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BattleMaster posted:None of the factions were replaced with the Dark Age ones although some - like a bunch of merc units and Clans - died over the course of the Jihad and Wars of Reaving. In fact, BattleTech proper skipped over the entire period that the splinter factions were a thing, and by the time new material was being published in the era, every single one of them had been either absorbed or wiped out. And besides Tara "I Have a Crush On Every Boy" Campbell, every faction leader is either dead or has long since vanished into some unspeakably horrible torture prison to wish that they were.
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Aug 21, 2022 05:52
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Havent really had time to look at it yet but I got my copy of BattleTech Interstellar Ops Alternate Eras in the mail yesterday. 
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Aug 21, 2022 05:56
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BattleMaster posted:Well to be fair, that era of BattleTech was very confusing. I think the short lived "Classic BattleTech" rebranding was just the dumbest thing because I don't think anyone would confuse completely different names "BattleTech" and "MechWarrior" without it. But it did make it seem like it was just a product line that had been abandoned except for some basic life support. It should be noted without Wizkids stepping in and playing middle man to Randall N. Bills and Fasa Interactive, the BattleTech license would have died. Wizkids was not interested in owning and maintaining it, but they did allow it to survive and continue. And most of the writers for BattleTech were the same for Dark Age, so it wasn't like two different crowds working on completely different projects. The rebranding was more an effort to let all the grognardy fans know that "no, clix is not replacing your game, you still get BattleTech, and its thanks to Wizkids". You'd be surprised by how many grognards still don't know Wizkids saved BattleTech. Defiance Industries posted:
Good points, yeah I'm sure why CGL has kept Trillian so restrained, but I guess that's a character or confidence problem after Melissa dovetailed the Commonwealth so disastrously. And you'll get no disagreements from me about HOTW basically making all the Successor States too scared of Alaric being really dumb. Empire Alone tries to repair it somewhat by pointing out that most Successor Lords wouldn't have known Alaric had taken all his troops for several months, buying him some time, but his Empire should've collapsed much sooner. Defiance Industries posted:In fact, BattleTech proper skipped over the entire period that the splinter factions were a thing, and by the time new material was being published in the era, every single one of them had been either absorbed or wiped out. And besides Tara "I Have a Crush On Every Boy" Campbell, every faction leader is either dead or has long since vanished into some unspeakably horrible torture prison to wish that they were. Spirit Cats are actually still alive. And to be fair, it's not really a blackmark against the splinter factions that they no longer exist. All of their goals, except for the Cats and Highlanders, was to gather territory and take it back with them to the Great Houses. They literally were trying to be absorbed. All of the splinter factions were absorbed and gone during the clix game (I think the last splinter faction to appear was Bannson's Raiders in the last expansion, only because they were fleeing Liao, prior to that the Spirit Cats were last to actually get pieces, 3 expansions prior to the game being shuttered), so it's not like Catalyst was just trying to sweep them under the rug; Wizkids made that decision. The splinter factions were just a way for Weisman to keep conflict to a low-level intensity at the beginning of the game. Anyways, ran my summer clix tourney yesterday. Seven players showed up, lot of fun. 
Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 11:05 on Aug 21, 2022 |
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Aug 21, 2022 11:01
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So I was role playing in my head a small pirate/mercenary force/minor state that lived on the borders of Stiener and Marik, had picked up some of the unsavory habits of the Marian's and was being funded by someone bigger. Turns out I re-created the Circinus Federation on first principles. How do you pronounce "Circinus"? Is it SIr-Sin-es? And what's more, their leader, capital and merc force was taken out utterly after the Jihad and it's now wide open real-estate!
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Aug 21, 2022 13:59
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The Spirit Cars are still around but they're absorbed into the Clan Protectorate, like how the Stormhammers are still alive but they are now the second battalion of the 17th Arcturan
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Aug 21, 2022 20:01
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I don't think that analogy holds up, the Clan Protectorate very definitely retains the individual identities of its component parts. "Spirit Cats" are still a relevant and distinct part of the Protectorate from the Sea Fox contingent and both are distinct from the native population.
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Aug 21, 2022 20:08
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And the second battalion of the 17th has a different color scheme and their own logo, but that's still presented as secondary to the larger entity they are in. They're Clan Protectorate units in EA first and foremost.
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Aug 21, 2022 20:35
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Kinda like the Crescent Hawks formation of the Kell Hounds.
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Aug 21, 2022 21:06
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https://www.etsy.com/listing/1278466577/battletech-miniatures-build-an I was thinking of getting a set of 12 miniatures from this 3d print, was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for what to get? 
