Advice on AU occupation zone requested

[Wolflord]

Dear all,
I am starting to plot out an AU for my gaming group starting from the old "Twenty year update" with the following broad brush strokes and would greatly appreciate some advice on how big a wedge of the Inner Sphere Pie the Clan Occupation Zones should occupy. Planet names as reference points on the IS map would be fantastic.
Thanks in advance
Wolflord

No recovered technology for the IS except for the Comstar Guards.
Half as many clans but each one is approx twice it's cannon size - 8 or 9 clans in total.
Phelan + Natasha do not conveniently arrive to steer the Wolves through the invasion.
Focht does pull off his Tukkayyid moment but probably deeper into the sphere.
The wolverines are the WoB, and no one expects them - hit squads operating as early as 3052 building to the jihad as per cannon-ish.
No free Rasalhague Republic (sorry space Vikings) but the Wolf Clan will be more Nordic and less Mongolian Horde (hopes to appease rampaging space Vikings  :) ).

[Stormfury]

The Ghost Bears are already the Nord Clan.  The Wolves are heavily influenced by their Russian (ish, any way) founders.

Other than that, Ulric really doesn't need Natasha or Phelan, and will probably do better without either; without those pair further antagonising the Wolf Supremacist/Crusader factions, his job is going to be a lot easier, and there's nothing Natasha did that Mikel Furey can't. The biggest change from losing Phelan will be having to fight for Radstadt, and it is possible that his absence and the other changes means no Tyra suicide run.

Without any recovered technology, the Inner Sphere is borked completely. In canon, design-wise there was rough parity from ~3058 (at least for the FedCom) and that played a major part in them being able to succesfully oppose the Clans after the Year of Peace. Without the advances in technology gained from the canon invasion, the Word of Blake will be further behind the eight ball, with no way to do a number of Manei Domini implants (TSM, C3i, VDNI, etc) nor to outfit their troops with battle armour.

Under the conditions proposed, I would expect the Falcon line to extend at least as far the Tharkad axis. The Smoke Jaguars may reach Shimonoseki.

The tip of the corridor should be at least as far as Orestes for the Wolves. More likely to Terra itself.

[Archangel]

You are putting too many restrictions on your AU.  As a result there is no chance for the Inner Sphere to beat the Clans.  You say it is based upon the setting of "20 Year Update" but then you remove two key factors that established that setting - recovered technology and the establishment of the FRR.   You might as well have the Clans attacking around the 4SW era.

No recovered technology for the IS except for the Comstar Guards.

This is your biggest stumbling block because the consequences stretch back to the Fourth Succession War when the FS forces used the Black Boxes to communicate despite the interdiction placed upon them.  The recovered technology was instrumental in slowing down the Invading Clans which in turn persuaded them to agree to the Battle of Tukayyid (or else face Clan Wolf becoming the ilClan).  For example, without the recovered technology Luthien would have fallen.  No slowdown, no Treaty of Tukayyid.

Phelan + Natasha do not conveniently arrive to steer the Wolves through the invasion.
Focht does pull off his Tukkayyid moment but probably deeper into the sphere.

Phelan was instrumental in persuading the Grand Council to abide by the agreement.  End result the Clans resume the invasion.

The wolverines are the WoB, and no one expects them - hit squads operating as early as 3052 building to the jihad as per cannon-ish.

So what?  Without the recovered technology, the FWL is not in any real shape to help them rebuild and with the Clans looming on the horizon it is questionable as to whether they would be able to as they desperately try to reinforce their border with the Lyrans half of the FC.

No free Rasalhague Republic (sorry space Vikings) but the Wolf Clan will be more Nordic and less Mongolian Horde (hopes to appease rampaging space Vikings  :) ).

No FRR, no ComStar Mechs for the DCMS.  No ComStar Mechs and the Ghost Regiments, Ryuken and Genyosha are significantly weaker going into the War of 3039.  End result the DCMS takes a pounding during the War of 3039, losing a large swath of worlds to the FC.  After the War of 3039, the FC continues to slowly absorb worlds and the DCMS is unable to stop them.  By the time the Clans arrive, the DCMS is a shadow of itself, is unable to resist the Clan onslaught and is destroyed.

[Wolflord]

Thanks for the reply Stormfury.

In order to get the number of clans down to 8 I am going to have to do some mixing and matching of their personalities.

