Does anyone else dislike the clans?

[NeonKnight]

Maybe the Wobbies were right.

The Wobbies are ALWAYS right ;)

[Crimson Dawn]

I do like the clans and even their tech but that is due to how I tend to view the stories I like with them.

1.  Clan vs clan which is fun or

2.  Clans are the overall antagonists and your group of plucky IS pilots needs to fight against the nastier clan forces.  That too is fun in an under dog sort of way.

While I do enjoy clan culture and I could see how it could be fun trying to use that to restrict yourself to make for a challenge against "inferior" forces to me that probably is not going to be a game I will be using that often.

I will say that I do not care for how some of the clans got used.  I agree that there are too many of them and as evidence I would say that many do hardly anything at all and some become hard to distinguish from each other.  It is sad that you could probably take away half of them and not notice especially if you give another clan the few things that they are known for.  Probably would have worked better if those eliminated clans existed but were destroyed/absorbed during the time leading up to the invasion (yes this did happen already but I think they could have done that more).

While mismanagement is not just a clan thing I do think that the clans have the more unique problem of their being too many of them.

[DarkLloyd]

I like the Clans for One reason only, you can farm some sweet sweet salvage.
And the contracts to raid them pay Really Really well.

[Jellico]

I guess you got me there. But it makes for a boring story unless there is pay-off.

Maybe the Wobbies were right.

Payoff? A stern lecture from a white hat ends in a payoff?

Perhaps we are getting a payoff now with IlClan? "Who is hypocritical and on the fast road to destruction now Surat? "

[abou]

Payoff? A stern lecture from a white hat ends in a payoff?

Perhaps we are getting a payoff now with IlClan? "Who is hypocritical and on the fast road to destruction now Surat? "

Well, no. It is that characters have wants and needs, but favoring their wants tends to have consequences.

Peter Parker wants to use his new powers for personal gain. He needs to use his new powers responsibly.

[pat_hdx]

I have mixed feelings.

There are things about the Clans I like, and things that drive me crazy.

First of all, for me, I have to remind myself that developing this vast IP with so many cooks in the kitchen over 30 plus years is a difficult thing. Conniving things so that the lore works well with a table top game geared to be fun rather than realistic (fusion powered energy weapons with ranges in the hundreds of meters rather than hundreds of kilometers because nobody can play on a 100 meter table) is hard...

I bet that if the game was developed today, the ease of getting feedback over e-mails, forums, Discord, IM, etc. Would have led to way more play testing and better/balanced Clan factions and equipment.

With that in mind, these are my likes and dislikes:

Likes:

• The Blood of Kerensky trilogy. I was a wee lad when it came out and loved it. The Clans made for an epic addition to the universe, and frankly one that was inevitable in some fashion from the moment the Universe was fluffed with a mass exodus of SLDF units.
• Some cool characters like Ulric Kerensky and a compelling plot device in the Warden cause to protect the Inner Sphere from within the Clans
• Some really evocative units like the Timber Wolf and Gladiator. They really represented FASA hitting its stride in the design department after the rocky start with the unseen.
• Later on the Wars of Reaving made for a compelling story line and while maybe a bit too blood thirsty in parts, a satisfying outcome to an over rigid, war focused, low productivity society, designed by a warped N. Kerensky.
• WoR gave us the Imperio del Escorpión which I find to be an incredibly fun faction which can field some cool and varied forces. You want a Primitive Archer with semi-guided LRMs with a Perseus and Purifier squad providing TAG? You got it. A star with a Star League mech,  A Marauder IIC, a Thug with Wolverine Era improved PPCs, a Summoner with improved Heavy lasers, and an Araña militia mech? You got it. Your Seekers found a RWR cache with Dragoons and Rampages? Perfectly plausible.

