Author Topic: Back From the Dead, Dead On Arrival — A Review of Force Manual: Davion/Kurita  (Read 1200 times)

pokefan548

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Back From the Dead, Dead On Arrival — A Review Of Force Manual: Davion/Kurita

Fluff: A
Crunch: D+
Priority: Crunch

Overall Grade: C-


It's a title I'd hoped I wouldn't have to write. I was a big fan of the Combat Manuals, even if their release was notably aborted. So, come April 2022, I was ecstatic to see the understated announcement that the Combat Manuals were being rebooted, and in the process two of my biggest issues were being addressed: not only would we see the debut of Force Manual: Davion, giving us all the tools to run real War of 3039 matches using just the first wave of Force Manuals (granted, we're missing the Lyran front, but hey—compromises must be made, sometimes), but it would also support Classic BattleTech, massively broadening its usefulness.

I saw this as an absolute win. The books, whose main issues were a limited scope combined with an aborted launch, were now shaping up to be a fantastic option for experienced players, a great standard for event and tournament organizers, and, perhaps most of all, a fantastic pseudo-codex for new players taking their first dive into one of BattleTech's major factions. Hell, even before launch, I was so enamored by the potential for the reboot that I'd already sketched out drafts for a War of 3039 tournament and multiple Shrapnel game articles that could offer modest expansions on the Force Manuals' offerings.

But What Was a Combat Manual?
For those unfamiliar with the Combat Manuals don't expect the same level of in-depth lore as you would from a Field Manual or Handbook. They were game aids first, and the Force Manuals are no different. Of course, they still served as a streamlined primer on each faction for new players, but the ultimate goal was for players to use them and the information on the various combat commands within to create organized, lore-friendly forces (with some benefits for accepting the limitations imposed). They were limited to just Alpha Strike, and, of course, they weren't perfect, but they were an underrated gem that had the misfortune of coming out during a down period in BattleTech's activity, and for a system that hadn't yet gained its current popularity. In the end, for various reasons, the run was cancelled after just two entries: Combat Manual: Kurita and Combat Manual: Mercenaries.

The Long Wait
As it's not really an issue to people reading this review after the books have already released, I'll keep this brief, but I do want to highlight it as it speaks to a recurring issue with Catalyst—and one that exacerbates the issues I have with the Force Manuals. The wait.

Remember how the announcement for these was in April 2022? And the announcement states they were to start releasing in late 2022? Both Force Manual: Davion and Force Manual: Kurita released in October 2024. To be frank, and to skip ahead a bit, while there are things to like about the Force Manuals, they do not feel like two and a half years of work. While, yes, much of that time was also taken up by work on the Mercenaries Kickstarter, it's an excessive amount of time for one moderately-sized new book working off of an existing template, and another book that just needs its contents updated and a few features added or removed.

Catalyst is a small company, and I would rather its core employees be dedicated members who understand the world, the game, and the community, rather than hiring like mad and leaving big decisions about BattleTech to people who can't provide such stable stewardship. Ask any Brush Wars fan, though, and they'll tell you that the lack of personnel means CGL's propensity for New Toy Syndrome can and does regularly hit smaller projects hard. It's an issue currently affecting several lines of supplements, and I hope after all the Kickstarter mess dies down, Catalyst opts to sit down and put in the time to catch up on products that have been gathering dust for years before they dive into another big box set or massive-scale book project.

The Fluff
So, enough waffling on about the past—the books are out, how are they for those looking into BattleTech's story and aesthetic?

Force Manuals as Lore Primers
Aside from the odd typo, formatting error, or layout issue, the Force Manuals, like their predecessors, do a good job of giving you the Cliff Notes version of "Who are they?" and "Why should I care?" For beginners, this is great. While of course, dedicated fans love hearing about the various subcultures, industries, and finer politics of their favorite faction, beginners can easily skim Force Manuals and get all the most important parts of each faction's backstory, culture, military, and other elements essential to the faction's "vibe" without getting bogged down. From the streamlined walls of lore at the front of the book, to the brief summaries of each combat command, to the various handy inserts on the margins covering interesting, but usually ancillary or non-essential information, the books are simply fantastic primers that players can easily digest, and build upon if and when they decide to devote more time to becoming equally-invested readers.