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Aug 21, 2022 21:45
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12 Savannah Masters
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Aug 21, 2022 22:56
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I kinda liked all the tiny small scale groups that were cut off but had a bizzarre sense of Free Rasalhague nationalism going or were rich. Whatever happened to Bannson anyway?
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Aug 22, 2022 02:54
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Nobody knows. If he's alive he definitely wishes he wasn't though. You can do a lot of torture in a decade.
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Aug 22, 2022 06:35
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Defiance Industries posted:Nobody knows. If he's alive he definitely wishes he wasn't though. You can do a lot of torture in a decade. quote:Bannson disappeared from the public eye for four months in mid-3135 before he was sighted in the Rasalhague Dominion being stalked by Capellan agents, though rumors that Ki-Linn had dispatched Death Commando hit squads after Bannson were never confirmed.  But real talk all the small factions torching every inch of the Republic territory that wasn't incredibly locked down did a good job at showing just how fundamentally unstable and fragile the RotS even was and why it was such a paper tiger. For me at least it justified why the plan was to immediately withdraw to fortress republic, not because they had some special plan or weapon but because they weren't capable of anything more. kingcom fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Aug 22, 2022 |
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Aug 22, 2022 06:43
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kingcom posted:
Turns out taking a bunch of worlds from their current nations (only getting away with such because said nations were too worn down from fighting the Jihad to say no) and telling them they're part of the Sphere, forcibly relocating a bunch of them to different worlds to 'discourage nationalism to outside powers', and then making citizenship dependent on Doing Good For The State probably wasn't the brightest series of moves on the part of the RotS. Turns out, the only reason why the Clans managed to get rid of IS Nationalism was because A) The Pentagon Worlds just went through a period of civil war that left the /entire population traumatized/ to the point that they were willing to try anything as long as they never had to endure That again, B) There was literally an entire Inner Sphere worth of empty space between them and the nations they once called home, and C) They had 250 years to smooth out the wrinkles before they were exposed again to the Inner Sphere. The RotS had no change making it work in only the 50 years it had between the end of the Jihad and Grey Monday, especially when located smack dab in the middle of the entire IS with all the other nations pulling and tugging at their attempts to make a cohesive society. Maybe if they had another 100 years to work with they could have gotten their own people on board with loyalty to the RotS instead of their ancestry, but even that... The RotS was primed to fail right from the start.
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Aug 22, 2022 13:21
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It hung around well enough until that sharp shock. Like the Clans being "Whatever it takes, we're not going through THAT again"... the worlds that became the Republic of the Sphere had taken the brunt of the worst of the Jihad (some worlds had gone straight from the FedCom Civil War to the Jihad, etcetera) and were ready to try something, anything different. Unfortunately, there were folks still alive that remembered the time they belonged to their old nation when the Blackout hit...
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Aug 22, 2022 15:33
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kingcom posted:But real talk all the small factions torching every inch of the Republic territory that wasn't incredibly locked down did a good job at showing just how fundamentally unstable and fragile the RotS even was and why it was such a paper tiger. For me at least it justified why the plan was to immediately withdraw to fortress republic, not because they had some special plan or weapon but because they weren't capable of anything more. Rorahusky posted:Turns out taking a bunch of worlds from their current nations (only getting away with such because said nations were too worn down from fighting the Jihad to say no) and telling them they're part of the Sphere, forcibly relocating a bunch of them to different worlds to 'discourage nationalism to outside powers', and then making citizenship dependent on Doing Good For The State probably wasn't the brightest series of moves on the part of the RotS. Every State but Liao handed over territory to the Republic for a couple reasons. A) Devlin Stone had the biggest army in the Inner Sphere by the end of the Jihad, and it was fanatically loyal to him, B) Most of those territories were the most devastated after about 20 years of non-stop fighting (Chaos March, FCCW, Jihad), so it would've been incredibly expensive to repair them, and C) The majority of civilian populaces thought Devlin Stone was the be-all end-all, and most nobles did not want to end up with their heads on pikes, so they went along with his ideas. Also, after over 30 years of constant conflict, disarming and peace deals sounded good. I'd say the majority of the Republic population actually did stay loyal to the dream of Stone, the splinter factions had some support here and there, but they were never the vast majority of the Republic. The real deathblow that Stone dealt to the Republic was reckless disarmament, to the point that 2/3rds of his military was on paper. Had the ROTS had a full 30-40 regiments come the Black Out, even if 1/4th splintered off, they would've crushed the splinter groups. SirFozzle posted:Unfortunately, there were folks still alive that remembered the time they belonged to their old nation when the Blackout hit... Actually most of the splinter groups, especially their leadership were made up of 2nd or 3rd generation folks who had been born in the Republic (Or at least had Republic citizenship). Every single splinter faction leader was under 40 when the Blackout hit. Like the children and