Dislikes:

• I always figured that  Clan forces could be balanced with numbers and things like Arty by IS forces. But playing Megamek has given me an appreciation for how overpowered the clans are, and how much work a GM would have to do to keep things balanced.  I don’t play MWO, but balancing that without blowing up the Clan flavor must be a nightmare for the studio.
• The 3025, Clan Invasion up to Tukayiad, and to an extent the Jihad periods are really fun (even with their flaws), but the late Invasion period and Fedcom Civil war were a let down, and depressing. I lost interest in BT for a time  in part because of it. Particularly with the Clans, I feel the plot armor and conniving  to keep the Wolves and Falcons safe and growing stronger is hard to swallow. They tear each other to pieces, while massively out numbered, thousands of light years from their base of support, facing the Industrial and R&D might of the FC, with supplies streaming in from the FWL, all while trying to subjugate a hostile populous, with little experience in the free wheeling planetary economies they are taking over?  The Ghosts Bears won over the populous, the Nova Cats reached an accommodation with the DC…but the Wolves and Falcons? The answer seems to be: Well, the Lyrans, and the FC before that have been too busy crotch punching themselves, from 3052 to 3145 to leverage their industrial, work force, financial, and scientific might (not to mention the tech of the Wolves in Exile) to rid themselves of  this horrible threat occupying scores of their planets and subjugating billions of their countrymen…..that’s hard to take. I feel like the Wolves and Falcons should have been slowly pushed back, and while still holding some of their planets in the Inner Sphere, would have revived and set up shop in many of the old RWR, Periphery Kingdom territories.

• WoR was pretty good, but the penchant for mass sterilization is a bit much,  it’s a recipe for a Demographic nightmare.  What are the Cloud Cobras going to do on Roche? Stuck in an Economic system that is low surplus by design, with a rapidly aging population with zero natural population growth? Use scarce transportation resources to ship in millions of people from other hard hit planets that need all the labor they have? Spend a huge amount of resources to build a huge Iron womb system for the civilian castes, and then have to mothball it all in 20 years after the population situation stabilizes? If I had to take up the storyline for the Homies, it would include some quiet sterilization reversals using clan advanced medicine.

I really hope that when the Home Clans get reintroduced into the story line, their power is reflective of an extremely difficult recovery process, social change reflective of the value of labor after mass death (see what happened in Europe after the Black Death) and they don’t come out steamrolling like in Ben Rome’s April Fools timeline.

[SteveRestless]

I don’t play MWO, but balancing that without blowing up the Clan flavor must be a nightmare for the studio

Nah, they just rob the clans of most of their effectiveness.

I've got a Marauder 5D with 2 Heavy PPCs, 3 Medium Pulse, Streak 4, and I have a Timber Wolf A config, and the only differences I can really tell between them are the different narrators and cockpit art, and relatively superficial differences in range. Well, the HPPC min range smarts a little. But they're roughly the same effectiveness.

[rebs]

Posting via a phone, so don't mind the typos, please...

What the Clans did during the Wars of Reaving bothers me too.  They essentially bottlenecked their selves - again. 

For a society obsessed with genetics, the clans make dumb decissions from a genetically-inclined point of view.  Yes, it's only a game, but it's science fiction that prides itself on being a somewhat harder brand of science fiction whenever possible, so I feel free to complain.  In this instance, the Home Clans have done a lot of hard work to eliminate genetic diversity whenever possible throughout the Wars of Reaving.  Mass sterilization, orbital obliteration of population groups who hold different values and ideas, on top of their "gene puddle" of a warrior caste.

The warrior caste is effectively a population on a self-imposed island.  After a few hundred years, we're already getting to see what happens to populations like that, through bloodhouses that have exhausted their selves (like often with the Mandrills), to individuals who exhibit insanity.  Insanity is said in canon to be "rare among the Clans", yet an instance of it led to the wars of reaving, in the person of the Bloody IlKhan.  The signs of the clans' "great experiment" coming to an end are there to be discerned.  One doesn't even have to look hard for them, the major plot points are rife with them.

Makes one wonder what the Home Clans will bring to the game table next.  Perhap they'll break through their own self imposed limits on the genetic engineering techniques they use.  They may have to, considering the damage they have done to their selves through the centuries.

[Robroy]

It is not just genetics that are heading towards a dead end. The Home Clans have crippled their Science caste, destroyed factories, cities, and worlds. I think their ability to recover, let alone to advance, is questionable.

[IronSphinx]

I think their ability to recover, let alone to advance, is questionable.

Here's hoping...  ;)

[rebs]

It is not just genetics that are heading towards a dead end. The Home Clans have crippled their Science caste, destroyed factories, cities, and worlds.

Orbital yards too.  Lots of man hours and resources in all of these things you mentioned.

