clan Ice Hellion's stupid Mad Max gimmick. I always thought the Falcons were reasonably respected by the Crusaders.
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Nov 15, 2015 06:12
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Saint Celestine posted:Think of the long game. Carlos will get captured, the clans wont know who he is, he'll learn their ways, win some trials, become khan, and then when it all falls to poo poo, he'll lead his clan-in-exile to the border of FWL space in former Capellan territory. This would be amazing except for one small problem - Caesar Steiner is already working that angle. Dolash posted:Of all the implausible things in the Clans, one of the most egregious to me is the idea that they ever thought - to any extent - that the Inner Sphere would work according to their honour rules and weird made-up language Recall that the Spanish explorers who came to the New World would essentially stand on the beach and declare - in Spanish - what amounted to "Hey, natives, be Christians. If you don't, we'll feel perfectly justified in killing you all and taking all your stuff and it will be your fault, not ours." The fact that the natives didn't speak Spanish and didn't know what Christianity was didn't bother them at all. Cultural differences being willfully ignored is not exactly a new and unanticipated situation, is my point. I mean, it's incredibly stupid, but the Clanners have spent generations knowing no other way to live. The fact that other people might live differently just doesn't occur.
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Nov 15, 2015 06:12
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There's no Sarna article on Asa Taney but there's a very well-researched one on the hitman who blew up Melissa Steiner with a flower vase.
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Nov 15, 2015 06:14
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paragon1 posted:D is for Davion, friend. whoops!
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Nov 15, 2015 06:23
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Grand Old List of Ice Hellion bad decisions: - Their first Khan drank so deeply of Nicholas's Kool-Aid he started manufacturing ways for his Clan to be more like the critter they're named after. He requested only light and medium `Mechs be assigned to the Ice Hellions. - Almost immediately after the Wolverine annihilation, parts of Clan Ice Hellion were caught roiding up. - - Clan Ice Hellion went to war with itself over this. Clan Ice Hellion destroyed more than half of its fighting strength. - When the Grand Council revealed the Dragoon compromise in 3000, Clan Ice Hellion nearly launched a solo invasion of the Inner Sphere on their own. - - Clan Ice Hellion has a second, secret civil war over this when the saKhan finds out. - When they failed to win a place in the invasion, Clan Ice Hellion went on a conquering spree in the homeworlds and pissed off all of the other Home Clans. - Promoted Asa Taney to Khan - As punishment for losing a binary to the Jade Falcons, Asa Taney replaced one of saKhan Cage's binaries with a Freeborn Solamha unit because saKhan Cage hated freeborns. - About a fifth of Clan Ice Hellion jumped ship to Clan Wolf (including saKhan Cage) during the Harvest Trials (a unit could voluntarily lose a trial of possession with Vlad Ward's Clan Wolf to join the Wolves). - Attempted to invade the Jade Falcon occupation zone (in what they called "Operation Ice Storm"). They got almost completely annihilated by the Jade Falcons and Hell's Horses. Only three Clusters escaped, which were taken in by the Goliath Scorpions - - This invasion was never considered to be a serious military campaign by the Jade Falcons, who refer to it as the 'Hellion Tantrum.' The other Clans consider the Ice Hellions so unimportant that no Clan claims Clan Ice Hellion as their rival or mortal enemy. The Ice Hellions claim the Wolves as their rivals, but even the Wolves didn't give enough of a poo poo to claim them back. 1/5th of Clan Ice Hellion preferred to join their most hated enemy rather than to remain Clan Ice Hellion. Edit: One last tidbit before I go to bed: nearly every OmniMech has a loadout (the 's' variant) designed to engage multiple light-weight machines with pulse lasers and/or Streak SRMs. They're all pretty much ideal for loving over Clan Ice Hellion's only semi-effective gimmick. PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Nov 15, 2015 |
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Nov 15, 2015 06:25
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Admittedly it wasn't just joining their most hated enemy: it was also the only hope any of them had of seeing the Inner Sphere and maybe even getting to die gloriously there.
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Nov 15, 2015 06:43
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T.G. Xarbala posted:There's no Sarna article on Asa Taney but there's a very well-researched one on the hitman who blew up Melissa Steiner with a flower vase. Yeah, this is basically why I wanted to know how big of a fuckup he was and asked you guys. Thanks for all the info. All I can say about it is: Yikes!