Given double strength clans I am considering something like Steel Falcons, Ghost Wolves, and Smoke Jaguars (sorry Nova Cats) invading with the strength of 6 cannon clans While the Star Cobras boss the home worlds. I'll try to avoid the year of peace if I can as it never made sense to me.

I've no personal problem mixing the Scandinavian and Russian influences of the "real" Bears and Wolves, but a leadership group of Ulric Kerensky, Mikel Furey, Katya Kerensky, Bjorn Jorgenson, Alethea Kabrinski, and Laurie Tseng Could be a bit overpowered >:D

Your reference planets are very helpful I think my ComGuards (despite the user name I dont get to play Wolf this time) may make their stand on Dalkeith - a real life "in joke"- or on Terra if it all goes pear-shaped for the Steiner and Kurita players.

[Wolflord]

Thanks for the reply Archangel,

I agree that Luthien will fall in this scenario, quite possibly Coventry and Donegal too. The Combine and/or the Commonwealth may go down swinging it is not impossible.

My gaming group is quite likely to try to solve the clan problem with raw numbers and the arithmetic doesn't look that great from a clan point of view. Quantity has a quality all of its own as they say.

As I understood it Comstar and it's internal factions never lost the star league tech. Wasn't that what "holy shroud" was about stopping the houses from recovering tech to prevent them from catching up with Comstar? So technologically advanced WoB striking from the shadows seems perfectly reasonable to me. It's not as if my WoB/wolverines weren't expecting the clans to do something sooner or later.

In a sense my Focht could lose by halting the clans at Dalkeith which in turn gives the WoB time to build up from a shadowy sect of fanatics to a crusading host; be it in the FWL (alas poor Regulus that first drew me to the big stompy robot game  :'( ), some nasty place in the periphery, or any of several supposedly uninhibited worlds.

I don't agree that a clan victory and an inner sphere defeat are forgone conclusions mainly because neither is a monolithic society and each sub faction will look out for it's own interests first.

Edited to add although the maps may look quite different compared to cannon at various snapshots in time.  :)

[Stormfury]

You are putting too many restrictions on your AU.  As a result there is no chance for the Inner Sphere to beat the Clans.  You say it is based upon the setting of "20 Year Update" but then you remove two key factors that established that setting - recovered technology and the establishment of the FRR.   You might as well have the Clans attacking around the 4SW era.

Yes and no.

The original Invasion as we saw it played out had exceedingly limited use of advanced technologies; none at all until after the Outreach Summit, with the 20-Year Update mentioning only defunct Listen-Kill Missiles, the flawed TSM some Capellan units were still using, and  caustic-based "Freezers."

That's been massively retconned since, with the majority of Star League-era technolgies recovered and in widespread use before the arrival of the Clans. The performance of the Clans, however, was not retconned, so the end result is going to be about the same, with only the Year of Peace (which apparently won't happen) and Tukayyid serving as a brake on the Clan drive.

@ Wolflord; without the Year of Peace, the Clan advance may still be slowed if Leo Showers has the numbers to make a move on sanctioning Ulric. The other Invaders of the time were serious Crusaders who despised both him and the Wolves, especially in light of their greater success during Revival.

[Wolflord]

If the invasion starts a year later then I can do without the year of peace.

With more troops available from the outset Leo Showers should be able to achieve more and faster.
That should allow him to keep Ulric on a shorter leash.

With no split command and probably no mercenaries Luthien certainly falls.
That allows Leo to accept Fochts challenge, perhaps he sees it as his best chance to stop Ulric from reaching Terra first. At best Leo wins Terra at worst he pulls level with the Ulric et al.

A Comstar victory, I think, is quite likely as the jaguar/cats and the falcon/vipers will be coming off impressive but costly victories at Luthien, Coventry, Pesht, and Donegal.

Perhaps I should ask a Mod to move this over to fan fiction since I seem to have started plotting in more detail.

[Archangel]

With more troops available from the outset Leo Showers should be able to achieve more and faster.
That should allow him to keep Ulric on a shorter leash.

With no split command and probably no mercenaries Luthien certainly falls.
That allows Leo to accept Fochts challenge, perhaps he sees it as his best chance to stop Ulric from reaching Terra first. At best Leo wins Terra at worst he pulls level with the Ulric et al.

You are making several big assumptions, some of which are questionable given your AU parameters.