grandchildren of a lot of immigrants/migrants, there's a yearning for the imaginary ancestral homeland that can be extremely strong, even if their grandparents/parents were glad they left that behind. See Jasek Kelswa-Steiner vs. his father Landgrave Gregory Kelswa-Steiner. The father bore no illusions about the Isle of Skye or the Lyran Commonwealth but Jasek was determined to bring back Skye to Steiner control. Or Aaron Sandoval, who up until Stone vanished was 100% a Republic loyalist, but losing the cult of personality figurehead drove him to look for a new ideal. Katana Tormark was an inside DEST job from the start though. I think there's a lot of untapped potential in the fiction world about competing identities and interests of Republic folk, both Great House and Clan especially. One of the Dark Age novels even had Clansmen fighting in the RAF while other Clansmen were attacking the Republic, causing some dissonance among the non-Clan RAF members. Defiance Industries posted:The Spirit Cars are still around but they're absorbed into the Clan Protectorate, like how the Stormhammers are still alive but they are now the second battalion of the 17th Arcturan I see it more analogous to the Azami of the Draconis Combine. Ruled and subservient yes, but very distinct and has to be treated a little different than other areas. The Clan Protectorate is the agreement between the Cats, Foxes, and their member worlds, and their military is everything the Spirit Cats have, plus what the Foxes will provide, but the Cats are not absorbed, merely participating. If CGL ever let the Cats rebuild with a Clan Council, Khans, bloodname houses, etc., conflicts could arise between what the Spirit Cats want, the Foxes want, and what the Clan Protectorate as a whole wants. We're already seeing that right now in Empire Alone, to some degree.
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Aug 22, 2022 17:20
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:I'd say the majority of the Republic population actually did stay loyal to the dream of Stone 
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Aug 22, 2022 17:33
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His dream being the erasure of all cultural identities he does not agree with
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Aug 22, 2022 17:48
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His dream was for people to look past their national differences, disarm, and stop fighting huge fuckton wars every decade for the whims of petty nobles and weirdo eugenics warriors. Also to kill the Word of Blake. Doesn't mean his tactics and ideas in pursuit of that dream were ethical or moral. But let's not simplify to the point of error what Stone was trying to achieve.
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Aug 22, 2022 22:37
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How many days was he in office before he went to ethnic cleansing? Like two? That's not a sign it was something he came to after a lot of compromise and failure, it was his first action, his plan the entire time. Stone's dick probably got hard thinking about ethnic cleansing. He wasn't about "looking past national differences," because if that was the case he would have respected people's existing cultures. He wanted to destroy everyone's culture so they would follow him because he is and was a megalomaniac.
Defiance Industries fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Aug 23, 2022 |
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Aug 23, 2022 00:21
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:His dream was for people to look past their national differences, disarm, and stop fighting huge fuckton wars every decade for the whims of petty nobles and weirdo eugenics warriors. Also to kill the Word of Blake. Welcome to BattleTech
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Aug 23, 2022 00:27
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Come to think of it, we need a new thread title.
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Aug 23, 2022 00:28
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Defiance Industries posted:How many days was he in office before he went to ethnic cleansing? Like two? That's not a sign it was something he came to after a lot of compromise and failure, it was his first action, his plan the entire time. Stone's dick probably got hard thinking about ethnic cleansing. He wasn't about "looking past national differences," because if that was the case he would have respected people's existing cultures. He wanted to destroy everyone's culture so they would follow him because he is and was a megalomaniac. Stone and Lear started with voluntary migrations, and when they felt that not enough people were moving and mixing, went to forced. Given that it can take weeks for dropships to leave a planet and mount its jumpship, and then weeks/months to get to its destination, and more weeks to actually land on the new planet + the months or years it would take to actually tally and count just how many people were moving, that means the forced expulsions didn't happen for at least several years into the ROTS being a state. Not a day or two. FM 3085 makes it was not the immediate plan, but a reaction to when the first plan failed. When the Combine or Confederation decide a population is troublesome, and they sterilize entire groups or flood them with immigrants from more favored cultures, that's cultural genocide. When the Republic tried to force different cultures to live side-by-side and understand each other, their methods were still immoral and crimes, but their intention wasn't to destroy cultures (even if they did), it was to make cultures more tolerant of each other. If he wanted to destroy people's cultures, he would have forced all peoples to speak Star League English (Or Davion French, since he was probably a FedRat), dropping contractions, and using genocide as a way to solve political disputes. I think he developed megalomania from his time as Exarch and thinking everything he wanted to accomplish was going exactly to plan. But that's what a cult of personality can do to a person. EDIT: New thread title: BattleTech: IlClan wants that fortress wall back up! Crazy Joe Wilson fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Aug 23, 2022 |
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Aug 23, 2022 00:42
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BattleTech: New HPG, Who Dis?