The Clans threw aside all of the values instilled in them by the Founder.  They might as well throw them out forever, since the founders were tainted spheroids anyway.   

[Kitsune413]

Orbital yards too.  Lots of man hours and resources in all of these things you mentioned.

The Clans threw aside all of the values instilled in them by the Founder.  They might as well throw them out forever, since the founders were tainted spheroids anyway.

[rebs]

I might as well have a sense of humor about it.

[rebs]

Nicholas Kerensky was just as tainted as Phelan Kell.  Phelan was at least born under the care and supervision of Wolf's Dragoons scientist caste.  Nicholas was a straight up freebirth without even an asterisk.

Believe it or not, quirks and conundrums like this are part of what I like about the Clans.  They are just as hypocritical and self serving as any faction of human beings can possibly be.

[Foxx Ital]

My favorite thing about the clans is the hypocrisy. Sure if sunny backstabs you it's par for the course, if the clans do it then it's shocking!! Most of the hate seems to stem from the clan invasion,which makes sense. But things have changed in the real time to where its more even.
 Personally I've seen more min maxing from inner sphere players than clan, just how many medium lasers can I stuff in here and Make it heat neutral!!!
  One of the reasons I like the current era is because you see some really awesome mechs that close the tech gap, looking at you lament.
 I'm also the weirdo who thinks it's fun to take on battlemechs with infantry so I'm kinda used to facing weird odds.
 I've said it before but the great thing about battletech is there's something for everyone and if you're playing a campaign you should hopefully be having it run by someone who will make challenging but fun. There's a little more leeway for pick up battles but mainly your experience will be based on how your game is being run and played. If restless was a munchkin freebirth or a clan player who constantly just picks them for their mechs and didn't adhear to their flavor, I wouldn't play him. No one's forcing a ppc to your head ^_^.
 So in the end relax,order a pizza and pop open a beverage of your choice because the game is smashing robots and war...war never changes.

[Elmoth]

Best thread in the forums since I started coming here. Lots of info on the class, but also the game, the universe in general and the broad timeline. Kudos to all of you. I am sending links to this to the other players in my RPG group. It might prompt a revision of what we do in our tabletop, universe and RPG games.

[Kit deSummersville]

Equipment Compatability rules always read to me like someone who thinks of mechs as being like computers in the 90s, and I doubt they were written by someone who actually wrenches on shit or wires it up for a living.

There's nothing stopping someone from dropping a Chevy engine into a Ford Chassis

Anyone who's ever swapped a 390 out for a 402 would know that it takes a hell of a lot more work than just putting in a 428.

[Elmoth]

Mechs being ultra-reconfigurable is a let down for me. It makes mechs lose a lot of personality.

[Colt Ward]

Honestly, it depends on your interpretations and what you want to do . . . if you are replacing a AC-10 with a IS/Clan UAC/10 or LB-10X then most folks are not going to bat an eye of at that sort of thing . . . replacing it with a light gauss rifle or plasma rifle will get a few people to balk.  More will balk at a 20 class or a Gauss Rifle because the larger size.

History of the mech also matters . . . Clan machines are way more plug & play.  New built IS machines should be easier to modify than centuries old mechs that are patched together from pieces over the decades- that 200 year old Griffin my have had its left arm blown off at one point and the only replacement available was a shoulder actuator designed from a Wolverine.  So the tech who did the repair had to find the right patch for the software (maybe a different cycle rate for the electricity run through the myomer), shave off some of the myomer around the contact points, and in fact create a few new contact points to graft onto the frame.  Its a lot easier to work on a blank canvas than to have to dig through a pile of patches, tack ons, substitutes, and conversions to try to add a new one with the HOPE it does not break something else.

Makes you wonder when the tech/production recovery happened if some of the elite units had their mechs refurbished to the production standard.

[The_Caveman]

Mechs being ultra-reconfigurable is a let down for me. It makes mechs lose a lot of personality.

Same. The omnis that have more limited capabilities have so much more character. The Executioner may be objectively a bad 'Mech, the performance of which can't justify its prevalence in Clan toumans, but it has a lot more flavor than the more generic bag-o-guns designs like the Nova Cat.

