3050 Surprised-Clans?

[Prospernia]

The only real shock was the Com Guard mechs. Not only did ComStar have SLDF mechs but had the capability to retrofit 'Clan Buster' mechs just for said conflict. Though it was only a shock due to how arrogant most of the Clans approached that battle, the idea of superior industrial capabilities and total war had become lost to them.

The arrogance of the Clans was reflected perfectly in the Clan-players. They were absolutely convinced they would beat any Inner-Sphere mech.   I proved them wrong on occasions, but, that was in high-school and you can't hold things people do or think when they are teenagers against them.

I'd say no for waves 1 and 2 since those were units on the edges and probably hadn't been upgraded yet, especially since both the 12th Donegal (Victor's unit) and the Legion of Vega (Hohiro's) didn't have upgrades, per Lethal Heritage. Hell, Victor's Victor was a base model.

As they got closer to the interior they might see an upgraded mech or two, maybe even a company but it took until the pause for upgrades to be pushed out in large numbers.

Honestly, if I were a Clanner I'd LOVE to see a Star League tech mech. It is a greater challenge and the greater the challenge the greater the glory

I started playing 2750 battles before I played 3025-battles, so Star-League Tech wasn't anything new.  I just though, Classic-Battletech, was a bit boring and Star-League technology made the game a bit more fun.

When they played 3050, I thought the idea the Inner-Sphere, would, all of a sudden, have all this Star-League tech, was a bit much, so the majority of the encounters, when I ran a MW2 Clans game, were 3025 mechs, which, is kinda correct; the worlds the Clans took were backwater, unimportant-worlds with second-line units; they Clans were very good at taking out the rear-guard, green-units. Like the Spartans would always be positioned, in a Hopelite-battle, to face the weakest opponent.

[RifleMech]

The original TRO 3050 had advanced mechs such as the upgraded Jagermech and Victor having nearly reached production by the war of 3039, and other bits of advanced technology in active service during the war (like the endo steel and CASE equipped hatamoto). The original 3050 was also the book that established Comstar had handed over mechs with advanced technology to the combine.

It wasn't a gradual bit of continuity drift. It started pretty much from the beginning. Catalyst actually toned things down in later publications by giving us things like the Daboku, the introtech Hatamoto, and quietly retconning references to the Combine acquiring plans for the DD Jagermech during the 3039 war.

Frankly, Catalyst has made it much clearer and more restrained what was actually available and when after the Helm core.

That helps illustrate the problem with the reintrodates, and the lack of variants with prototype tech. Granted we didn't have prototype tech at the time. They went straight to production quality tech. Still, there's room to include prototype tech as TRO:3050 mentions prototypes and "first to use recovered tech" mechs.

The fluff for the JagerMech-DD says it was prototyped and still having the bugs worked out when the War of 3039 happened. That would work if it mounted MPL-Ps. The stats simply show that Kurita replaced with standard MPLs, which Davion copied a couple years later. But now the DD isn't introduced until 3042. The JagerMech was one of the first Davion mechs to be upgraded with recovered tech. Davion had UAC-Ps in 3029 and UAC/5s in 3035. They also had MPL-Ps in 3030. With the DD now being introduced 3042, where's the JagerMech with prototype/production SLDF tech used during the Wo39? 

The Hatamoto-Chi fluff has the 27T being one of the first Kuritan Mechs to use advanced tech. That would be good variant for prototype tech since the stats are for the 11K. Only now the 11K no longer exists. We do have an introtech 26T but where's the variant that used prototype tech? Kurita was producing ES in 3040 so they should have ES-P available during the War of 3039 so a Hatamoto with prototype tech is possible.

And the with the LB-10X being commonly available by 3040, why was Wolf Trap's Imperator Code Red LB 10-X Autocannon still a promising but untested state secret weapon in 3050? They didn't use it in war games or against pirates? 

There's some blanks that need filling and some errata that needs including. The biggest would be with the Advance Component 3039 Table in the War of 3039 book. It doesn't have availabilities for all production quality tech. If the FedCom has at most 1 outdated LB-X-P per lance during the Wo39, and they were producing the LB-10X from 3035, how many LB-10Xs per lance did they have? How many UAC-5s? With production quality being available before the Wo39 the table needs some fixing.

