The Republic of the Sphere: My Heart Will Go On (With Another Faction)

[Wrangler]

I'm guessing you missed the part where they're getting their own section in IKEO... :)

Yep, thats on me.   

I just hope this isn't belters' swan song. I always like a unique fringe groups.  I don't think there a spacers factions. Free Guilds seemed to the closest to surviving fringe kind groups.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Given that Catalyst seems to be paying more attention to the smaller groups and filling them out in a way that's never been done before, I don't see it as being too likely that the Belters are going to be wiped out in the near future.

[Weirdo]

While I don't *want* to see them wiped out or subsumed into Alaric's dominion, I'm no stranger to dying factions. I know it's not a high bar, but as long as they die smarter than say, the Republic Navy, and as long as they don't continue to exist but see everything that makes them interesting slowly stripped away, I'm good.

[tassa_kay]

I'd certainly hope the Belters don't get wiped out just as they become relevant for the first time ever, but I won't cry about it if they do, either.

[BrianDavion]

I'd certainly hope the Belters don't get wiped out just as they become relevant for the first time ever, but I won't cry about it if they do, either.

I mean it's hard to cry for a sub faction that's been mentioned in a whopping one sourcebook

[Metallgewitter]

The Belters had a few mentions:

Interstellar players
Star League civil war book 2
Jihad Hotspot Terra
FM 3145

Though the most fleshed out was certainly IP and Hot Spots Terra. The rest just gives a small mention of them

[Cannonshop]

The Belters had a few mentions:

Interstellar players
Star League civil war book 2
Jihad Hotspot Terra
FM 3145

Though the most fleshed out was certainly IP and Hot Spots Terra. The rest just gives a small mention of them

I think Brian's point, is that they're effectively irrelevant for a large number of long-time fans and players, especially compared to factions that have already been and gone.

at least, that's how I read this:

I mean it's hard to cry for a sub faction that's been mentioned in a whopping one sourcebook

In a sense, he's not wrong either.  The sort of situations in which they would be relevant break with the supremacy of the Battlemech pretty thoroughly, and neither Fasa, nor Fanpro, nor Catalyst has really been able to make Aerospace work, and much of the time the setting's been in publication, the developers have focused on Reduction to annihilation of things like Warships because they really can't figure out how to make them saleable without threatening that Battlemech Supremacy^(tm).

BUT, because they didn't annihilate the Snow Ravens, there h as to be something relevant for them to be doing, so chasing down and slaughtering belters works.

[Metallgewitter]

BUT, because they didn't annihilate the Snow Ravens, there h as to be something relevant for them to be doing, so chasing down and slaughtering belters works.

Or die in stupid / glorious deaths like getting slammed by fighters or Dropships. The Davions can teach the Ravens a thing or two about loosing Warships in stupid ways

[Cannonshop]

Or die in stupid / glorious deaths like getting slammed by fighters or Dropships. The Davions can teach the Ravens a thing or two about loosing Warships in stupid ways

Granted, House Davion is really very developed in the art of destroying their own navy in useless and stupid ways...They're like the SAFE of naval warfare.
[edit]
Just occurred to me that BOTH can happen at once-the Snow Ravens get to slaughter Belters for Alaric, AND explore useless and stupid ways of dying in deep space with House Davion...

[BrianDavion]

Or die in stupid / glorious deaths like getting slammed by fighters or Dropships. The Davions can teach the Ravens a thing or two about loosing Warships in stupid ways

A Davion warship captain is just an old recording of Captain Kirk screaming "RAMNING SPEED MISTER SULU" set on repeat

[Cannonshop]

A Davion warship captain is just an old recording of Captain Kirk screaming "RAMNING SPEED MISTER SULU" set on repeat

careful, Brian, I've actually made enemies harping too hard on that joke.  (wait, I make enemies anyway...)  Suffice to say though, they're gonna have to come up with SOMETHING for the Ravens to do with their most famous assets, and between putting a boot on the Belters, and smashing up what's left of AFFS's 'navy' it's still not much.