One, you assume that the invasion corridor assignments are going to be the same.  Without the FRR the potential prestige of each corridor is going to be different.  The Wolf (FC/FRR) or Ghost Bear (FRR/DC) corridors could easily suddenly find themselves to be the more prestigious than the Falcon (FC) or Jaguar (DC) as the border between the DC and the FC would likely fall in one of those corridors.  With the resulting change of prestige attributed to each corridor, there likely would be a shuffling of corridor assignments.

Two, you assume that Clan Wolf will rush ahead.  Given the lack of any recovered technology, the additional troops and the depleted state of the DCMS going into the conflict, another Clan could easily become the frontrunner.

Three, you assume that ilKhan Leo Showers would come to a similar agreement with Focht that Ulric Kerensky did.  Given the fact that Leo Showers despised ComStar (and barely tolerated Focht), the added troops (per your OP), the IS powers lacking the year of relative peace while the Clans withdrew to the Clan homeworlds to elect a new ilKhan, Ulric not being ilKhan and the high probability that no Clan will fall as far behind Clan Wolf as they do in the main timeline results in the likelihood an agreement similar to the Treaty of Tukayyid virtually nil.  On a personal basis, none of the other Clans cared for the trial negotiated between Ulric and Focht and would have dismissed it if they didn't view it as the only chance they had to catch up to Clan Wolf.

[Wolflord]

Thanks for the continued feedback Archangel.

Here are the options I am looking at for the Commonwealth/Combine border
A) along the Alshain Prefecture - if DCMS seriously battered in 3039 and no FRR buffer state
B) pretty much up the middle of the real FRR - if DCMS in relatively good health

Invasion corridors for option A
Most prestigious = DC/LC border due to best fights = Jaguar
2nd prize = the LC interior relatively rich pickings, at least some of them well defended = Falcon
Least prestigious = centre corridor, weak opposition and relatively poor pickings = Wolf

Invasion corridors for option B (requires more politicking at clan senior leadership levels)
Most Prestigious is redefined as the one that gets you to Terra fastest in best shape
Centre corridor = heavily defended LC/DC border given to the wolves as punishment
Flanking corridors = better roads to Terra, tell the rank and file that it is more Prestigious because a greater frontage means more opportunities for battle, tell the leadership that it gets you to Terra in better shape for the big show

Wolves Racing Ahead in option A
A force equivalent to the Wolves & the Bears will rip through a relatively weakly defended region

Wolves Racing Ahead in Option B
Ulric's forces may not be so far ahead since they will be facing better opposition than in option A, in fact Leo may have to worry about keeping up with Elias as well as Ulric. Although I would still expect the wolves to be in the lead since they have little need to guard their flanks and so can more easily mass forces on a short frontage to overwhelm even top RCTs

Since my gaming group require a "Tukkayyid" it is not so much that I am assuming it will happen as finding a way to make it happen. My best idea so far is that Focht sends out some ComGuard Divisions to get the Clan leaderships attention i.e. they fight better and more honourably than the other spheroids and are throwing out challenges like they mean business.

The Location of the "Tukkayyid" event can be anywhere from Tukkayyid to Terra at the moment I am penciling it in for Dalkeith because that will provide a real life in-joke that will leave my group ROFL current 2nd choice is Antarctica.

[Stormfury]

Without the formation of the FRR and the Ronin War, the Combine is in slightly better shape as long as the War of 3039 ended in much the same way it did in canon.

That said, if you want the paths the Jaguars and Falcons took in canon to be the "most prestigious," you are seriously changing the nature of the Clans. They were expecting little enough fight from the Sphere as it was, and deliberately chosing to hit weaker opponents means sacrificing an opportunity to prove their awesomeness.

For all the flack the Kungsarme cops, they actually were fairly skilled and quite well-equipped, blending thew Combine's lights with the Lyrans' heavies and assaults. Their preferred combat style and guerilla experience made them a tough opponent for the Wolves and Bears, who both had to find their own solutions to the latter problem.

The speed of the Wolf advance through the FRR is entirely down to the prowess of the Wolves, not the weakness of their opponent; in other threads I have compared the force ratios between Luthien and Rasalhague, or Falcon and Wolf engagements against AFFC commands.

I don't know if the Wolves of the proposed AU are a cut above the rest as they were in canon or not, but if they are they will outpace the other Invading Clans no matter what corridor they are striking along.