[klarg1]

Some of the inconsistency is probably also due to real world timeline. The fiction went from “one lance of old ‘mechs to defend a planet” in 3024 (Decision at Thunder Rift) to “Clans Invade!” In 3049  (Lethal Herritage) in just 3 years.

I’m not too surprised writing outpaced game design to get it all done.

[RifleMech]

But again, I should point out that there's still a good reason for the armies of the Inner Sphere to not have been overflowing with star league tech despite their ten/fifteen year head start on the technology. And that's because they were implementing all this new production in the traditional inner sphere manner, which is to say as stupidly as possible.

As an example, just using the mechs mentioned in TRO 3050, the Federated Suns (not the entire Commonwealth, mind you, just the Davion half) was in the process of building or planning to build seventeen different mechs using advanced technology for their own use (not counting simple field refits like the Javelin or Whitworth, or mechs they were buying elsewhere like the Victor).

This is fairly typical of the time. So the great houses were rebuilding factories and infrastructure that hadn't existed in centuries, and were also immediately pulling those newly built resources in a dozen different directions on different projects with little real overlap. Of course there'd be years of delays actually getting any of that into the field in numbers.

I think some of that is more to changing when SLDF Tech was recovered than IS manufacturing tendencies. Originally it took time to learn SLDF tech, build up the infrastructure and run up production. The tech was still new in TRO:3050. As such, mechs like the Panther 10K made sense. Kurita didn't know then that 13 single heat sinks wouldn't have been enough because they hadn't used it in combat yet. Now the Panther-10K's 3051 date no longer makes sense as Kurita has been producing the ERPPC since 3037. By 3051 they would have known that 13 single heat sinks wouldn't be enough because they learned that lesson 12 years earlier.

My favorite bit of hilarious nonsense is how Johnston Industries decided to clone the Cataphract with almost entirely new and different parts, and no doubt sank many millions of cbills into research and development into making a then modern and fully realized design suited for production, but had no intention of actually building it because it was just a decoy to draw attention away from a completely different mech, no doubt with its own expensive development program.

Seriously, the Caeser is hilarious.

Where does it say that Johnston Industries never intended to produce the Caesar? It was a decoy but TRO:3050U says they did produce it but it had poor sales until after the FedCom Civil War when they made new variants. But even if they hadn't produced it why would it be hilarious nonsense?

They wouldn't be the first company do spend money on a product they weren't planning to sell. Companies have been doing that for ages. In universe, Bergan Industries built the Champion LAM purely as a proof of concept in 2699.

[ColBosch]

Where does it say that Johnston Industries never intended to produce the Caesar? It was a decoy but TRO:3050U says they did produce it but it had poor sales until after the FedCom Civil War when they made new variants. But even if they hadn't produced it why would it be hilarious nonsense?

No, I remember that story from somewhere. It's not in the Caesar or Cataphract entries from TR3050, though.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Was it in a Field Manual?  I'm sure I've seen that same story somewhere.

[SteelRaven]

Sarna references TRO: 3050 Upgrade pg. 77 to help mask the development of the Axman

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I just checked TRO 3050U and it does say that the Caesar was designed to hide the Axman's development but makes no mention of it never having actually been intended for production.

[Wasteland Warrior]

I doubt the clans would have been shocked or particularly angered by the use of Star League tech when they first hit the sphere.  The Inner Sphere defensive forces included chassis designed and produced exclusively for the Star League (including their recent Atlas) but the clans never screamed 'where did they get that?' or 'how dare they?' when encountering one.

We tend to group a bunch of equipment together based on whether it appeared in TRO3025 designs, but in universe, that distinction would be a very arbitrary measure by 3050.

House Lords had some access to SL tech prior to The Exodus.  The Exodus left factories and plenty of mechs behind for said House Lords to strangle each other over (even the big AK parked his ride on a 'roid). A significant portion of the Star League chose to stick around, keeping their mechs and techs.  And Kerensky and his heirs were blind to Inner Sphere activity for centuries after that.

