BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Game Universe => Clan Chatterweb => Topic started by: Precentor Scorpio on 18 January 2018, 13:45:40
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Still stuck in the 3050's - 3080's but it appears that the Gargoyle is still in use in 3145 ish.
Is it being produced in this time period or is this a situation where there were so many mechs available that enough parts can be manufactured/found to keep the design operational.
Thank you
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I don't have the book handy from the office, but the War of Reaving Supplemental had a list of Clan designs that are no longer in production- if no one else gets around to checking that list for you here, that's probably the best place to look.
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War of Reaving Supplemental does not list the Gargoyle amongst the designs the Home Clans no longer use. For what it's worth, the Wolves and Hell's Horses were very fond of the Gargoyle. I imagine the Hell's Horses like it a lot due to the fact that it rarely uses torso mounted weapons and makes a good heavy Elemental Transport.
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If it ain't produced anymore, there are likely so many of them left they're far from extinct for now. This might be the likeliest scenario: Objectives The Clans does not list Gargoyle anywhere (at least i can't find it there). Sarna lists Gargoyle production sites as Tokasha, and "Wolf Clan Site OZ-1" but i've no idea what place that is and the link's red. But if it is in Wolf territory, it probably survived since Tamar aside, the Wolf industrial facilities seem to be in pretty good condition. Unless it was on Tamar...
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If it ain't produced anymore, there are likely so many of them left they're far from extinct for now. This might be the likeliest scenario: Objectives The Clans does not list Gargoyle anywhere (at least i can't find it there). Sarna lists Gargoyle production sites as Tokasha, and "Wolf Clan Site OZ-1" but i've no idea what place that is and the link's red. But if it is in Wolf territory, it probably survived since Tamar aside, the Wolf industrial facilities seem to be in pretty good condition. Unless it was on Tamar...
It likely was Occupation Zone on Tamar, but the Blakist nuked it. Sarna going by what the TROs were saying, sometimes they don't mention where these the production plants were.
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Well, that's a good point as well- so many were built that it's likely to survive for a long time in service even after production ends. We saw a Jade Falcon driving a Night Gyr in one of the Dark Age novels, decades after that design was (apparently) out of production, after all, and it's hard to believe it's the only one left in the Clan.
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The Clans are pretty meticulous about using things until they're nothing more but scrap, so they'll be using any Gargoyles they've still got for a while yet, me thinks.
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The Clans are pretty meticulous about using things until they're nothing more but scrap, so they'll be using any Gargoyles they've still got for a while yet, me thinks.
Not to mention the fact that the Gargoyle is one of the easiest Clan Assault Omnis to repair, as all you really need to do is swap out the arms to restore 95% of it's firepower.
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There's a big difference between "out of production" and "extinct". In the Man O' War's case, it's still a common enough 'Mech, even if it's no longer being produced. Hell, it even got a new variant in the 3120s.
MUL is your friend.
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I thought MUL not perfect though. There always a detail missing since it's done on volunteer basis just like Sarna isn't it?
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I thought MUL not perfect though. There always a detail missing since it's done on volunteer basis just like Sarna isn't it?
Whether it's perfect or not, its data is canonical.
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I thought MUL not perfect though. There always a detail missing since it's done on volunteer basis just like Sarna isn't it?
Nothing is perfect. If you want to question something on the MUL, there's a thread for that.
Both the MUL and Sarna are done by volunteers. However, the MUL is official, the volunteers are specifically "chartered" by CGL. The MUL is a product of CGL.
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I'm not knocking down MUL, it's needed tool. It's just slow progress.
Sarna.net cite's only canon sources. There older articles it was not done, they've been noted and many corrected.
I just hope this year we will see finally 3150's Record Sheet books.
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I was leaning towards the no longer in production option. Still don't understand the replacing the Timber Wolf cheap fiction but oh well
Nice to see the Jade Falcons improved on the Hellbringer.
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Aren't any new production Mad Cats in 3145 handmade?
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Aren't any new production Mad Cats in 3145 handmade?
Yep. The only source of new Mad Cats since the Jihad has been a workshop on Weingarten that builds them by hand from hand-tooled parts. It was described as the Inner Sphere's "least productive assembly line." It's current status is uncelar, as it might have been disasembled/moved/abandoned with the Wolf migration.
The Wolves never migrated Mad Cat production from the homeworlds, and simply assumed that their supply lines would remain functional forever. That worked out fantastically for them. This left them with no capacity to build the 'Mech at all; no tooling, no blueprints, no machinery, not even a source of spare parts.