[Metallgewitter]

careful, Brian, I've actually made enemies harping too hard on that joke.  (wait, I make enemies anyway...)  Suffice to say though, they're gonna have to come up with SOMETHING for the Ravens to do with their most famous assets, and between putting a boot on the Belters, and smashing up what's left of AFFS's 'navy' it's still not much.

I can already see the Ravens put a McKenna as captain on every ship and whenever they appear on a hostile planet just blast McKenna's famout "Surrender or we will bomb you into atoms" speech from the last days of the Terran Alliance over the entire network. Until someone decides to play "Miraborg the Clanner"

[Fire Scorpion IIC]

careful, Brian, I've actually made enemies harping too hard on that joke.  (wait, I make enemies anyway...)  Suffice to say though, they're gonna have to come up with SOMETHING for the Ravens to do with their most famous assets, and between putting a boot on the Belters, and smashing up what's left of AFFS's 'navy' it's still not much.

Ravens have most warships but they aren't the only ones with them

Considering ground that will need to be covered I expect them to spend most of the time having individual warships running from hot spot to hot spot playing equalizers in major engagements but rarely grouped together in a decisive manner

That way we get to have warships and maintain focus on mechs

....
... McKenna's famout "Surrender or we will bomb you into atoms" speech from the last days of the Terran Alliance...

Is there a copy of this speech anywhere?

[Cannonshop]

Ravens have most warships but they aren't the only ones with them

Considering ground that will need to be covered I expect them to spend most of the time having individual warships running from hot spot to hot spot playing equalizers in major engagements but rarely grouped together in a decisive manner

That way we get to have warships and maintain focus on mechs

Is there a copy of this speech anywhere?

problem being, after 70 something years in storage, that Raven fleet's still listed as 'veteran/elite', while the 'still being used frequently' ships are still at inner-sphere 'regular' or below.

It's a walk.  They've got both quantity and quality on their side against an opponent that can't even claim competency, esp. as the SECOND biggest fleet is ALSO on their side.

This mismatch reaches absurdity pretty quick, it's going to take significant levels of handwavium to make it anything but an easy walk, just based on the conditions as set up.

The other thing about it, is that you can pull all the capital weapons off and it's still a mismatch on an epic scale, just based on using carried dropships and Clan fighters (with pilots).  (the Warships provide an excellent platform for schlepping supplies and consumables sufficient to make 'normal' engagements using ASF's a losing proposition too-and those 'normal' ASF forces are facing Clanner Vets with Inner Sphere Regulars at BEST...and with smaller quantities in most cases.)

Like I said, they gonna need a LOT of handwavium just to give the Ravens something to do.

all of this could've been avoided, it could've been made exciting and interesting, but entropy doesn't apply to Clanners after all-long periods of idleness or long term storage with no practical experience doesn't degrade their commanders or crew, long periods of peace doesn't cause dilution of capability or skill, even on platforms that aren't in use for Generations.

They don't even have maintenance issues.

Because they're Clanners, it's a fixed value, they roll right out of sibko into perfect competency, because it's a fixed value.

Just like nobody bothered to try building new warships for seventy years including the Cappies, for the same reason-it's a fixed value, and if they did, the product would be "Inner Sphere Green/Cadet"-because entropy and complications DO exist for inner sphere factions, while rebuilding or investment  into something critical for their existence like shipbuilding industry-doesn't.

because it's a fixed value.

so here's the prediction: the Snow Ravens will wipe/out or subjugate the Belters for Alaric, in the process, they'll take up ramming or lose fights they shouldn't have until their fleet is wreckage, but not before they've eliminated all the relics from the successor fleets...probably by ramming or other pyrrhic victory 'tactics'.

After which, they will return to irrelevancy-a status they've held since the first Clan books came out in the 1980s.

But not before eliminating that other pesky irrelevancy, the Belters, Ross 248, the remnants of the House Fleets, and so on.

