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Dolash posted:They might have a stupid culture and have tampered wildly with genetics, but the Clans are still made up of human beings. If anything, some Clanners might be especially vulnerable since Clan culture promotes an idealized image of war between people bred for the task, following arcane honor rules - the bloody reality of mowing down hapless conscripts and flattening cities is somewhat less appealing. So what I am reading is that the clan is Imperial Japan during WW II.
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May 25, 2015 03:17
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Telsa Cola posted:So what I am reading is that the clan is Imperial Japan during WW II. What was their Pearl Harbor? Turtle Bay?
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May 25, 2015 03:43
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Artificer posted:What was their Midway? Turtle Bay? corrected you. Just like WW2 Imperial Japan, the clans weakness is time management .
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May 25, 2015 04:48
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Telsa Cola posted:So what I am reading is that the clan is Imperial Japan during WW II. I think it's closer to Nazi Germany. Japan, by and large, did not enjoy technological superiority except in a few very narrow fields. Also telling diehard clan roleplayers that they are basically fascists is never not funny.
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May 25, 2015 06:27
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Eh, when Battletech wants to do historical parallels they clearly don't shy away from it, the Clans seem like a deliberate attempt to make something more alien-ish and sci-fi than another "Space Samurai" or "Space Prussia", although there's some obvious Mongol allusions (both the invasion and the khans). I can accept there's some fairly justified (in their minds) reasons for the Clan invasion not to blow through the Inner Sphere, but then again there was that large Clan task force that went after the Rimworld Republic and got backstabbed during the trial with the FWL. That seems to suggest that they've at least got the tech and resources that they could try bum-rushing across the Sphere if the goal is worth it, maybe it's even a sign of how psychotically the Clans hate the Amaris line that they were willing to drop all pretenses like that. Does all this mean that if the Great Houses wanted to, they could start using nuke-equipped fighters to destroy Clan invasions in space, before they make the planet, and they don't do that for fear of nuclear retaliation from the Clans? And that the Clans aren't shooting down IS jump-ships when they go on the offensive because they'd much rather let them land their invasion forces and fight them man-to-man for the Honouretm?
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May 25, 2015 09:45
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Clan honor rules are largely designed with limiting the loss of limited resources since the Clan homeworlds generally have piss poor excuses for metal deposits. Nuking the gently caress out of someone who can't return the favor so flagrantly goes against it that we have top brass committing suicide over it. Plus there's no personal glory if you're not down on the grind fighting them mech to mech or man to man.
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May 25, 2015 09:59
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Dolash posted:Eh, when Battletech wants to do historical parallels they clearly don't shy away from it, the Clans seem like a deliberate attempt to make something more alien-ish and sci-fi than another "Space Samurai" or "Space Prussia", although there's some obvious Mongol allusions (both the invasion and the khans). If we're going for historical parallels, I would say that the Clans are more akin to the Huns rather than the Mongols, who, for all their cruelties, ruled justly/tolerantly, expanded trade and technological exchange, and in certain cases, promoted the arts. The Huns were all about just sacking, looking, and gaining glory through conquest.
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May 25, 2015 12:04
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Dolash posted:Does all this mean that if the Great Houses wanted to, they could start using nuke-equipped fighters to destroy Clan invasions in space, before they make the planet, and they don't do that for fear of nuclear retaliation from the Clans? Not really. The warheads AeroSpace fighters can carry aren't very impressive to a capital ship. And yeah, you can stuff bigger ones in DropShips, but now you're actually just having a fleet engagement. Dolash posted:And that the Clans aren't shooting down IS jump-ships when they go on the offensive because they'd much rather let them land their invasion forces and fight them man-to-man for the Honouretm? Orbital assets are usually the first things bid away. And yeah, if your entire purpose in life is ground combat, you're not likely to give that up in exchange for someone else swatting some blips on a tac screen in service of some nebulous strategic good, unless you're a remarkably politically driven Clanner. PBJ posted:If we're going for historical parallels, I would say that the Clans are more akin to the Huns rather than the Mongols, who, for all their cruelties, ruled justly/tolerantly, expanded trade and technological exchange, and in certain cases, promoted the arts. The Huns were all about just sacking, looking, and gaining glory through conquest. I think it's a mistake to cram fictional polities into historical pigeonholes, but you probably shouldn't neglect the various Clans' individually divergent attitudes towards most of the above.
