Here's your 'what if': what if in 3049, the Clans didn't have a massive weight/damage/range advantage over the Star League's tech, what if they only managed to have SLDF tech equivalent gear when they were introduced? would they still have the following they do today? would you still like them if they didn't have more powerful/lighter/cooler running weapons and equipment?
can you explain why?
Sure. Because Clan governance and society is fundamentally different, more interesting, and more believable (to the extent anything in BT is believable) than the Houses.
The Houses, IMO, are unimaginative riffs on the same unbelievable premise — that medieval societies will make a comeback in the 31st century right down to the knights and samurai. I have no problem with the reappearance of a “modern” feudal system. Dune did that very well, for example. But Carolingian France and Shogunate Japan among the stars? Please. At least Lucas bothered to come up with a different name for his fighting monks.
The Houses are also all fundamentally autocratic, hereditary monarchies. Some have trappings of democracy, but if they ever had them, their actual democratic organs failed long ago. It’s hard to get excited about whether a character or unit dies fighting for the medieval French-styled monarch or the medieval Japanese-styled monarch. Big yawn, IMO.
The introduction of the Clans fundamentally improved the stale House background that BT was built on. Like Dune or other good sci-fi societies, the Clans were a de novo invention (of Boy F. Peterson), not just a pale copy of some medieval country. This made the Clans both more believable and more interesting than the Houses. They were something I had not seen before and there was a logic to why they were the way they were.
And they were democratic meritocracies. Unlike the Houses, where most PCs and NPCs of any import were given their station and status by their daddies, you had to fight and vote your way higher within Clan society. Yeah, there’s lots about the Clan trial system that is stupid or brutal to our 21st-century eyes, but from a story-telling perspective, a Trial of Position or a Trial of Bloodright or a Grand Melee sure as heck beats “I was a born to a minor noble and after graduating academy, I used my wealth to start a mech company.”
To be clear, I’m making no value — good or evil — judgements about the Houses versus the Clans. Both produce wise and wily characters like Hanse and Ulric, as well as terribly careless and downright insane characters like Maximillian and Malvina. There’s black in every major faction in this universe.
But in terms of in-character and out-of-character motivation, what’s more motivating? Fighting for stale copies of medieval monarchies? Or fighting for an original society with a governance model that your character can rise within? The latter, for me, at least.
FWIW… YMMV.