[Metallgewitter]

The old McKenna speech was little more then this:

Attention all AGM members currently participating in the barbarities. Cease all hostile Actions and return to your barracks or I will bombard you into oblivion

And again even if the Ravens move their fleet as support there will inevitably be losses. How much of a reserve force do the Ravens have? Not much if FM 3145 is any indicator. Once Attrition kicks in their fleet will loose it's effectiveness. Not to mention loosing even one Warship will be a huge loss especially since those ships contain working HPG's. Or heck maybe someone will be suicidal enough to try and board those ships for the Technology they contain

[Cannonshop]

The old McKenna speech was little more then this:

Attention all AGM members currently participating in the barbarities. Cease all hostile Actions and return to your barracks or I will bombard you into oblivion

And again even if the Ravens move their fleet as support there will inevitably be losses. How much of a reserve force do the Ravens have? Not much if FM 3145 is any indicator. Once Attrition kicks in their fleet will loose it's effectiveness. Not to mention loosing even one Warship will be a huge loss especially since those ships contain working HPG's. Or heck maybe someone will be suicidal enough to try and board those ships for the Technology they contain

Might make a couple fun scenarios for whatever the current RPG for the setting is (I lost track at ATOW...)

The basic problems still remain, however; the current setting/situation is ripe for a 'final extermination', not for anyone being able to realistically (within the rules) compete.

fact here; nobody has more than a handful of irreplaceable relics.  Even the Snow Raven navy isn't really set up to do the main jobs a Navy is actually supposed to do, but they do have, between them and their master Alaric's relics, a naval force that would require the entire surviving wreckage of everyone else combined to face off against...for one battle.

alternately, they also have an effective monopoly on capital weapons plus strategic mobility sufficient to exterminate the Belters in a few days, given that said belters do NOT have a means of escape.

It's going to be one-sided, it's going to be short, it's probably not going to be worth more than a paragraph side-note in a sourcebook entry.

and after that, they won't really have anything to do with their hardware except lose it in the most unproductive ways possible, maybe, just MAYBE also taking out the relics and wreckage of the entirety of the rest of the Inner Sphere's fleets...assuming those worthies don't die stupidly in some other fashion.

There were no other preparations made, the die is cast, at this point it would require multiple authorial ass-pulls to have it go any other way.

[Church14]

That assumes Alaric allows the Ravens into Sol. We already know in Elements of Treason:Honor that Alaric isn’t allowing free passage into Sol as long as the fortress lasts. It also shows him using  a warship that was eventually scuttled as the guard for the guests’ ships orbiting Mars.

The whole thing paints a picture of Alaric presenting this flawless facade to hide how bad his control of Sol is. Which makes it feel like Alaric is leaning on the punch drunk wolves alone to deal with Sol based threats.

We’ll find out in six-ish weeks.

[Cannonshop]

That assumes Alaric allows the Ravens into Sol. We already know in Elements of Treason:Honor that Alaric isn’t allowing free passage into Sol as long as the fortress lasts. It also shows him using  a warship that was eventually scuttled as the guard for the guests’ ships orbiting Mars.

The whole thing paints a picture of Alaric presenting this flawless facade to hide how bad his control of Sol is. Which makes it feel like Alaric is leaning on the punch drunk wolves alone to deal with Sol based threats.

We’ll find out in six-ish weeks.

But the Belters are demonstrably not really a threat now, are they? The one and only time they sallied forth, they got their asses annihilated, they've toelrated being denied access outside the system for centuries *(Thus, likely no Jumpshps, ergo, no route of escape), and don't have an industrial base OR fallback position.

However, they DO require ships to finish exterminating them, and that's something that Alaric can use the Snow Ravens for, since they have a surplus of ships suitable for the job and want to be in his 'good books' quite badly.

It's also one of the few missions the Raven touman is suited to carry out on their own, given that there are no fleets to fight them for their warriors to prove their warriorness.

