Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

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RSU 1741 said:
The even funnier thing, is that with all the Dark Age/Jihad retcons and desperate attempts to make the lore make sense you end up with the sober realization that a minor Inner Sphere power (as much as the WoBbies were minor) ended up building an entire army of souped-up cyborgs armed to the teeth with Omnimechs, nukes, custom bio-plagues and mass drivers, all hellbent to kill every single Clanner at the head of a somewhat united Inner Sphere. Even if it was in theory. And even the entire Clan Homeworlds (in the laughable theoretical case they could unite and fight properly a serious Inner Sphere expedition) could have only countered with space assets, or simply die in flames.

Btech never made sense and the Clans are cool, but their entire lifestyle and setup is plainly absurd. It's like Slovenia being a serious opponent for the US or something.
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To this day I still want to know what FASA's original plans for the Jihad were before ClickyTech.
 
RSU 1741 said:
The even funnier thing, is that with all the Dark Age/Jihad retcons and desperate attempts to make the lore make sense you end up with the sober realization that a minor Inner Sphere power (as much as the WoBbies were minor) ended up building an entire army of souped-up cyborgs armed to the teeth with Omnimechs, nukes, custom bio-plagues and mass drivers, all hellbent to kill every single Clanner at the head of a somewhat united Inner Sphere. Even if it was in theory. And even the entire Clan Homeworlds (in the laughable theoretical case they could unite and fight properly a serious Inner Sphere expedition) could have only countered with space assets, or simply die in flames.

Btech never made sense and the Clans are cool, but their entire lifestyle and setup is plainly absurd. It's like Slovenia being a serious opponent for the US or something.
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Less like the USA and more like the rest of Europe considering how much diplomatic work Jaime had to do on Outreach to get everyone to fall in line. Hanse had to pretty much blackmail Thomas Marik (well his body double actually but nobody knew that at the time) by offering NAIS cancer treatments for his son in exchange for the FWL producing field upgrade kits for BattleMechs to get them outfitted with Star League tech. IIRC you even had the impossible happen of a Davion/Kurita joint mech design.
AbduluCthuluZulu said:
To this day I still want to know what FASA's original plans for the Jihad were before ClickyTech.
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My personal preference would have been the Homeworld Clans showing up and deciding to just raze the entire Inner Sphere out of spite in Kerensky's name and managing to rope in some of the IS Clans, like the ilClan stuff except not retarded. No zellbrigen, no fucking around, Turtle Bay incidents every time a WarShip shows up in orbit to demand complete surrender, just complete genocide as a response to their numerical inferiority.
 
Snekposter said:
My personal preference would have been the Homeworld Clans showing up and deciding to just raze the entire Inner Sphere out of spite in Kerensky's name and managing to rope in some of the IS Clans, like the ilClan stuff except not retarded. No zellbrigen, no fucking around, Turtle Bay incidents every time a WarShip shows up in orbit to demand complete surrender, just complete genocide as a response to their numerical inferiority.
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So basically, what the end of the Wars of Reaving had set up before CGL unceremoniously removed the homeworlds from the map.
 
AbduluCthuluZulu said:
So basically, what the end of the Wars of Reaving had set up before CGL unceremoniously removed the homeworlds from the map.
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Pretty much, yeah. Would also have been a much, much better way to resurrect Clan Smoke Jaguar by claiming they were all gloriously martyred in Kerensky's name by the Inner Sphere than what we wound up getting, and I'd have them act as a replacement to the Manei Domini by going all-in on mind-melting cybernetics like Enhanced Imaging and DNI. Your typical Warrior only gets ten years or so to get a Bloodname until they wind up declared solahma and of no further use, and that's if they don't get killed, so no point trying to preserve your own life and sanity.
 
But more to the point, I'm talking about what FASA must have had planned for the ComStar splinter faction specifically. After all, they started building up that plot hook right at the end of the Clan Invasion with Operation Scorpion.
 
AbduluCthuluZulu said:
But more to the point, I'm talking about what FASA must have had planned for the ComStar splinter faction specifically. After all, they started building up that plot hook right at the end of the Clan Invasion with Operation Scorpion.
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Well, something less retarded than "giant shadow military and a bunch of convenient worlds nobody knew about". Probably go with a mix of Clan-hating hardliners and true believers in ComStar's bizarre quasi-theology that have quietly managed to stash a ton of WMDs over the years combined with infiltrators and sympathizers inside mainline ComStar and the ComGuards that all blindly lash out at the Inner Sphere and ComStar proper in the midst of the Second Invasion in a bizarre combination of attempted takeover of the Inner Sphere (various Myndo Waterly loyalists), doomsday cults trying to usher in the complete destruction of the Inner Sphere as Blake foretold (the Manei Domini guys), and a scorched earth campaign by the anti-Clan hardliners to deny the Clans staging areas and wear down their supply lines (guys who think Focht compromised too much with the Tukayyid terms), all of which sees the factions nuke each other almost as much as they nuke everyone else, just like how a scorpion cannot help but sting. Less of a Jihad, more of a ComStar Civil War right when the Inner Sphere really, really can't afford to have the guys responsible for the telephone lines start blowing them up.

TL;DR: Extremist retards instead of extremists with retarded writing.
 
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AbduluCthuluZulu said:
To this day I still want to know what FASA's original plans for the Jihad were before ClickyTech.
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Based off of what the various developers and writers have said over the years, basically the Jihad we got except for there would be no Stone. So at the end of the Jihad, you have the IS in shambles, a new state right in the middle, C* is back to being the only commo company in town, WoB is gone (or is it), and you go from there. The ClickyTech setting wasn't the future until Weisman got the property back and needed everyone to not have Mechs so he could sell blind boxes and lawnmower Mechs as the standard.
 