But again, it must be said that the information is highly streamlined. You won't get nearly as much lore as you would from one of the old House Books, a Field Manual, or a Handbook. Veteran lore experts who aren't too interested in having a handy guide to building fluffy forces on tabletop aren't likely to find anything new in the Force Manuals' pages. Again, that's not what the Force Manuals are trying to accomplish—so fair warning to those who are mainly in it for the nitty-gritty lore details!

Beyond that, though, they are good for a skim. The slimmed-down lore passages are fast, easy reads that are nice to reference if you want a short brief of a command that's just shown up in a novel or sourcebook, and there's just enough substance that a command you've never looked over before may just hook you.

And They Are Pretty
Another big plus is the art. While far from an artbook, and indeed even a normal sourcebook, the art present in the Force Manuals is nice. Special mention goes to the updated art for several uniforms, which is not only an excellent successor to a lot of very old, very 80s art, but a nice break from Catalyst's recent trend of excessive 'Mech art. And of course, Force Manual: Kurita being an older book given a face lift means it has a mix of mid-'10s- and '20s-style BattleTech art—a fine fusion for me, as someone who really enjoys a lot of the art that came out in the handful of years before BattleTech's renaissance.

Again, though, it's not quite the focus of the Force Manuals. If you enjoy BattleTech art, there will be plenty to like, but if you're looking for a book filled to the brim with pieces that aren't unit insignias, there are other books available that will serve you better.

The Crunch
And unfortunately, here's where the complaints begin—sadly enough, as we reach the part that the Force Manuals were always meant to focus on.

Out With the FP, In With the Rarity
Those who remember the original Combat Manuals may remember that the salvage, duplicate, and special unit picks were all based around the "Faction Point" (FP) system. Put simply, every unit in a company contributed 1 FP to a company—thus, a full company of 12 'Mechs had 12 FP to spend. FP expenditures ranged from marginal expenses like having duplicates of the same 'Mech variant, to highly expensive options like Clan salvage. Some of these costs could also vary by combat command—some highly-decorated commands could access better equipment for less FP, while others got discounts on salvage from regularly-fought enemy factions—giving these commands a nice added bit of flavor.

It was a system that seemed intimidating to many people. Indeed, even I thought it would be cumbersome at first. That being said, after sitting down with it for a few minutes one day, I actually found it shockingly intuitive. Still, it was an unpopular system with many of those who knew it, and I'll grant that it could have had a bit more refinement. When talking with folks working on the project early on, I was informed that, from the very beginning, one of the first goals was to replace the FP system with something more approachable, less restrictive, and that requires less math. Of course, I wasn't told any more than that, so I crossed my fingers and held my judgement to see the result.

The result is... mixed. The rarity system has all the ingredients at its core to be a great replacement, but some baffling removals hold it back severely. One thing I do like is that rather than having a Common availability list, and then Faction and Faction Special lists to distinguish between the common house 'Mechs and the flashy new stuff, the Force Manuals assign each unit a rating of Iconic (for those 'Mechs that the faction can and will spam until the cows come home), Common (for the units that aren't hard to find, but aren't everywhere in the faction's ranks), Uncommon (for those units that can actually be hard to find, but aren't borderline impossible), and Rare (for those exceedingly rare picks). I actually really like this added granularity, especially when combined with the Equipment Rating each command now receives that dictates how quickly its tech gets upgraded over the course of the Clan Invasion.

There were, however, some balls dropped in its implementation, I feel. For one, it doesn't really simplify the math all that much. Instead of having a clean, bespoke point value for buying unusual units and force configurations based on your overall force size, you now have several hard limits and then a bunch of percentages based on force size. It's really not any less complex to calculate, at the end of the day, and I fear the percentage-based limits might not fit well when Force Manuals debut for forces that may not often divide evenly into quarters and thirds, such as ComStar and the Clans.

Additionally, there really isn't much that affects this system. Common Enemy and Ally attributes, as well as force building rules that grant certain commands access to Special lists, are all gone, with almost no replacement. Some commands are still able to pull units from other factions' lists, but unlike the FP system's implementation of Common Enemy there don't seem to be any limits or added costs for doing so. Likewise, since Equipment Rating doesn't apply during the Succession Wars, units like the Second Arkab Legion that could pay hefty sums to access a Special list to reflect an unusually large quantity of surviving Star League equipment or a high-priority for War of 3039 innovations are often SOL. Only in Force Manual: Kurita and only for 'Mechs new to the War of 3039 is any restriction implemented, and said implementation feels a bit wonky to me. In all other cases, any backwater command can be armed just as well as the best of the best during the Succession Wars.

