- Joined
- Mar 19, 2016
Sorry for the late reply, was out of town. I do enjoy the games, but I prefer the balance of the tabletop (and by extension Mekton, and thus also more or less the lore) to MechWarrior's. The reason I love the setting is because while mechs are kickass and cool, a bunch of guys hiding in a building with an AT gun are very dangerous to individual mechs. A tank/hovercraft squadron can core pen your Marauder because an AC20 is an AC20 no matter what it's mounted on, and hovercraft are cheap (also the core principle behind the Urbie). In the games where you pilot a mech yourself, yes, non-mechs are just chaff to fight between setpiece mech engagements. But on the tabletop, you can theoretically spend all your points on tanks and swarms of infantry and VTOLs if you want and remain competitive vs an opponent who bought all mechs and a couple squads of PBIs to fill in the gaps.In the fiction; the game was a little more dicey (heyo) due to trying to keep things balanced. Though tanks could get DFA'd and in general were using combustion engines while 'Mechs were using fusion.
Back on topic, while core canon maintained that the Imperials just fielded ISDs, in EU lore there were a shitton of other ships, like Dreadnaughts, that were very prevalent and dangerous in their own right. It's just that Imperial admirals (and leadership in general) preferred the aesthetic of monolithic forces, which was often a strategic blunder that the Rebellion was able to exploit. Just as often the sledgehammer approach to strategy worked fine. Carriers were unmanly and the TIE wasn't really valued, so the Rebellion took advantage of that and used individually superior strike craft designs and the carriers to deploy them to obviously great effect. Also it's easier and smarter as a guerilla force to build many small craft and a couple boxes to hold them all vs one big battleship.
There's also the consideration that it's WWII in space, and Axis forces are more associated with the Bismarck and Yamato with the Allies more associated with destroyers and carriers. The Japanese loved carriers too, but their adherence to the Great Big Battleship Battle Doctrine fucked them. The Germans loved U-Boats, but again, big surface ship apocalyptic battle. Hence, in general, Imperials love bigass gunships and Rebels love fighter aces.