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To be blunt, the Ghost Bears got psychic premonitions about every factory the Wolves tried to build in the Inner Sphere and appeared just as the Wolves got them done. That made the extra long supply lines feasible and development of the Inner Sphere OZ undesirable.
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To be blunt, the Ghost Bears got psychic premonitions about every factory the Wolves tried to build in the Inner Sphere and appeared just as the Wolves got them done. That made the extra long supply lines feasible and development of the Inner Sphere OZ undesirable.
Actually, you've got this backwards. It turns out that Clan Ghost Bear are the "Chief White Halfoat" of the Battletech Universe. Battlemech Factories appear in response to where they want to go to. They actually didn't WANT Tokasha Mechworks back in the day, it just happened to appear at a time that coincided with them showing up.
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When did the Ghost Bears take a 'Mech Factory from the Wolf OZ? I don't ever recall that happening.
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Satalice when the Wolves started building Locust IICs there.
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Satalice when the Wolves started building Locust IICs there.
That's one time on a world that was already on the border after the Wolves had already provoked the Bears. Hardly a pattern.
And even then, that was in the mid-3060s. By then, the Falcons and Bears had set up far more manufacturing in the Inner Sphere, both in terms of new lines and ones transplanted from the homeworlds.
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The Warden Wolves were building the Timberwolf on Arc Royal . . . doubt the Gargoyle, but after the Jihad . . . who knows, TPTB were pretty clear about wiping them out and then TRO3150 came out.
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The Warden Wolves were building the Timberwolf on Arc Royal . . . doubt the Gargoyle, but after the Jihad . . . who knows, TPTB were pretty clear about wiping them out and then TRO3150 came out.
The Wardens were building the Mad Cat on Arc-Royal before the Jihad. That line was destroyed in the Jihad and never rebuilt.
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Yep. The only source of new Mad Cats since the Jihad has been a workshop on Weingarten that builds them by hand from hand-tooled parts. It was described as the Inner Sphere's "least productive assembly line." It's current status is uncelar, as it might have been disasembled/moved/abandoned with the Wolf migration.
The Wolves never migrated Mad Cat production from the homeworlds, and simply assumed that their supply lines would remain functional forever. That worked out fantastically for them. This left them with no capacity to build the 'Mech at all; no tooling, no blueprints, no machinery, not even a source of spare parts.
i get the feeling that workshop's main output was not full mechs, but rather any unique spare parts existing Timber Wolves required to stay operational. (since most should be shared with other clan designs that are still in production)
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and, from the other end, I once did the math, and based on BT's own repair rules, starting with the empty air where you want a timber wolf to be, and repairing the empty mech bay until there is a Timber Wolf standing there, this hand-assembly line has a possible output range of anywhere between 4 and 50 mechs per year.
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and, from the other end, I once did the math, and based on BT's own repair rules, starting with the empty air where you want a timber wolf to be, and repairing the empty mech bay until there is a Timber Wolf standing there, this hand-assembly line has a possible output range of anywhere between 4 and 50 mechs per year.
that's actually better than some of the full Factories.
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Yeah, it's hard to get solid numbers on anything.
You look too closely at any of this, and it becomes quite obvious that none of it holds up, that none of it makes any sense, and it's not put together with the eye towards realism that it seems like it should have. This is just another aspect of that.
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and, from the other end, I once did the math, and based on BT's own repair rules, starting with the empty air where you want a timber wolf to be, and repairing the empty mech bay until there is a Timber Wolf standing there, this hand-assembly line has a possible output range of anywhere between 4 and 50 mechs per year.
I still have a hard time swallowing the assertion that the same Clan that staged a daring rescue of the Kerensky genetic legacy from the Blood Chapel somehow couldn’t throw some Timber Wolf blueprints and schematics on the 31st Century version of a thumb drive somewhere.
It’s such a bad bid of writing, almost like some bad fan fiction or something.
Why they would seek to marginalize one of the iconic mechs of this game is really puzzling.
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I still have a hard time swallowing the assertion that the same Clan that staged a daring rescue of the Kerensky genetic legacy from the Blood Chapel somehow couldn’t throw some Timber Wolf blueprints and schematics on the 31st Century version of a thumb drive somewhere.
It’s such a bad bid of writing, almost like some bad fan fiction or something.
Why they would seek to marginalize one of the iconic mechs of this game is really puzzling.