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May 25, 2015 12:21
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The Merry Marauder posted:I think it's a mistake to cram fictional polities into historical pigeonholes, but you probably shouldn't neglect the various Clans' individually divergent attitudes towards most of the above. I always forget that the Rasalhague Dominion and the like are technically a "thing" in the old BT timeline. Perhaps B would create a similar relationship between Skye and the Steel Vipers? Aw, who am I kidding, they're gonna find a way to gently caress it up somehow. It's the Battletech way!
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May 25, 2015 12:32
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Anyway, C, because anything that gets Waterley away from a council whose opinions she can sway and over to Skye where people can goggle at her frail insanity is the way to go.
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May 25, 2015 12:43
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dis astranagant posted:Clan homeworlds generally have piss poor excuses for metal deposits. More than just bad! The metal deposits of the Kerensky Cluster will be almost totally exhausted by 3100. The status quo after the Wars of Reaving may have changed the rate of consumption but it also put an end to the one thing that could stop it: outward expansion.
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May 25, 2015 18:02
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So basically the Clans are 100% hosed no matter what they choose to do. That's kind of hilarious.
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May 25, 2015 18:10
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Defiance Industries posted:More than just bad! The metal deposits of the Kerensky Cluster will be almost totally exhausted by 3100. The status quo after the Wars of Reaving may have changed the rate of consumption but it also put an end to the one thing that could stop it: outward expansion. How does that even work? Does the technology not exist in BT to mine asteroids? Do the Clan's home systems not have any asteroid belts? (I seem to remember that Kerensky deliberately chose to settle resource poor systems) Do they require some sort of unobtainium for their machinery? And even if all of that is true: Is there not an entire empty galaxy ready to be colonized beyond their home worlds? How does BT fluff all that? oh, and I guess, I'll throw in another vote on the B pile.
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May 25, 2015 18:55
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Scintilla posted:So basically the Clans are 100% hosed no matter what they choose to do. That's kind of hilarious. Unless they manage to keep some sort of IS presence in this timeline, which would be neat. I'm basically unconcerned with the canon universe at this point because this one is just so much better (I have read nothing about it, and played MW2, 2Mercs, and 4 as the extent of my canon knowledge) from what I can tell in this thread. I'd rather see the clans be interesting than go away and be hosed forever.
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May 25, 2015 18:59
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sheep-dodger posted:How does that even work? Does the technology not exist in BT to mine asteroids? Do the Clan's home systems not have any asteroid belts? (I seem to remember that Kerensky deliberately chose to settle resource poor systems) Do they require some sort of unobtainium for their machinery? I guess that while moving a bunch of people to another world to set up an outpost is easy, moving enough to colonize a world successfully is much larger. Also asteroid mining is definitely done in the BT universe, at least with comets but there could be plenty of reasons for it to be hard such as a bunch of young stars with some pretty messy and unpleasant radiation profiles and solar winds. Or plain old author fiat which is fine by me when it comes to gently caress over the clans.
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May 25, 2015 19:03
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sheep-dodger posted:And even if all of that is true: Is there not an entire empty galaxy ready to be colonized beyond their home worlds? Well, hey, there's a Clan with lots of Seekers in their Warrior caste, who explore the Periphery and would be great advance scouts... ...but the Goliath Scorpions got Abjured and booted out of the Homeworlds. So, you know.
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May 25, 2015 19:05
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The Merry Marauder posted:Well, hey, there's a Clan with lots of Seekers in their Warrior caste, who explore the Periphery and would be great advance scouts... So it boils down to the Clans being the Clans. Why am I not surprised?