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Nov 15, 2015 07:03
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And he is the kind of person the Clan system is INTENDED to elevate.
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Nov 15, 2015 10:11
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Given that we are talking about the stupidity of the homeworld Clans in canon, I feel like it is my responsibility- as one of the few people in the thread that does not appear to viscerally loathe the clans in and out of game and would wish that they had never been invented- to give a sort of counterexample. Consider if you will, a Clan founded by a near universally respected army commander in Kerensky's army, someone who when they were allowed to choose their warriors to found their clan opted to choose an enlisted man and technician as their second in command rather than a mechwarrior and officer (though his choice quickly tested successfully to become a mechwarrior), a founder that from the word go drilled into his troops the value of meticulous planning and preparation, in contrast to the Ice Hellions GOTTAGOFAAAAAAAAAST ethos, and a founder who was responsible for planning the successful liberation of the Clans' homeworld. Consider this clan that early on, looked around and said, "So, okay, trueborns are obviously at the top of the heap, but we would have to be a special kind of moron to reject freeborn warriors who are good at their jobs, or old warriors who can still fight. You know what? Let us not go out of our way to denigrate people who can still fight well for the clan. You know what? Let us go fruther, let us make a special position whose responsibility is to speak up for lower ranking warriors, freeborns, and non-warriors to the Khans, just so we can be sure we are not loving things up here." Consider this clan that almost alone regards the Kerenskys as genius military leaders but not actual demigods, a clan that has a functioning Watch that can find their rear end with both hands... are you getting the picture? Consider this clan, whose response to the Dragoon intelligence reports was NOT confusion and derision, but a sober estimate of how much force it would actually take to conquer Terra. Their carefully planned estimate was, of course, eliminated from bidding as the other morons all bid low because of course the invasion would be easy. This clan had to sit around and watch as their moron brothers and sisters got their faces beat in and stalled out not even halfway to Terra and lose almost every major battle they fought in, and then after two years of that had to watch their moron siblings still not learn their lesson and plan out a campaign like they would and as a result get turfed on Tukayyid. But that was okay! This clan got into a bit of a scrap, and then absorbed another clan that ended up working with pirates and tried to cover it up, and finally moved into a leadership position of the clans. So finally the Inner Sphere comes to Strana Mechty, and this clan we are considering perks up and puts their intelligence into action. They beat the living poo poo out of the First Free Worlds Guards with barely any losses. Only the Falcons managed to win aside from them. But then they get back to their encampment and, SURPRISE! Their moron siblings managed to gently caress it all up and now the entire invasion of the inner sphere, which they were kept out of because they were too smart and planned too well, has been rejected. Look, I am not saying that Clan Star Adder is perfect, but they are probably the least unlikable and most competent clan. Go Star Adder! You frankly do not belong in the canon clans. You are far too effective and sane.  Is it any surprise after all that poo poo that after the Wars of Reaving the Star Adders basically run the homeworld clans? As in they have a massive, massive majority of basically everything, the other surviving homeworld clans that did not flee are their puppets... they run the joint. They are simply competent, which few other clans can boast.
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Nov 15, 2015 16:24
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Defiance Industries posted:And he is the kind of person the Clan system is INTENDED to elevate. It's really considerate of the clanners to consistently prove why their entire system is a hilarious failure.
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Nov 15, 2015 16:51
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Clan Strategy Snake also boasted the second largest navy in the Clans, if I'm remembering my numbers correctly. They were probably bright enough to not fall for the deal when a gaggle of Snow Ravens wandered up and said, "Hey, buddy, we'll trade you a bunch of SLDF Jenners for that lousy ol' Black Lion ya got hanging around in orbit." There's like five Clans that have some grasp of sanity and/or planning (not necessarily in equal measures, admittedly), and unsurprisingly, pretty much all of them are still around, while all the really rabid maniacs have been blown to smithereens by the time the 3100s roll around. The continued survival of the Jade Falcons is an admitted outlier on this pattern, but I guess they needed a new Clan War Crimes with the loss of the Jaguars and the end of the Wars of Reaving, so hey, why not?
