So I've read almost all Battletech novels and there's something that's really bothering me: Clan warriors are really, really bad at what they do. In the board game it says that on average they have an advantage of 1 in both gunnery and piloting skill compared to their IS counterparts, but in the novels it's really the opposite.
At the beginning of the Clan invasion (Lethal Heritage, etc.), the Clans do win, but it's made very clear that it is only due to their tech advantage. Then almost right away the Clans start losing (because of their inflexible tactics), and even once they've had a lot of exposure to IS tactics, they keep on losing. They even lose almost all straight up 1 on 1 fights against IS warriors!
Now, I understand that there are more famous IS characters that we follow in the novels and that they are supposed to be extraordinary individuals (even though they miss a lot of shots when in actual fights lol, even Kai Allard-Liao seems to have a gunnery skill no better than 4 or 5...), but it kinda makes following the clans not very fun. The whole point of their society is to make them into better warriors, but all they've managed to do in 250 years of this is to become worse than they initially were.
Even the Clan freeborns seem to be better warriors than the trueborns when they can catch a break from social oppression, how the hell did the trueborn program catch on in the first place?