Without the FRR, the most prestigious corridors will be along each side of the Lyran and Draconis borders. In canon, the more militaristic Combine was believed to present a better foe than the Lyran Commonwealth, hence Leo Showers chosing it for his Clan to attack. I would expct the situation to be similar in an AU setting; from left to right the corridors would be Wolf, Falcon, Jaguar, and Bear rather than the Falcon, Wolf, Bear, Jaguar deployment schema we're familiar with.

I would also note that much of Tukayyid's success stems from Focht having enough time to essentially terraform the whole planet and craft it into a trap for the Clans. Without that opportunity, I would expect the Bears and Falcons to be able to perform much better.The Jaguars could go either way, since their failure was caused by problems endemic to the Clan, but without as much opportunity to prepare the Com Guard may not be able to manage what they did in canon, either.

[Archangel]

Without the formation of the FRR and the Ronin War, the Combine is in slightly better shape as long as the War of 3039 ended in much the same way it did in canon.

Without the FRR, the Combine didn't receive the desperately needed Mechs that were key to the Combine's survival in the War of 3039.  Even if the Combine were to reach some other agreement with the ComStar, the OP's declaration of no recovered tech practically precludes widespread deployment of the Mechs (of which even the most stripped down models were years ahead of what the Combine deployed at the time).

The formation of the FRR (and the associated agreement with ComStar) were vital to the Combine's survival.  Even Theodore admitted that had Hanse Davion continued with the offensive, the DCMS would have broken under the pressure and that is after ComStar provided all those additional Mechs.  Without them well the FC's biggest problem would be to find enough troops to garrison all the planets they took.

[Stormfury]

There are still other things ComStar would be willing to provide the 'Mechs for- most notably to encourage the Combine to go to war with the FedCom. Their plan was for the Successor States to grind each other down, not for Hanse Davion to single-handedly re-establish the Star League, after all.

The stripped-down versions were just the Level 1/Introductory Rules variants, too; hardly "years ahead" of what the Combine had, merely different designs using the same technology base.

[Archangel]

There are still other things ComStar would be willing to provide the 'Mechs for- most notably to encourage the Combine to go to war with the FedCom. Their plan was for the Successor States to grind each other down, not for Hanse Davion to single-handedly re-establish the Star League, after all.

The stripped-down versions were just the Level 1/Introductory Rules variants, too; hardly "years ahead" of what the Combine had, merely different designs using the same technology base.

It wasn't just lost technology that the ComStar Mechs introduced but also design elements that were lost.  Some of these elements helped with the recovery of lostech and the CGR-1A9 Charger (a level 1 variant) even inspired the Hatamoto Mech series.

Even you have to admit that Waterly was always scheming while she was helping Theodore, she was also stabbing him in the back by conspiring with Marcus Kurita.  There is no way she would have given the Draconis Combine Mechs, even Level 1 Mechs, for free.

[Wolflord]

So if I want three invasion corridors with Ulric's forces in the central corridor, then according to your feedback I need to either
a) put the FRR back in to be the supposed weaklings that Ulric is punished by being sent against [looks at gaming group, asks who wants to be space vikings ...........briefly >:D ]
Or
b) require Leo and Elias to be an order of magnitude more Machiavellian than in canon and send Ulric's forces against the strongest defences while they race down the flanks on the road to Terra [a more Machiavellian Elias Crichell ............ Leo watch your back  O:-) ]
Or
c) both of the above if the clans assessment of the FRR matches Stormfury's

Alternatively you are advising me that no FRR probably means Leo and Elias driving down either side of the LC/DC border with Ulric's forces on one flank or another.
Possible advantages here are
a) Ulric's forces heading in the general direction of Tharkad opens the possibility of heading back towards cannon at some point
b) on the other flank Ulric & Ranna meeting Jaime & Natasha on Luthien would be a heck of a scenario

My problem with this is that for symmetry I would need a fourth double strength clan which means the initial invasion wave is twice the canon strength. My inner Herb is quite content with the possibility of the combine and/or the commonwealth going down swinging but 8 canon clans worth of troops in wave one is just too much overkill.  :)

[heads off to find out if gaming group finds "FRR high road to Terra" or "Wolves on the Flank" more acceptable...................."My dear reluctant space viking we've already decided our Ulric's troops will be more Norse than Russian, if you live you can join the Touman and pilot a Timber Wolf Kit Fox.", "No you can't invade Tharkad and Luthien, look at the map!"]