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Aug 23, 2022 02:27
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Battletech: falcons canceled by social justice wolves
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Aug 23, 2022 02:47
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long-rear end nips Diane posted:12 Savannah Masters 4 Alacorns and 8 Savanah Masters.
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Aug 23, 2022 03:21
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:Stone and Lear started with voluntary migrations, and when they felt that not enough people were moving and mixing, went to forced. Given that it can take weeks for dropships to leave a planet and mount its jumpship, and then weeks/months to get to its destination, and more weeks to actually land on the new planet + the months or years it would take to actually tally and count just how many people were moving, that means the forced expulsions didn't happen for at least several years into the ROTS being a state. Not a day or two. FM 3085 makes it was not the immediate plan, but a reaction to when the first plan failed. Forcing everyone to intermingle into one collective group is a method of erasing minority culture. It's why Henry Ford was so big into it.
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Aug 23, 2022 04:58
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Battletech: The Clans took Terra. Nobody cared The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Battletech: Wolf Clan captured Terra. Everyone else laughed at them The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Battletech: All Sphere Systems, Nominal The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Battletech: New Alpha Strike, Detected
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Aug 23, 2022 10:09
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The Beastie Wolves - Licensed to ilClan?
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Aug 23, 2022 11:34
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licensed to il is pretty good
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Aug 23, 2022 13:22
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General Battuta posted:licensed to il is pretty good
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Aug 23, 2022 14:13
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General Battuta posted:licensed to il is pretty good lol
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Aug 23, 2022 14:14
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I said come in! posted:https://www.etsy.com/listing/1278466577/battletech-miniatures-build-an What's the vehicle all the way to the back on the left? The one with the two ball turrets on top?
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Aug 23, 2022 14:20
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Put in a report/request for Battletech: Clan Wolf is "Licensed to il" title change 
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Aug 23, 2022 15:32
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Just came across this gem ER PPC TAC'd my Left Torso and critted my XL Woke Engine and Double T Sink 
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Aug 23, 2022 15:51
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I'm the motorcycle coolguy
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Aug 23, 2022 18:12
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Z the IVth posted:What's the vehicle all the way to the back on the left? The one with the two ball turrets on top? That's a Hanse MBT
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Aug 23, 2022 18:30
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Here they are, my first painted miniatures in like 15 years and my first ever mechs! I genuinely didn’t remember how much I enjoyed painting and how time flies doing it. I feel like the mechs are just nice minis to paint as well. I never was and apparently still am not the most amazing or patient painter but it seems like I can still hold a brush, also I’m happy with my color schemes and they look decent from further away. Think I’m most pleased with how the Battlemaster and Awesome turned out. Of course, they still need to based but that might have to wait until I’m back in Finland in a year. Now to just get some games under my belt! Played a couple of test games with the girlfriend the other day and definitely dug it despite it being pretty slow going having to check and double check all the rules. Found some people to play with here in Berlin, just haven’t had time to meet up with them. Also I’m already lusting after new lance boxes... Might get two to add a lance to both ”teams”.
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Aug 23, 2022 22:31
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a cyborg mug posted:Here they are, my first painted miniatures in like 15 years and my first ever mechs! These are very nicely done and it clearly shows that you had fun doing them. Both paint schemes are excellent, but I really like the red and white personally.
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Aug 23, 2022 23:38
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Crazy Joe Wilson posted:His dream was for people to look past their national differences, disarm, and stop fighting huge fuckton wars every decade for the whims of petty nobles and weirdo eugenics warriors. Also to kill the Word of Blake. Wasn't he actually created by Word of Blake though? Thought he confessed as much right before he got appropriately put out of our misery by pillow. Though maybe I missed something and he fully turned against his creators, which seems appropriate enough for a WoB plan really. Haven't read Hour of the Wolf, so not sure of specifics. I do remember he planned to stage the Blackout at a time when he could return a la King Arthur and get everybody licking his boots for "saving" them, but somebody ran the plan early and oops, Republic wasn't strong enough to endure.
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Aug 23, 2022 23:59
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