Psh, I've forgotten a thumb drive with a presentation just because I was late to CLASS. Never mind when people are trying to kill me!
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Yeah, its that Clan couple driving to the Inner Sphere from Home . . .
"Trothkin, did you turn out the lights before we left, quiaff?"
"Aff, the lights were out."
"Did you get the giftake from the chapel, quiaff?"
"Aff trothkin, I am just glad you picked up the Timberwolf specs."
"I did? I thought you got the specs, quineg?"
"Neg . . . "
"I am not turning this car around, we are nearly there. We will just adapt!"
All joking aside . . . yeah, they should have just taken a single Timberwolf apart & study to get the specs as well as cast forms for any machining. I mean we may have ended up with something like Mad Dog I vs II where there were cosmetic differences but . . .
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“Apple misplaced the blueprint to the IPhone and was forced to build them one at a time in artisanal workshop, which increased the Iphone’s value to hipsters everywhere.”
“Yo, sorry Vlad never once in our 30 year occupation of the Inner Sphere did we upload the plans to the Timber Wolf and the production line to Sharepoint, we did get you the ladies of House Steiner swimsuit calendar though.”
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Or they have the blueprints/schematics and that's not the issue.
Where is the timber wolf by hand reference by the way? I was trying to write up a timeline of the timber wolf but couldn't remember where that reference was.
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joking aside . . . yeah, they should have just taken a single Timberwolf apart & study to get the specs as well as cast forms for any machining. I mean we may have ended up with something like Mad Dog I vs II where there were cosmetic differences but . . .
That's probably how they ended up with the Mad Cat sheltered workshop, by dissasembling examples and studying their components. That sort of reverse-casting rarely works out well even on simple things (eg Toys, where it's commonly used), let alone complicated machinery.
The removal of the Kerensky Giftake from the homeworlds was a plan that was thrown together at the time as the situation required, and not exactly a fair comparison. That they made it out with just that much required the Wolves to essentially sacrifice an entire Galaxy to do such. The weren't exactly in a position to also grab technical data that they might not have even had on hand at the time.
The reference to the hand-built Mad Cats is in Objectives: Clans, p28. It suggests that the Wolves never had the blueprints for the design in the Inner Sphere to begin with. This, in turn, was the result of a policy of deliberately neglecting the OZ that Vlad enforced (And is explained in more detail in Wars of Reaving). So if you want to blame anyone, blame him.
Vlad was a great warrior, but a terrible leader
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Which is only to be expected in a society where your one-on-one combat prowess is used to figure out your growth potential.
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The reference to the hand-built Mad Cats is in Objectives: Clans, p28. It suggests that the Wolves never had the blueprints for the design in the Inner Sphere to begin with. This, in turn, was the result of a policy of deliberately neglecting the OZ that Vlad enforced (And is explained in more detail in Wars of Reaving). So if you want to blame anyone, blame him.
Vlad was a great warrior, but a terrible leader
Ok, I was thinking it was late Jihad, but wanted to make sure. TR 3085 mentions the Timber Wolf in production by Clan Wolf. ("nearly lost"). Though that TR3085 wording could be interpreted different ways, I was told that meant actual production, not building a couple by hand. The status of hand built Timber Wolves was temporary until Wolf built the new factory line in the IS.
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Not disagreeing Deadborder, I do not want to blow this up . . . but the plans were in the IS with the Warden Wolves- which may explain the battles over the years after the Jihad between the two groups- but on a design built for modularity and that they had between 3080ish and 3130ish . . . 50 years?
Honestly, their heavies are in good shape pre-move except they are standard Battlemechs rather than Omnis- Tundra Wolves and Blood Reapers- I think their lights and mediums are in horrible shape with what they have not being Wolf-esque. Where they used to be Adders, Ice Ferrets, Pouncers and Phantoms they have . . . Sun Cobras and Lobos, again not Omnis. While the Lobo is not bad, its a fat Adder or non-jumping Pouncer, where is their cavalry?
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Not disagreeing Deadborder, I do not want to blow this up . . . but the plans were in the IS with the Warden Wolves- which may explain the battles over the years after the Jihad between the two groups- but on a design built for modularity and that they had between 3080ish and 3130ish . . . 50 years?
