I should say, to expand, absolutely nothing to entice any Raven fan to read it.
Every other faction has been a player in this series of books, even at the very least in a minor way. All the Great Houses. All the other Clans. New sub-factions. Former FWL states now independent. Every significant Periphery state - Canopians, Taurians, even the Marians.
Raven Alliance? Nope.
'
the basic problem is that the Devs left them with no relevant role to play, no peers to conflict with, and an identity that has no role to play.
What do you do, when you're "The Warship Clan" and warships are extinct almost everywhere, to the point that there's no navy to contest with?
THAT is why the Ravens get no love-the Developers cornered them into a position where they don't have any narrative role to play besides "Oh, yeah, they exist...we guess.."
Nobody else has a Navy, and they signed on with Alaric's Star League/ilClan setup early and without so much as a ripple of dissent, so the next closest fleet in size?
isn't positioned to fight them, and nobody else
has a fleet to fight with, leaving Snow Raven in the position of being bus-drivers for the ilClan, and/or having their fleet die and losing their whole 'schtick' that makes them interesting enough to keep around (from a narrative/game development perspective).
In a sense, the Raven Alliance is like their signature unit type-they linger, and in theory could be powerful, but there's not a damned thing to do with them so they're just kind of 'left there'.
I mean, what're they going to do, finishing off the COMBINED Inner Sphere fleets, even 1 to 1 casualties they still come out ahead and their ships are statistically better than any potential competitors (and more numerous) outside the other Clans-most of whom don't have much of a fleet either (Except Alaric, who's got most of two Touman's worth of warship survivors, plus the Ghost Bear fleet, plus...and the ravens on top of that.)
Basically their most likely opponents don't have a navy, and what relic ships they have don't have a working doctrine.
So the Snow Ravens are kind of like that old car with the cool paintjob you can't find fuel or spare parts for and the DOL won't certify as street legal, but you still own it, and it's too powerful for your local 1/8th mile monthly club drag night (*mostly populated by high schoolers and twenty-somethings with cheap stuff that isn't competitive outside that venue).
There's no attention, because there's
nothing for the Snow Ravens to DO-at least, nothing that makes a good story, and the reason there's nothing to do, is that everything's been structured to make them supernumerary. There are no peers to test them against, and after a while 'heroically sacrificing the relic warship' gets OLD (and often, reads as contrived).
So...if you want Clan Snow Raven relevant enough to get ink, something has to change, and the change itself will end up reading as deeply contrived in its own right.
here's where we're at:
1. can't cross swords with the largest OTHER fleet in the Inner Sphere (Clan Wolf plus whatever ships they grabbed at Terra). Can't cross swords with the most POWERFUL potential enemy ships either (The Lev III's belonging to Ghost Bear), the Diamond Sharks turned theirs into strip malls, so no challenge there.
2. Nobody has a working fleet EXCEPT the Snow Ravens. Nobody is building ships, nobody is building a Navy of really any kind, so there's no fight there, just a hand full of poorly maintained relics (ooh, the Davions have two foxes? oh, right, and they're half savaged themselves. [mocking tone]such a fight[/mocking tone], The Lyrans have one half slagged Mjolnir and a Tharkad class that can't even move under its own power. What a [mockery]Challenge[/mockery].
Nobody's got anything to fight the Snow Ravens
with, their warships end up being irrelevant, so the Clan itelf?
well...is treated as irrelevant. Like a top-fuel dragster in a collector's garage when you have a universal noise ordnance and fuel is rationed by someone who hates top fuel dragsters (or, indeed, any motorsport at all).
