This presumes (mistakenly, I believe) that the TPTB intend to keep having the Clans as a major power and opponent to the Inner Sphere when the past 20 years of setting development has been about how elements of the Clans have split off and joined or otherwise merged with various pre-existing Inner Sphere factions (first the Dragoons, then Wolf-In-Exile, then the Nova Cats make a deal with the Draconis Combine (and then the RotS), then the Diamond Sharks move in as free traders, the Ghost Bears and Ravens make deals with Inner Sphere powers, and the Scorpions become el Scorpio Imperium).
By all accounts the Clans look to be moving firmly into minor powers status with their only prospects for not being so laying in doing the unthinkable and presenting a unified front and compromising with their ancient rivals.
...and then Clan Wolf and Clan Jade Falcon eviscirate large portions of the Free Worlds League and Lyran Commonwealth, and it looks increasingly likely that the Nova Cats are going to break off and directly fight the Combine, and, oh yes, the Ghost Bears and Ravens? They are still in charge. By the way, the Dragoons are not even clan.
Their torpedoes were the most advanced in the world during the war. At the start of the war their Zero fighters outperformed everything in the Allies' arsenal. They also mounted the largest guns ever (18 inchers) on their battleships (no other navy in the world used guns that large). What kicked their butts was their lack of production capacity compared to the United States.
I already refuted the torpedoes. The IJN Torpedoes were a type of torpedo that other countries had long abandoned research into because of how unstable and explosive they were. This was later validated when a good number of IJN ships were sunk due to how easy it was to make the torpedoes go off.
As for mounting the largest guns, yes, it was impressive until you realized the Yamato had exceptionally poor fire control system and that, if it ever came to ahead against the smaller but far more advanced Iowa class BB, it would have sunk.
As for the Zero? It was certainly an impressive design and I will give you a point for that, but also very fragile which would later prove to be the design's undoing.
And the Clans' reliance on might-makes-right leadership where the winners of one-on-one physical duels get to be the generals instead of say, people who demonstrate an actual grasp of strategy, was not sheer idiocy?
No more idiotic than having people in charge based on who they are related to.
The Germans produced vastly superior tanks
German tank superiority did not come into play until 1942, when the Tiger I was rolled out. Until then, the Germans actually had inferior tanks to the Russians and the French.
They also had shoddy leadership from the get go.
The Military leadership was dangerously competant, after all, they did pioneer a level of combined arms and tactics that would later come to symbolize the Blitzkrieg, and have managed to defeat the far superior French/British army in 1940.
And because they're the Clans that means magic pixie-fairies are going to come and save them from the inevitiable crush of human history?
...because those same magic pixie-fairies saved the Successor States? I am sensing a double standard here.
What keeps BattleTech interesting is that it marches on too. We aren't perpetually stuck in 3025. Nations are born. Nations fall. Alliances shift. Leadership changes hands. Its that continued change over time that gives BattleTech much of its versimiltude and makes it so engrossing. What you're asking for is for them to make a special magic exception to what's made BattleTech such a great setting because your favored faction won't be keeping its major power status.
Curious, I dont see you making that same argument for the Successor States, whom have more or less remain unchanged with the exact same dynasties in charge since 2750. The only one you could possibly argue for is Free Worlds League, but they recently reformed with the same Marik dynasty in charge. I guess Status Quo is king after all.
Doesn't keep them from being relevant to any story someone would care to tell about them.
Except they arent relevant to the universe as a whole. You could take the Northwind highlanders out of the universe entirely, and it would change absolutly nothing.
Personally, I think there's more than enough in the Clans to keep them interesting even if they had shown up with just Star League-era tech back in 3050.
Then it would have been even more difficult to explain how they would have been able to threaten the Successor States from a population base of barely a billion.
Let's face it, take away magic-pixie fairies and you have no leg to stand on. Your argument resides entirely on the demand that rational human beings throw away their rationality because you want the Clans to always be major players in a universe that evolved past them.
In a universe that has evolved past them? Who died and made you Line Director? As delusional as you are about it, the Clans still remain powerful players even in 3144, so to say that the universe has moved on from the Clans is about as laughable an argument as saying that the universe has moved on from the Successor States, which, if you had not noticed, it hasnt.