MWO I think really took the lazy way out by allowing unrestricted customization and opened the game to being dominated by a very shallow meta. Not to mention shooting themselves in the foot with a business model focused on selling new chassis (or, more cynically, exploiting fan nostalgia for old TRO favorites) that would directly benefit from each chassis being unique.

They could have come up with so much more creative customizing systems by abandoning the TT construction rules and leaving stock configs as-is. The skill tree, as it was finally delivered (not the pointless, grindy placeholder they launched with) showed a lot of promise. If customizing had been centered around taking an existing build and tweaking it (meaningfully, not a 2% bonus here and there) to suit a play style, there would've been room for a wider variety of styles to flourish.

[Kidd]

Mechs being ultra-reconfigurable is a let down for me. It makes mechs lose a lot of personality.

gain you mean

as it stands each Mech is basically a hand-crafted war machine reflecting the tastes of its pilot

from a military POV it's more individually customised than a Starbucks frappe

[MadCapellan]

No, I'm pretty sure he means to say lose. When any 65-80 ton 'Mech can be configured to carry the exact same warload, what makes any given model of 'Mech more interesting than another? What's to like about a Mad Cat if every 5/8 heavy can carry the same pair of energy guns & missile racks, give or take a few tubes?  Individual Omni chassis lack character - they're essentially mannequins you slap your gun(s) of choice on. Realistically, they're extremely sensible as combat vehicles, but as space opera mechanical death gods they are rather boring.

[Kovax]

from a military POV it's more individually customised than a Starbucks frappe

Probably a very apt phrase.  For some players, it's a work of finesse to create their machine of choice, pronounced in a cultured French accent as "frap-PAY".  For others, it's just another big hammer, stuffed with as many energy weapons as the heatsinking will allow, pronounced in a rude urban American accent as "Frap".

The problem is that the degree of configurability would probably be militarily VERY useful, but the inevitable result on the game table is everything being tailored to the overly optimized 'Mech-versus-'Mech meta-game, rather than "normal" combat engagements.

I would have preferred to see mostly stock designs, but with some having a small amount of "swap space" for mission-specific equipment.

[massey]

Probably a very apt phrase.  For some players, it's a work of finesse to create their machine of choice, pronounced in a cultured French accent as "frap-PAY".  For others, it's just another big hammer, stuffed with as many energy weapons as the heatsinking will allow, pronounced in a rude urban American accent as "Frap".

The problem is that the degree of configurability would probably be militarily VERY useful, but the inevitable result on the game table is everything being tailored to the overly optimized 'Mech-versus-'Mech meta-game, rather than "normal" combat engagements.

I would have preferred to see mostly stock designs, but with some having a small amount of "swap space" for mission-specific equipment.

I'd "like" this post 5 times if they'd let us.

Particularly the frap part. :)

[Colt Ward]

See, I like facing someone who expects to face a mech-killing force where they brought a bunch of 3/5 and 4/6 Gauss/ERPPC toting heavies & assaults leaving everything else off.  Because I play combined arms with multi-purpose weapon systems and electronics as much as possible- I prefer a LB-10X over a Gauss Rifle b/c I can chose single damage or crit-seeking, it works against vehicles and extremely well knocking out for air support.  While I love the reach of ER ATMs, I like taking a design with cLRMs & cSRMs so I can configure my munitions load with things like smoke and infernos- you can fire 22/23 hexes at me, but good luck getting the LOS when I start tossing out smoke & moving behind it.  Getting Elementals and later types of suits to swarm that slow moving death blob.

And if I really want to crack your Gauss blob open, on board Thunder & Snipers are a good way to convince the opposition to spread out and keep out of firing positions.

I DO have to admit I am having a hard time 3070+ for campaign customization for fast units not to strip out standard PPCs, Large Pulse Lasers, and even ERPPCs for Snub PPCs.  The Wraith . . . Light Ray . . . Nightsky . . . Uziel . . . even something slower like the Enfield with its Large Pulse Laser would benefit from the Snub.

From my experience, the folks who do not want to play against (which is not the same as those who do not use) a combined arms approach is b/c they only want to plan to have to face a force of mechs.