Snekposter said:
Well, something less retarded than "giant shadow military and a bunch of convenient worlds nobody knew about"
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It pisses me off they used that plot device not once but twice.

The Society wasn't that far off. How in the name of fuck they managed to build all they did and revolt in a society like the Home Clans is anyone's guess.
 
AbduluCthuluZulu said:
But more to the point, I'm talking about what FASA must have had planned for the ComStar splinter faction specifically. After all, they started building up that plot hook right at the end of the Clan Invasion with Operation Scorpion.
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Following Field Manual: Comstar I was always led to believe that the Jihad would have been a thing, but for sure not the epoch-defining spergout it ended up being. WoBbies summoning dozens of divisions and Shadowrun cyborgs out of thin air had almost no build up in the books, it was clearly a way to explain how they managed to kick everyone's ass to the ground on flimsy excuses.

Too much buildup was essentially wasted: units, characters and plot points were flat-out nuked or gasses or killed, everything to give way to the Republic and Stone. Personally, I think it would have been like the Smoke Jags: the WoB as a punching bag faction so the "good guys" (Comstar, Davionman and the Dragoons) could have a good final fight on Terra or something.

But the Dark Ages came and they were "tired of writing Robes" so Comstar got written off.

Corn Flakes said:
The Society wasn't that far off. How in the name of fuck they managed to build all they did and revolt in a society like the Home Clans is anyone's guess.
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Shitty writing or the Clans are completely incompetent at everything. The Society came from nothing, got one book and went away in a book. I like the little schizos to bits (they're an excuse to field Clan Mechs without proper Clan pilots) and their units are pure bullshit, but their setup is pure improvisation.

The fun thing is, with Herbert Beas at the helm, the Manei Domini not only survived the Jihad but got super-jumpships, functional non-smart AI and drone battle armour in Ghosts of Obeedah. They'll never use them again, my bet.
 
The only real build up was hints that WoB was up to something but the kicker was they were siphoning off 15% of the FWL economy in the process, like nobody would notice, and of course because of the brain trust running FASA and later publishers, nobody did. But no one said "a couple dozen divisions of troops, street samurai, and planet killing warships from hidden worlds with fully capable factories that have been running for two centuries even though no one in ComStar needed those Mechs and ships until after Tuk,kyyid, and for some reason no one who stayed with the reformed C* knew anything about these worlds, not even Focht who should have been told about them considering he was in charge of rebuilding the ComGuard".

The Jihad should have been WoB deciding to take all those Chaos March worlds, eliminating Wolf Dragoons in the process, then going after ComStar and the Clans starting that war and it just spirals into the Fifth Succession War, but given BT is a Space Opera there has to be an evil faction and everyone else combines to beat them. So there's the Jihad.
 
Snekposter said:
My personal preference would have been the Homeworld Clans showing up and deciding to just raze the entire Inner Sphere out of spite in Kerensky's name and managing to rope in some of the IS Clans, like the ilClan stuff except not retarded. No zellbrigen, no fucking around, Turtle Bay incidents every time a WarShip shows up in orbit to demand complete surrender, just complete genocide as a response to their numerical inferiority.
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Instead of doing alt scenarios like BT Gothic I wish they did one-shot what if scenarios like this though you'd have to set it earlier than when Jiad happened so you don't have IS built warships knocking around to challenge the Clans', maybe something like Ulric doesn't die during the Refusal War and the Jade Falcon successfully get the Clans to reneg on Tukayyid.
 
Today I learned that the bagpipe memes are in fact canon:
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I do not like the wheel to allocate damage but I get it. They have the Grand Summoner E so I can finally terrorize the locals without having to print off sheets
 
Swiss46 said:
I do not like the wheel to allocate damage but I get it. They have the Grand Summoner E so I can finally terrorize the locals without having to print off sheets
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I think they designed that for people who play via phone or tablet. Makes sense.
 
Tried getting my friend who is into 40k to understand Battletech and quickly realized even the simplest of things needs a twenty minute explanation each. The SLDF and Clan connection plot may have literally bored him to death if I wanted to be accurate.
 
RA-5C Vigilante said:
Tried getting my friend who is into 40k to understand Battletech and quickly realized even the simplest of things needs a twenty minute explanation each. The SLDF and Clan connection plot may have literally bored him to death if I wanted to be accurate.
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That's why you don't go in explaining things when introducing people to BattleTech. Start with the very basics (giant rock-em-sock-em robots with guns and feudalism IN SPAAAAAAAACE), then answer questions as they come. It's a lot easier to keep someone interested when they're the ones asking the questions.
 
Corn Flakes said:
That's why you don't go in explaining things when introducing people to BattleTech. Start with the very basics (giant rock-em-sock-em robots with guns and feudalism IN SPAAAAAAAACE), then answer questions as they come. It's a lot easier to keep someone interested when they're the ones asking the questions.
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Oh I did the basics and showed him Mechwarrior and all that, which he’s adopted with good speed. It’s when we start getting into the weeds that I lose him.
 
I just found out there was a Battletech con near me this past weekend.
If I had known I would have gone. I used to play and the location was very cool.
It was on the USS Massachusetts battleship in Battleship cove, Fall River MA.
Saturday and Sunday. 35 bucks for either day. But they had a package for 100 bucks, was both days and you got to stay over in one of the crew bunks Saturday into Sunday. If they have it next year, I'm going.
 
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