Even if the departing Star League had been ruthlessly thorough in purging technical records and sabotaging factories capable of producing tech the Star League considered 'exclusive', after a few centuries it would have been remarkably foolish of the Clans to assume they had destroyed all records, that the Inner Sphere hadn't reverse engineered designs that bore 'advanced' tech (and developed the ability to spam them), and that all existing ancient machines and hidden caches had been destroyed.

They should have expected at lease some tech that they might have felt exclusively protective of had proliferated, and they should have expected some advances in technology beyond the Star League's glory days, not unlike their own tech had. 

The Dragoons first showed with advanced machines/tech, reflecting their expectation that Fleas, Shoguns, ER PPCs and CASE were still common enough in the Sphere.  The Clans were probably surprised (and somewhat amused), if not skeptical, when Col. Wolf reported he was purging his forces of double heat sinks to avoid raising further suspicion of his unit's origins (and likely to preserve his own supplies which suddenly were not so easily replenished).  Even so, this occurred very shortly after the Dragoons arrived in the Inner Sphere, and as good as Wolfnet might have become, again, it would have been foolish to assume the Dragoons had a fully comprehensive list of what combat technology existed at that time, based on even a couple of years of infiltration.

At least some of the Star League's leading-edge martial technology should have existed.  If anything really surprised the Clans, it was probably the scarcity of it.

Just my 2c.

[Charistoph]

Probably the most surprising thing for the Clans would be Hatchets.  Their disdain for physical 'Mech combat probably never brought the concept to their minds.  I think it was developed after the Dragoons' last report, and easily would be missed in the interrogation of the Outbound Light's crew.

[Prospernia]

Probably the most surprising thing for the Clans would be Hatchets.  Their disdain for physical 'Mech combat probably never brought the concept to their minds.  I think it was developed after the Dragoons' last report, and easily would be missed in the interrogation of the Outbound Light's crew.

Considering a 3025 Quickdraw with a Hatchet has a one in six chance of killing a Dire-Wolf, with one hit.

[MarauderD]

Considering a 3025 Quickdraw with a Hatchet has a one in six chance of killing a Dire-Wolf, with one hit.

Only if attacking from an elevation one level higher than the Dire Wolf, if my memory serves......

Also, a 3025 Quickdraw isn't living to get that close to a Dire Wolf, but that is a different argument entirely.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Considering a 3025 Quickdraw with a Hatchet has a one in six chance of killing a Dire-Wolf, with one hit.

Hatchets don’t hit on the punch table unless you take a penalty on the attack roll.

[SteelRaven]

Hatchets don’t hit on the punch table unless you take a penalty on the attack roll.

Then a manager of a game store 25 years ago owes me a rematch!

[Charistoph]

Then a manager of a game store 25 years ago owes me a rematch!

Well, it depends on which ruleset he was working off of.  The Compendiums didn't say where a Clubbing (or Hatchet) Attack hit, and it came right after Punching Attacks.  So a lot of assumptions (made by a lot of people) were made that it hit on the Punching Table.

This wasn't changed till the book that came with the 4th Edition box or Master Rules.

[Caesar Steiner for Archon]

Probably the most surprising thing for the Clans would be Hatchets.  Their disdain for physical 'Mech combat probably never brought the concept to their minds.  I think it was developed after the Dragoons' last report, and easily would be missed in the interrogation of the Outbound Light's crew.

Retroactively even moreso, now that we know from the 2765 report on the LCAF that the Second Royal Guards wanted to invent melee weapons centuries earlier but everyone was like "lol no, weapon ranges keep getting longer, soon engagement ranges will be so long that melee will be impossible." Now there's an element of "wait they actually DID that?"

[SteelRaven]

Well, it depends on which ruleset he was working off of.

I was joking. I'll never take away that man's Hatchman charging my Timber Wolf and scoring a cockpit kill. I have no problem lossing to something as epic as that and I'll agree no Clanner expected Spheroids changing at them metal clubs like Berserkers of old.

Edit: my phone's auto corrected is way too aggressive today, must have been the last update.