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May 25, 2015 19:10
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The reality is that in a galaxy old enough to generate life-sustaining planets, there will be many second and third generation stars with plenty of metals available. Moreover, you could build every battlemech in the Battletech universe, plus all of their factories, every ship of every fleet, all the ammo, material, etc., from just the metal deposits found in, say, Australia. The given explanation for Clans not having enough metal resources despite them possessing many planets capable of sustaining life are essentially antiscientific, but that's hardly unusual for Battletech. You just accept it as authorial fiat, just like you accept that (as with every other SF setting that has it), somehow FTL travel doesn't violate causality. e. Just to put this firmly into scale, mentally. From Wikipedia: quote:Western Australia's iron ore output for 2011 was 474 million tonnes Planets are big, yo. Really, really big. And even the biggest spaceships in Battletech are small. Very, very small. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:24 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 25, 2015 19:20
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Went back and checked the reference in TRO 3060: it's not all metals, it's just the ones that are the most important for constructing 31st century military hardware. So I guess whatever it is that makes BT armor so incredibly strong at an inch thick and probably like, stuff they make fusion reactor shielding out of?
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May 25, 2015 19:42
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Defiance Industries posted:Went back and checked the reference in TRO 3060: it's not all metals, it's just the ones that are the most important for constructing 31st century military hardware. So I guess whatever it is that makes BT armor so incredibly strong at an inch thick and probably like, stuff they make fusion reactor shielding out of? Liquid lithium and/or magnetic fields? Realchat for a moment, if we wanted to move the earth to a fusion powered economy and use magnetic confinement we can't use stainless steel for the magnets because there isn't enough nickle or cobalt on earth to make enough of them. They would need to be made of aluminium or something like that which is more prevalent. There was one tokamak style design I saw where each magnet was something like 30 feet tall and over 100 tons. So yeah, if we assume that they make mech armor out of something like titanium/tungsten/osmium alloys they can definitely run short.
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May 25, 2015 20:17
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This is what happens when you base your society on the deranged vision of a literal brain-sick fool, and then have a bunch of fight happy warmongers who don't understand anything other than HONOOOOOOOOOOOOOR run it.
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May 25, 2015 20:56
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About that Against the Bot LP... I kind of started working on it, and... http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3708423&pagenumber=21#post445759337 Leave feedback there in the Sandcastle so I do not gum up this thread with stuff that PTN himself is not doing!
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May 25, 2015 21:11
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sheep-dodger posted:Do they require some sort of unobtainium for their machinery? Jump Drives require germanium, but that's the only 'rare' element I'm aware of. sheep-dodger posted:And even if all of that is true: Is there not an entire empty galaxy ready to be colonized beyond their home worlds? There're areas of the galaxy that are unreachable due to the relatively short jump distances. The Pentagon Worlds and the Kerensky Cluster are unusual in having so many habitable worlds. I'm pretty convinced the Star League went to a great deal of time and effort to render possibly habitable worlds "unattractive" in some way to curtail colonization efforts when humanity started spreading too far for them to control, but that's more of a plot thread in the LP than something that's actually true in the real universe. More likely without the vast resources of the Star League to terraform marginally-habitable worlds there simply isn't any way for humans to live healthy lives on most planets. There are a few clusters of humanity that are well away from the Inner Sphere or the Clans, but they tend to be small groups of worlds surrounded by huge swaths of empty space. Edit: The implication being: there aren't any worlds nearby they can colonize with the resources they have available to them, and they don't have enough resources to go looking. Which is pretty much the Metaplot's way of saying "Your favorite Clans probably lived, but they're never going to be an issue again. One invasion was enough." Double Metaplot Edit: "Pay more attention to Alaric Wolf." PoptartsNinja fucked around with this message at 21:35 on May 25, 2015 |
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May 25, 2015 21:26
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gently caress planets. Habitats fo' lyfe. Though they've probably forgotten how to do that already. Or kept nuking them until nobody would build them any more.