[Church14]

But the Belters are demonstrably not really a threat now, are they? The one and only time they sallied forth, they got their asses annihilated, they've toelrated being denied access outside the system for centuries *(Thus, likely no Jumpshps, ergo, no route of escape), and don't have an industrial base OR fallback position.

However, they DO require ships to finish exterminating them, and that's something that Alaric can use the Snow Ravens for, since they have a surplus of ships suitable for the job and want to be in his 'good books' quite badly.

It's also one of the few missions the Raven touman is suited to carry out on their own, given that there are no fleets to fight them for their warriors to prove their warriorness.

My understanding is belters go all the way out to the Oort Cloud. So they have ships and a place to flee to. It would take decades to find em all, and you’d never know for sure. Wolves also supposedly had weak ASF support since they couldn’t replace hardware, and extended campaigns tend to be hard on ASF. Alaric will struggle to find em.

But, resistance doesn’t need to be castrums and ASF fighting warships. Industrial sabotage, malicious compliance, murder in alleyways. There’s lots of way to force Alaric to spend resources he doesn’t really have to make Titan Yards useful. The Wolves are also still likely bleeding on Terra given what the table of contents has.

[tassa_kay]

That assumes Alaric allows the Ravens into Sol.

I might be misremembering or just have no damn idea what I'm talking about, but with that leaked art showing the Snow Ravens' WarShip and space-suited troops boarding what looked to be a Newgrange nestled amongst some asteroids (and sidenote, wouldn't capturing a Newgrange kinda solve one of the biggest problems we've called them out for facing, readily-accessible ship repairs?), I kinda feel like that might be a safe assumption.

[Church14]

I might be misremembering or just have no damn idea what I'm talking about, but with that leaked art showing the Snow Ravens' WarShip and space-suited troops boarding what looked to be a Newgrange nestled amongst some asteroids (and sidenote, wouldn't capturing a Newgrange kinda solve one of the biggest problems we've called them out for facing, readily-accessible ship repairs?), I kinda feel like that might be a safe assumption.

You’re remembering right. But we have no context for it, or where it is, or if that mission works. It could be some hidden system nearby, or Ravens could in desperation say “cowabunga it is” and gone into Sol in force to go get it. That said, a Newgrange really is half of what Ravens need to sustain a presence in the Terran corridor for the long term. The other is some source of materials. I’m not sure a six month supply line running through a border with DC and FS is wise.

[Church14]

Side topic. There’s a name listed in iKEO that I don’t recognize at all. Claudia Sasse-Busseau is nestled between Herman Manes (Hastati commander) and Randal Buhallin (CJF).

Anyone recognize the name or even the last names? I’m drawing a blank on it.

[tassa_kay]

Probably a brand-new character.

[Cannonshop]

Side topic. There’s a name listed in iKEO that I don’t recognize at all. Claudia Sasse-Busseau is nestled between Herman Manes (Hastati commander) and Randal Buhallin (CJF).

Anyone recognize the name or even the last names? I’m drawing a blank on it.

If they're important enough to list, you'll probably meet them in the next product or the one after.

Sasse-Busseau looks like a French name...

[Cannonshop]

My understanding is belters go all the way out to the Oort Cloud. So they have ships and a place to flee to. It would take decades to find em all, and you’d never know for sure. Wolves also supposedly had weak ASF support since they couldn’t replace hardware, and extended campaigns tend to be hard on ASF. Alaric will struggle to find em.

But, resistance doesn’t need to be castrums and ASF fighting warships. Industrial sabotage, malicious compliance, murder in alleyways. There’s lots of way to force Alaric to spend resources he doesn’t really have to make Titan Yards useful. The Wolves are also still likely bleeding on Terra given what the table of contents has.

