For the love of god... I never thought I would have to repeat myself but apparently my message is not getting through people's thick skulls:
Are you people getting it now? How many times do I have to repeat myself for you people to get it?
The problem is that it also imbalances the geopolitical game because the Clans do not have the massive economies and numbers of the Successor States. If Clan technology was given to the Successor States, you would have to make the Clans the raw numbers and economic power of the Successor States. Are you willing to see the Clans become equal in size and numbers to the Successor States? Because that is what it would take to put things back into balance after Clantech was given to the Successor States. As it is, the Clans' advanced technology is justified by the fact their economies and armies are much smaller, they need the advanced tech to deal with greater IS numbers, and if you take that away you basically turn the Clans into minor states that would be incapable of posing a threat to the Successor States, effectively eliminating them as interstellar players.
We are getting it... honestly, why should we care at all about fluff in any way or what is happening in the next scenario book or plot line advancement or what year is coming is there is not some form of internal consistency to the setting? What it seems to be said by so many other people far more eloquently is that the Clans don't make sense from a consistent view within the universe itself.
To continue to hide behind a strawman that the ingame universe is not 'realistic' and there for has no need for 'realism' is garbage. Might as well just invite space aliens and uplifted war-dolphins into the setting but those would not be consistent from an in-universe perspective.
What seems to be slowly evolving here is a view that more than just a few seem to be wanting a reasonable progression of the setting from an internally consistent with the established fluff written. There are volumes of it out there... the prototype books are showing this is coming. In fact, it seems that this merger might as well be spray painted on the Great Wall of China so we can see it from space.
This segment is not asking for realism from the sense of 'hard sci-fi' or real-world politics or economics or sciences or military logic... take a look through the forums and it is pretty well obvious to all to see since we have terms like 'FASA-nomics' that it isn't based in reality/realism. What they are asking for is INTERNAL CONSISTENCY. That things that have occurred within the setting continue along trends that can be predicted and that thing things that came before it influence what is to come after... without resorting to space wizards did it... which is about the only thing keeping Clan tech from being mass produced... to preserve the dying ember of the superior state of the clans...
Despite losing their home worlds, despite decades of near constant combat grinding the pre-war elite down to mush and depending on younger clones and freeborn that still somehow magically show up better, despite the fact that they have the administrative capacity that rivals some barbaric tribes with their warrior's first attitude, despite a good majority of the Inner Sphere clans pretty much looking like they were in shambles post Jihad/WoR, and despite having a population base and territory size that even makes the Capellan Confederation look like a right super-power.
Despite all this, we are to believe from an internally consistent viewpoint of the setting that the Clans are to continue keeping the edge in both technology and piloting skill despite pretty much ever bit of fluff screaming out otherwise just to keep some players happy at their superiority... that is even more unrealistic and unbelievable that something so simple as the Inner Sphere getting to stop using the lesser versions of Pulse Lasers, ER energy weapons, XL engines, the DHS, autocannons, missile launchers, and other common Star League derived technologies.
So if asking for an internally consistent setting that can use the fluff of it's own books to support itself is 'realism'... and I am supposed to not look at that... then I gladly welcome the alien invasion headed by the three head wolverines who look at the lost Minnesota Tribe as demigods and want to bring the holy light of the tribe back to the people from whom they originated. That is what happens when you discard consistency, you open the door to that.