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May 25, 2015 21:31
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goatface posted:gently caress planets. Habitats fo' lyfe. Or are hilariously resource intensive to build and maintain. Or all those factors at once.
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May 25, 2015 21:41
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SIGSEGV posted:Or are hilariously resource intensive to build and maintain. Or all those factors at once. Also tech intensive. If you have an actively regressive society they're not gonna last long in the face of overwhelming ignorance.
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May 25, 2015 21:56
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goatface posted:gently caress planets. Habitats fo' lyfe. The IS does it on a slightly smaller scale, with jump recharge stations that are usually inhabited by a small town's worth of people. The people of the IS seem to have a strong aversion towards being too far from a planet that I feel like stems from Jumpdrive malfunction. Since you can't move a K-F drive through K-F space, if your engine breaks down you're pretty much hosed, so not wanting to be totally isolated from planets and the safety they offer feels like a cultural thing to me, I guess. Anyway, you'd like Gulf Breeze in the Lyran Commonwealth if habitat stations are your thing.
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May 25, 2015 22:40
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Voting for the Best plan. Steiner rules for everybody. Would Skye really super-care about whether they're paying Space AT&T or Space Verizon anyhow? Let the Steiner Serpents set up shop on Terra.
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May 25, 2015 23:32
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Voting C for maximum Cersei Lannister.
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May 26, 2015 00:43
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I'm pretty sure D isn't getting enough love
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May 26, 2015 00:45
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True story - my only banned post on the MWO forums was for comparing Mamluks to clanners given their rigid caste system, the slave-like 'superior' warriors who are taken from birth based on genetic characteristics. I mean ffs they even were called 'true lords'. But apparently in this case, they thought I just sounded racist >_> Oh and C, because drama. garland336 fucked around with this message at 16:00 on May 27, 2015 |
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May 27, 2015 15:58
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Mukaikubo posted:About that Against the Bot LP... I kind of started working on it, and... Where'd you get the extra portraits? There's camo in the Ralgith pack but not really much in the way of portraits. ... have you tokenised all the first page art yet?
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May 27, 2015 20:29
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Nullkigan posted:Where'd you get the extra portraits? There's camo in the Ralgith pack but not really much in the way of portraits. I want to say there was a guy who regularly uploaded custom releases that were pre-packaged with a shitton of portraits, but I cannot remember who it was.
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May 27, 2015 22:46
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Current tally: A: 1 B: 41 C: 6 D: 8
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May 28, 2015 22:34
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Scintilla posted:Current tally: Jumping on the Bandwagon!
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May 28, 2015 22:41
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Voting's coming to a close, and I'm sorry again for the delay. I just did an interview at work which, if I get the promotion, will completely change my schedule. So I'm waiting to see before I commit myself to an update schedule I may not be able to keep (2 updates a week is still a 'go,' I just don't know if they'll stay Sunday and Wednesday)
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May 29, 2015 01:41
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No worries. Good luck on the promotion!
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May 29, 2015 01:54
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I won't be particularly heartbroken if I don't get it (I like working mornings), but it'll be good if I do.
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May 29, 2015 02:06
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I think y'all are forgetting how amusing the Duncan vs Melissa stuff was. Mind you, it's way too late since B's got it locked up, but I'm still getting my vote in, dammit. 
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May 29, 2015 17:05
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Well, good news. I got the position. I don't know what my final schedule's going to look like beyond the 4PM-to-midnight shift, but that still leaves me plenty of time for updates during the day. The only downside is, It'll be more of time crunch as I'll have to do them before work rather than my current plan of getting off work Expect a combat theater update tomorrow or Thursday at the latest, but at least for now I'm probably going to keep the scenarios a bit smaller and my update schedule may have to change depending on when my days off are.
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Jun 3, 2015 05:21
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