[BrianDavion]

Then a manager of a game store 25 years ago owes me a rematch!

I belive they originally hit on the punch table, it was changed to be the over all table in the Battletech Master rules (the rules preceeding TW) with the "optional punch location" added in TW. but I might be wrong

[SteelRaven]

I belive they originally hit on the punch table, it was changed to be the over all table in the Battletech Master rules (the rules preceeding TW) with the "optional punch location" added in TW. but I might be wrong

Again, I was joking. It's been talked about in this forum in the past.

[RifleMech]

No, I remember that story from somewhere. It's not in the Caesar or Cataphract entries from TR3050, though.

I don't know where it'd be.

I just checked TRO 3050U and it does say that the Caesar was designed to hide the Axman's development but makes no mention of it never having actually been intended for production.

TRO:3050U does say that "sales never took off as expected" and "Johnston is seeking to invigorate Caesar sales with a pair of new variants". The Caesar may have started off as just a diversion but it didn't stay that way long. They probably figured, "Why waste a good design when we can sell it and make some money?"

[Prospernia]

Only if attacking from an elevation one level higher than the Dire Wolf, if my memory serves......

Also, a 3025 Quickdraw isn't living to get that close to a Dire Wolf, but that is a different argument entirely.

I'm old-school:  And I've had plenty of Inner-Sphere mechs get close and personal with the Clans.   Their players were so over-confident.

[BrianDavion]

I'm old-school:  And I've had plenty of Inner-Sphere mechs get close and personal with the Clans.   Their players were so over-confident.

to be fair a lotta the early fluff says that the IS needs to get in close to the clans to fight them so...

[glitterboy2098]

I don't know where it'd be.



TRO:3050U does say that "sales never took off as expected" and "Johnston is seeking to invigorate Caesar sales with a pair of new variants". The Caesar may have started off as just a diversion but it didn't stay that way long. They probably figured, "Why waste a good design when we can sell it and make some money?"

wasn't the original TRO3050 fluff for the Davion Cataphract variants that said mechs were cover for the Caeser production? if that stands it means the davion's were doing wheels within wheels levels of deception.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

to be fair a lotta the early fluff says that the IS needs to get in close to the clans to fight them so...

Which to be fair you do need to do that if you're running Introtech designs with 4/5 pilots.

[RifleMech]

wasn't the original TRO3050 fluff for the Davion Cataphract variants that said mechs were cover for the Caeser production? if that stands it means the davion's were doing wheels within wheels levels of deception.

Not in TRO:3050

[Caesar Steiner for Archon]

My copy of TRO: 3050 says "...the semi-secrecy surrounding the Caesar is really a smokescreen for successes in working out the design of the Axman..."

The Axman entry says that they were having jamming problems with the AC/20 on the Axman. It also says that the Axman is supposed to be a showpiece design, so to me, it sounds like they said there were problems with the Caesar, but they were actually issues with the Axman. However, since the Axman is as much political statement as it is war machine, they didn't want people to know it was having design problems and said the Caesar was the one with issues instead.

[SteelRaven]

More likely both had issues as new designs tend to. Both the Caeser and Axman continue into the Il Clan era so any early issues did not hinder ether design regardless.

[OatsAndHall]

I'm always shocked that the Clans weren't better prepared for combined arms combat, focused fire and hit and run tactics of the IS. They came in fully expecting one-one combat against units with technology that was inferior compared to theirs... Add in infantry-spotted artillery and they're losing their chit..

[Charistoph]

I'm always shocked that the Clans weren't better prepared for combined arms combat, focused fire and hit and run tactics of the IS. They came in fully expecting one-one combat against units with technology that was inferior compared to theirs... Add in infantry-spotted artillery and they're losing their chit..

They had been dueling for centuries at this point.  Everything was a Trial, not a War.  The closest any of them had to this type of warfare were the Hell's Horses, though the Goliath Scorpions kept up the SLDF techniques and strategies in their histories and training.

[SteelRaven]

Because the clan warrior culture had become so focused on individual honor, most warriors became incredibly short slighted.