Out to the Oort isn't anything when  the developers and authors hold firm on the idea that a dropship can adequately patrol without jump capability, and time is...flexible in Battletech, as we've seen with how often information flows up-to-the-minute despite FTL comms being down between star systems.

so the distance/area doesn't really matter, things will move at the speed of the intended plot and no slower.  (IOW you would be right, if they stuck to published accelerations and speed and accounted for Newtonian physics instead of...well...let's say that the various liberations and invasions of the Sol system wouldn't look the way they do, if the book constraints and lack of inertial dampening or generated artificial gravity or non hyperspace FTL were actually applied evenly.  Not to mention things like RF and Light delay over distances...)

[Metallgewitter]

I might be misremembering or just have no damn idea what I'm talking about, but with that leaked art showing the Snow Ravens' WarShip and space-suited troops boarding what looked to be a Newgrange nestled amongst some asteroids (and sidenote, wouldn't capturing a Newgrange kinda solve one of the biggest problems we've called them out for facing, readily-accessible ship repairs?), I kinda feel like that might be a safe assumption.

The question would be if they can actually get that ship running again. The Republic had a resource crunch to bring their remaining Faslanes back into action and I for one thought that the Newgrange was actually crippled so they just left it to rot (then again the naming convention was weird. The Newgrange was the Blake's Mercy then rechristened to just Mercy during the Jihad and down the line it was apparently downgraded by the writers from a Newgrange to a Faslane). Still it would solve it IF the Ravens can somehow get the needed resources to actually restart the bloody thing. Just as a reminder a Newgrange is in essence a floating mobile yard / factory with over a battalion of Workmechs dedicated for resource extraction. If this ship is as badly damaged / decrepit as former books have made it out to be then it won't be an immediate asset. Especially if the Ravens need to "Import" workers and resources to bring it back to action

[tassa_kay]

I think if anyone can get a Newgrange up and running again, it's the Ravens. I'm not worried about that at all.

[Wrangler]

The Mercy is last known standard Newgrange Class Yardship left which makes it super valuable.  We don't know the state of the remaining Comstar built Yardships, we only know they were mothballed.

[Cannonshop]

I think if anyone can get a Newgrange up and running again, it's the Ravens. I'm not worried about that at all.

Yes, because it isn't going to need massive amounts of custom machined parts of mega scale after sitting that long abandoned (or the reasons for said abandonment), and the spares are always 'right there!' when it's a faction supporting the designated protagonist.

Along with all the fuel you need, air, life support filters, etc. etc. etc.

Here's your more likely scenario; The generations of personnel who were working on it had to be yoinked for Devlin Stone's Last Stand^(r), the work's done already, the Ravens are just walking in to do the equivalent of turning a key to start it up.

THAT way, at least, fits with the rest of the "Warships are insanely expensive which is why a salvaged warship is such a big deal" we've had since the first appearance in print, along with the "Warships are insanely expensive and complex which is why nobody built more of them" that we got after the Jihad.

Keep in mind, Large scale transport would've been quite useful to have in the post-Jihad Republic era, especially with all the mass-migrations just inside the Republic and there's a hard limit on how big a conventional core vessel can be, along with how many drop-collars it can use...but the Potemkin could manage twenty five of those-just the thing when you're 'voluntarily' moving large portions of planetary populations around to discourage nationalist feelings.

[Metallgewitter]

Flipped through FM 3145 again and this is what makes me wonder if the writers forgot the Newgrange ship: Tucker writes that the Republic lost the Faslane ship Iustitia in an industrial accident and the other three Faslanes Clementia, Harmonia and Necessitas were decomissioned and mothballed in the late 3120's. This must either be a writing error or someone downgraded the Mercy to a Faslane. Sarna notices for this that the Blake's Mercy was first renamed to Mercy and then later to Clementia and that it is in fact the last Newgrange ship.

Here is the quote from the FM 3145
and our three other Faslanes—Clementia, Harmonia, and Necessitas—were decommissioned and mothballed in the late 3120s

If he had written Yardships it would have been more in line. So my guess:they will probbaly tear apart the Faslanes to get the Newgrange up and running. If said ship can actually be reactivated, after all. It sat out there for nearly 30 years without maintenance (except perhaps cursory checks)