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Nov 15, 2015 17:11
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Am I right in thinking the crazy Clan social structure stems from a (somewhat misguided) attempt to balance them on the tabletop? As in, their mechs were absurdly overpowered but this was kept fair for the players by sticking a clan player with a load of rules restricting how and when he could use his wondermechs during a battle? I get the impression it didn't work, either. I could really do with a lore summary of everything we've seen so far in this thread. Keeping track of the original canon is crazy enough, tracking an alternate timeline is just  , even with reading through the games. It's fun and crazy and I'm enjoying it, but I have no idea who half these characters are or why it's so shocking that they're doing X instead of Y.
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Nov 15, 2015 17:14
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Loxbourne posted:Am I right in thinking the crazy Clan social structure stems from a (somewhat misguided) attempt to balance them on the tabletop? As in, their mechs were absurdly overpowered but this was kept fair for the players by sticking a clan player with a load of rules restricting how and when he could use his wondermechs during a battle? Nah, ClanTech is priced that in theory, equal points of Inner Sphere and Clan 'Mechs will result in the IS having more guys on the table than the Clans. It becomes a Quantity vs Quality fight.
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Nov 15, 2015 17:25
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Mukaikubo posted:Given that we are talking about the stupidity of the homeworld Clans in canon, I feel like it is my responsibility- as one of the few people in the thread that does not appear to viscerally loathe the clans in and out of game and would wish that they had never been invented- to give a sort of counterexample. The Star Adders also benefited from the fact they formed one of the few lasting Clan alliances with the chill Cloud Cobras. Having two mostly sane Clans working together worked wonders for allowing them to survive the WoR intact.
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Nov 15, 2015 17:51
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Loxbourne posted:Am I right in thinking the crazy Clan social structure stems from a (somewhat misguided) attempt to balance them on the tabletop? As in, their mechs were absurdly overpowered but this was kept fair for the players by sticking a clan player with a load of rules restricting how and when he could use his wondermechs during a battle? There were never any Rules, as in , lines in the book saying "You can/cannot do this." Zell was entirely on the players to adjudicate. BV was supposed to be the balancing mechanic, but there was never anything that could be done to truly account for the capability of a dude in a Warhawk to blast you off the map from outside your effective targeting range. A Clan tech base revolving around the heavy laser series and advanced melee options would probably have been much better received simply due to the Clans having to subject themselves to return fire.
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Nov 15, 2015 18:07
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Battle Value came in Max Tech long after the Clans were introduced. Even its (wonky as hell) predecessor, Combat Value, was in the The balancing factor was "don't play with assholes."
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Nov 15, 2015 18:09
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GenericServices posted:There were never any Rules, as in , lines in the book saying "You can/cannot do this." Zell was entirely on the players to adjudicate. BV was supposed to be the balancing mechanic, but there was never anything that could be done to truly account for the capability of a dude in a Warhawk to blast you off the map from outside your effective targeting range. A Clan tech base revolving around the heavy laser series and advanced melee options would probably have been much better received simply due to the Clans having to subject themselves to return fire. Well they did start trying to adjudicate zell a bit. First in scenario books like Tukayyid where they explained how you make a challenge (in your firing declaration) and the concept of honour levels was introduced such that breaking zell could mean that either that 'Mech, or the entire Clan force, would abandon the dueling rules for that scenario. There was also a later attempt (in First Strike! and possibly in other sourcebooks) to spell out the concept of zell a bit more clearly, so that a Dire Wolf doesn't have to accept a Spider's challenge, and a 'Mech earned "dezgra points" for hiding out of line of fire. The Merry Marauder posted:The balancing factor was "don't play with assholes." The balancing factor in Battletech has always been "play with someone who takes the game roughly as seriously as you." The possibilities for min/maxing the game are enormous and you really need to have someone who is on the same page about how much customization you'll allow, how much you'll rely on lovely canon designs rather than good ones, etc.