[Sartris]

I don't really care that much what other people do with rules that have literally existed for the entire life of the game. go nuts. Most people seem to eventually mellow out after a while and not try to min/max every mech in the hanger. In the campaigns I've run, I take a different tact and allow almost no customization outside of switching omni configs with modified units used as rewards for performance because i want omnis to be valuable assets.

I agree that wide open customization robs units of personality but I know it's been a huge draw for people over the years. Any restrictive customization rules would require a much more complicated set of guidelines not suitable for the intro box - and i'd rather have the custom rules in the intro box than not.

[Colt Ward]

To steer back on topic, I have found the justification for Clan warriors not being able to totally customize their Omnis having to do with status.  You have to be a certain status to get assigned to a frontline unit- which usually means you have a Omni, even for the standard mechwarrior.  You have to have a certain status to get a Omni as a officer in a secondline/garrison unit- usually bloodnamed/ristar who got sent their from a frontline unit for seasoning at command.  You want your personal loadout on your Omni?  You need to be of a status that justifies the Clan 'wasting' time to plan the layout, reprogram the gyro settings, load the software for those weapon systems, save that as a data dump to make it easier to load in the future, and then actually load it on the mech.

Instead of master tech Ginger telling go-fer tech Kilroy, "Go switch the load on that Gargoyle from a Prime to a C, we are not facing Hell's Horses this time.  And no graffiti stravag!"

[The_Caveman]

To steer back on topic, I have found the justification for Clan warriors not being able to totally customize their Omnis having to do with status.  You have to be a certain status to get assigned to a frontline unit- which usually means you have a Omni, even for the standard mechwarrior.  You have to have a certain status to get a Omni as a officer in a secondline/garrison unit- usually bloodnamed/ristar who got sent their from a frontline unit for seasoning at command.  You want your personal loadout on your Omni?  You need to be of a status that justifies the Clan 'wasting' time to plan the layout, reprogram the gyro settings, load the software for those weapon systems, save that as a data dump to make it easier to load in the future, and then actually load it on the mech.

Instead of master tech Ginger telling go-fer tech Kilroy, "Go switch the load on that Gargoyle from a Prime to a C, we are not facing Hell's Horses this time.  And no graffiti stravag!"

This, as it turns out, is what Clan scientists were busy doing for the 200 years after the OmniMech was invented.

Designing new and better Omni configs.

You want a personalized loadout and you're not some big-shot Ristar or a Khan? Better bribe the local scientist caste with some warrior-quality hooch and smokes. Or, do the design work as a pet project in your spare time.*

*Offer only valid for Clan Coyote warriors.

[Kidd]

You need to be of a status that justifies the Clan 'wasting' time to plan the layout, reprogram the gyro settings, load the software for those weapon systems, save that as a data dump to make it easier to load in the future, and then actually load it on the mech.

In Path of Glory, the (very cash-strapped) Mecharrior Zane of the (very cash-strapped) Dragoncat Cluster of the (very cash-strapped) Nova Cat Touman, just about manages to persuade his tech to replace his Pack Hunter's standard armour plates with ferro-fibrous.

I feel we have to separate game and universe considerations here. A lot of the justifications I see here is "because we don't want power-gaming munchkins messing up our sessions". That may be so IRL, but in-universe that's not so much of a problem. So I'm comfortable with the idea of nearly every Clan warrior with an OmniMech using it as intended, within resource limitations, and swapping out some weapon or other.

Particularly since a lot of the original configs are... less than efficient...

[Colt Ward]

In Path of Glory, the (very cash-strapped) Mecharrior Zane of the (very cash-strapped) Dragoncat Cluster of the (very cash-strapped) Nova Cat Touman, just about manages to persuade his tech to replace his Pack Hunter's standard armour plates with ferro-fibrous.

I feel we have to separate game and universe considerations here. A lot of the justifications I see here is "because we don't want power-gaming munchkins messing up our sessions". That may be so IRL, but in-universe that's not so much of a problem. So I'm comfortable with the idea of nearly every Clan warrior with an OmniMech using it as intended, within resource limitations, and swapping out some weapon or other.

Particularly since a lot of the original configs are... less than efficient...

Or even something like . . . the Summoner A?  Which has two tons of SRM ammo and a single ton of Gauss rifles . . . I would imagine plenty of Falcon mechwarriors browbeat (or maybe literally) their techs into switching out what class ammo was in the 2nd ton.