Honestly, their heavies are in good shape pre-move except they are standard Battlemechs rather than Omnis- Tundra Wolves and Blood Reapers- I think their lights and mediums are in horrible shape with what they have not being Wolf-esque. Where they used to be Adders, Ice Ferrets, Pouncers and Phantoms they have . . . Sun Cobras and Lobos, again not Omnis. While the Lobo is not bad, its a fat Adder or non-jumping Pouncer, where is their cavalry?
Again, Blame Vlad. The Wolves made a series of terrible decisions between 3060 and 3070 and it all came back to bite them in the bum.
Just because the Exiles had the specs for the Mad Cat doesn't mean that they are willing (or able) to share them with the Wolves. There's a lot of reasons for the two to not get along. And even then, given the state of the Wolf industrial base post-Jihad, there's no saying that the Wolves would be able to actually mass-produce an OmniMech. It's one thing to have the specs, it's another to actually have the capacity. Their first post-Jihad Omni was the Tommy II and even that had "problems" with its production.
While the Wolves aren't producing any of their traditional cavalry 'Mechs post-Jihad, it's not like they're short in supply by any means. The Fenris was said to be so common in Wolf frontline units that there was "one in every Trinary and almost one in every Star". And while yes, the numbers are obviously effectively finite, we've seen how long a design can hang on without being in production.
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One thing I find interesting: according to the MUL, at least, the Wolves don't appear to be trading with the Sharks/Foxes nearly as much as the other IS Clans.
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Battlemechs are outrageously sturdy, and can be repaired from almost any state of damage, as long as you have the parts, during the 3rd SW you didn't have the parts, The Wolves on the other hand have the parts, just not the Machine Tools, or final assembly plant. I have to imaging that any clan targeting/tracking and communications equipment is just as Omni as Weapons. Even the inner sphere was able to repair its Clan Tech salvage within a couple years of the invasion. If you have EndoSteel Plants, and FerroFibrous plants, and a 375 XL Engine Plant and the Myomer and actuator plants, you have the pieces to make a Timberwolf. May have to form the Armor or Structure into a different shape, but that doesn't seem that difficult.
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Battlemechs are outrageously sturdy, and can be repaired from almost any state of damage, as long as you have the parts, during the 3rd SW you didn't have the parts, The Wolves on the other hand have the parts, just not the Machine Tools, or final assembly plant. I have to imaging that any clan targeting/tracking and communications equipment is just as Omni as Weapons. Even the inner sphere was able to repair its Clan Tech salvage within a couple years of the invasion. If you have EndoSteel Plants, and FerroFibrous plants, and a 375 XL Engine Plant and the Myomer and actuator plants, you have the pieces to make a Timberwolf. May have to form the Armor or Structure into a different shape, but that doesn't seem that difficult.
This.
I just looked at the passage in Objectives. It’s a pretty weak sauce explanation. Basically they don’t have the assembly line. Since the Timber Wolf parts other than the CT are basically on other Omnis like the Hellbringer, the Summoner and the Mad Dog we must just be talking about the CT. This mech is an old design basically a second gen Omni and at this point not sure what proprietary knowledge wouldn’t have migrated from the HW.
Sorry, this a really tough one to suspend belief on, considering I work in Industrial engineering. Vlad was pretty resourceful after the Refusal War with the Harvest Trials and all hard to believe that they just forgot about logistics and production capacity. If they were missing something to produce the most important mech in Touman then he would just Trial for what he needed.
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Vlad didn't anticipate the Wars of Reaving. As mentioned earlier in the thread, he'd deliberately kept the Wolves' manufacturing in the Homeworlds, so when they were suddenly cut off during the Jihad his clan was abruptly in serious trouble.
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Vlad didn't anticipate the Wars of Reaving. As mentioned earlier in the thread, he'd deliberately kept the Wolves' manufacturing in the Homeworlds, so when they were suddenly cut off during the Jihad his clan was abruptly in serious trouble.
considering they were starting from scratch using neglected (and probably not in all that good of shape to begin with) low tech IS factories, that they had any sort of production at all by the 3100's is amazing.
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Would it make more sense to take an inferior mech linebacker to carry elements into battle then a timberwolf that could only fire 60% of its weapons if it is going to carry elementals. I would say no, but if the wolves were going to emphasize more combined arms then maybe for cheap fiction purposes it would make sense
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The Linebacker is faster than the Mad Cat. That right there gives it an advantage as an Elemental hauler.
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I believe the state of Timber Wolf construction comes back to a throw away comment in one of the period books.
Basically TPTB had to maintain construction despite a genuine attempt to end it.