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Nov 15, 2015 18:17
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The local gaming store had a pretty active Battletech community back when the Clans were introduced, so I can tell you firsthand that there was, at that point, absolutely no official rules or whatnot to encourage "fair fights." There were some notes on how the Clans fought, but enforcing that playstyle was entirely on the players; there was no mechanical enforcement. There were also no BV rules - the closest anyone had at that point was to say "well, we'll fight with an equal tonnage of 'Mechs," as though a Charger and an Awesome were fundamentally identical. So when Clantech first came into play and people wanted to start playing with it, the only way to try and encourage a fair match was to say "Hey guys, this is the fight we're planning, what do you think?" and the other customers at the store would think about it and, if one person had a grossly overpowered force, call bullshit. We had no system for this; it was just a matter of a bunch of people who'd played a lot of Battletech deciding "Eh, that seems fair."
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Nov 15, 2015 18:39
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The Merry Marauder posted:Battle Value came in Max Tech long after the Clans were introduced. Even its (wonky as hell) predecessor, Combat Value, was in the ...It still somehow hasn't gelled in my brain that TRO 3050 came out in 1990. It just feels like it should've been the mid-90s, and that doesn't even make sense because Mechwarrior 2 came out in '95 and that was Refusal War shenanigans already. I think I read Stackpole's invasion trilogy around then, that'd be about the right timeframe. Yet another notch under his name in the Book of Grudges. Anyway, the point is that the large pulse laser was a terrible idea and the guy who statted it out should feel bad.
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Nov 15, 2015 18:53
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BV2 isn't perfect, but it generally does a really good job balancing IS with Clans. I almost exclusively played IS forces and usually had great success against Clanners. It helped that my armies all were built around mediums and fast heavies, as those are by far and away the best mechs to deal with the powerful Clan mechs. Assaults just get mulched.
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Nov 15, 2015 20:16
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GenericServices posted:A Clan tech base revolving around the heavy laser series and advanced melee options would probably have been much better received simply due to the Clans having to subject themselves to return fire. You would've liked Option E. You'll still like Option C
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Nov 15, 2015 21:17
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KnoxZone posted:The Star Adders also benefited from the fact they formed one of the few lasting Clan alliances with the chill Cloud Cobras. Having two mostly sane Clans working together worked wonders for allowing them to survive the WoR intact. Aren't they both allied with Steel Viper in the PTN-verse and pushing through the Lyran Commonwealth on their way to Skye right now as part of Task Force Serpent? I seem to remember reading that somewhere in a fluff update or something, but we haven't seen them in a while. Maybe after this mini-campaign is over?
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Nov 15, 2015 21:21
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GenericServices posted:...It still somehow hasn't gelled in my brain that TRO 3050 came out in 1990. It just feels like it should've been the mid-90s, and that doesn't even make sense because Mechwarrior 2 came out in '95 and that was Refusal War shenanigans already. I think I read Stackpole's invasion trilogy around then, that'd be about the right timeframe. Yet another notch under his name in the Book of Grudges. Clan pulse lasers are Inner Sphere pulse lasers (introduced the year before in 1989) with doubled range brackets and +1 damage (for the medium and large ones). The Inner Sphere versions weren't unbalanced but yeah, doubling the range on those things made them too good, especially before they nerfed the pulse laser + targeting computer combo.
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Nov 15, 2015 21:37
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If voting remains open, I would like to place mine for Option E after some thought, for various reasons beyond comedy.  I don't know, but for me, the Clans seem absolutely perfect for a rescue op in the middle of Capellan territory in Duncan's practical perspective. If I remember the thread fluff right, thanks to player input Duncan is one of the few non-Clan people who has information on Clan traditions and can use that knowledge to pad his terms in a way that appeals to them. The Clans know that he will not really molest them and will probably feel inclined to negotiate out of that confidence. Duncan could lay it thick on the heroic/honorable angle to inflame the Clans; his son is fighting against all odds on a hostile planet against a superior and dishonorable force, the indiscriminate slaughtering of civilians and senseless waste of potential labor on a whim, and so on and so forth. The Caps are already For the actual process, perhaps the Clans aren't the best option; they have the power in their forces and technology to be capable at it, but I am doubtful that they would be able to pull off a deep cover op like this in a manner other than "hilarious failure", unless Duncan lucked out on a cool-headed Clan. But in Duncan's perspective, who better, aside from a certain crimson pirate who he may or may not have had a fling with?
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Nov 15, 2015 21:50
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Thought it might be expedient to point out that the Clans are actually quite capable of pulling this off without causing any new outrage, either on the national or IS level, thanks to Comstar currently having put the Capellan Confederation under an interdiction. Thanks to their planets currently being under an interdiction, and thus no news is going out from them, and thus the fact that there was a new front would go unnoticed. And they actually possess Warships too, so they can catch any Jumpships trying to escape. And before someone mentions that Comstar can of course break their own interdiction to send the news out, if the Clans are only attacking Abadan it doesn't even matter since the HPG there is already a pile of slag. 
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Nov 16, 2015 00:04
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Comstar can't break their own interdiction because a nuke just went off under the HPG.
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Nov 16, 2015 00:19
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Interdiction isn't something you break. Comstar doesn't like doing it because they involve destroying a whole lot of equipment, even though they don't usually nuke their own installations like that. HPGs are rendered inoperable, albeit relatively easy to repair if you know exactly how they're built. Anything they don't want reverse engineered is removed or destroyed and the staff goes into hiding. Even after its lifted you're looking at significant time spent repairing the damage and getting everyone back where they need to be.
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Nov 16, 2015 00:19
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Incidentally, I think people are getting things confused. The HPG was slagged last mission by a dropship sitting on top of it. Unless Comstar had two of them on the same world for some ungodly reason, this was simply a Comstar base. One with a nuke under it because Comstar.
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Nov 16, 2015 01:20
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Lord Koth posted:Incidentally, I think people are getting things confused. The HPG was slagged last mission by a dropship sitting on top of it. Unless Comstar had two of them on the same world for some ungodly reason, this was simply a Comstar base. One with a nuke under it because Comstar. The HPG admin building was slagged by the dropship, the dish was fine except for a Gauss slug knocking it out of alignment when it was firing up and transmitting. I assume that the HPG itself was ok since the Cappies wanted to study and reverse engineer that sweet, sweet tech to break ComStar's monopoly on transmission. That nuke prevented them from doing so. The fluff even said the nuke went off below the HPG's primary receiver after it failed to get either all clear signal from the now slagged admin building or the secondary base that Kernoff and GoonLevel II just defended and had vanish into another nuclear fireball with the spite Nuke. GhostStalker fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 01:27
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Whoops, missed that mention in the first part of the Campaign Update. Was going off the nuke being detonated below the facility in the last battle update. And I seem to recall that a reasonably heavy mech did a tapdance on top of the transmitter too, but I suppose at least components would have been salvageable. Though that does beg the question of just how long the Capellans had to look over the dish, given there was apparently an indefinite period of time between the first mission and this last one, but probably at least a few days. Or maybe it went off an hour after the first battle, as Kernoff probably wouldn't have bothered sending the all-clear if it relied on manual confirmation. Somewhat unclear. So in fact Comstar has set off TWO nukes on this planet, at least one of which was very much on the strategic level. And on different continents too, just to make sure that fallout is in various places. Lord Koth fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 01:53
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Lord Koth posted:So in fact Comstar has set off TWO nukes on this planet, at least one of which was very much on the strategic level. And on different continents too, just to make sure that fallout is in various places. That's C* for ya! They'll do anything to hold on to their HPG monopoly.
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Nov 16, 2015 01:58
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Comstar: Because "gently caress you", that's why!
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Nov 16, 2015 02:00
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Comstar: Putting the thermonuclear detonations in "Can you hear me now?"
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Nov 16, 2015 02:01
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What's 10 megatons between friends, really?
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Nov 16, 2015 02:04
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Why do Comstar's denial tactics remind me of the Jaburo assault in Zeta Gundam for some reason?
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Nov 16, 2015 02:04
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Worried about Denial of Service attacks? Comstar has you covered. Nobody denies (or attacks) your service harder than we do!
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Nov 16, 2015 02:38
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VolticSurge posted:Why do Comstar's denial tactics remind me of the Jaburo assault in Zeta Gundam for some reason? I hope you haven't forgotten that PTN was the one who did the Let's Watch
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Nov 16, 2015 04:35
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Just a progress report. I'm setting up sprites for the next mission, and one of the ones I wanted was incredibly terrible (I had to fix it) and another I had to create from scratch. The map's done though, so I figured I'd show that off at half-size so you can start worrying. 
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Nov 16, 2015 04:39
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