This also makes salvage nothing more than a fluff piece with some static, pre-defined salvage picks that, frankly, may or may not make much sense due to some odd inclusions and glaring omissions. The Combat Manuals used Common Enemies and Common Allies to allow factions and combat commands to pay for salvage from appropriate sources, sometimes with discounts for border commands or special exceptions for units on the border of a particular Clan invasion corridor. I do like including some canned salvage picks in each book, as the Combat Manuals did have the issue of using this system to encourage a "collect them all" approach that... definitely didn't work, considering the series only ever got one book for any actual state. The total lack of any rules for salvage or arms trade picks does make the books feel far less scalable, however, and seriously hurts lists without many—or any—baked-in salvage picks.

Both of these issues could have been very simple to fix, to my mind. Simply providing force building rules that, say, allow a command to allot additional Rare and/or Uncommon units could give the highest-priority and most exotic commands an edge still reflected in their fluff more often than not. Salvage could be a simple matter of increasing a unit's rarity by a set number of steps—say, +0 (to a minimum of Common) for Common Allies, +1 for Inner Sphere Common Enemies, and +2 for Clan Common Enemies; thus, an Iconic or Common 'Mech obtained from a Common Ally would be Common either way, a Common 'Mech from an IS Common Enemy would become Uncommon, and a Common 'Mech from a Clan Common Enemy would become Rare.

There are also issues with duplicates. While the FP system's default allowance of duplicate 'Mechs was perhaps a bit too generous (certainly for the Succession Wars), it more importantly only penalized duplicate 'Mechs. This isn't so with the rarity system—every unit is put under the same microscope, subject to the exact same duplicate rules, and all contribute equally to the same limits. This is a big problem when you start bringing in vehicles, and fighters. Rare fighters are a bit of a waste since fighters are almost always deployed in pairs, and sometimes there's not a variant of the same chassis at a lower rarity available. Vehicles are at least less expected to be quite so uniform, but the limit of two of the same Uncommon unit still hurts when you're trying to fit them into larger forces. Thankfully, infantry don't have rarities, meaning you can't be bottlenecked by Uncommon or Rare infantry being unable to form CI companies or BA platoons/lances, but that also creates the new issue that cutting-edge battle armor has no limitation other than Equipment Rating; this will likely become an issue for Clan availability lists in the future when suits like the Gnome and Salamander are introduced.

All in all, I like some of the core ideas in the rarity system, but overall it was very poorly implemented, I think. Having a more granular definition of just how special each unit is and how well each combat command is able to keep with the times are welcome additions, but in practice their design makes them more restrictive and less evocative, all without simplifying the process of building a force all that much.

And About Those Force Lists...
Maybe I'm the odd one out here, but despite how massive the lists were, I much prefer the Combat Manuals' availability list formatting to the Force Manuals'. Sure, it's a lot all at once, and they take up several pages, but the older availability lists also provided all the units in one place, with multiple sorting schemes making it a breeze to find the units you want. By contrast, cramming units in haphazardly wherever they'll technically fit under premade lances feels incredibly disorganized, and I often have to search page after page through lists sorted with no discernable rhyme or reason to find the rarity of a 'Mech I know should be available. Even worse, variants, even those from the same era, are often printed pages apart, leading to a lot of flipping back and forth when deciding whether a more cutting-edge or obsolete variant would be a better fit.

Meanwhile, in the Combat Manuals, I could very quickly find any of my own staple 'Mechs, or a 'Mech I wanted to experiment with, very easily just by checking the Availability List/Alphabetical-sorted table, then fill out needed roles and fit things into the remaining PV with the Role/PV-sorted table. No flipping back-and-forth trying to find where the hell my beloved Griffin and its variants are supposed to be, just go to the Gs in the Common list, and maybe check the same place Faction/Faction Special lists to see if the faction in question has any unique variants.

The system doesn't seem to be much better for those beginners who are just getting into the game either. Most of the pre-made lances and their helpfully-listed alternates can't be formed with any one plastic 'Mech box currently in circulation, and many require 3+ boxes or a lucky pull or two from a salvage box to potentially complete even just mixing and matching alternate units. While, yes, you can technically proxy anything in BattleTech, many players will be using this for Alpha Strike, where model size and shape matter a bit more; more than that, I've found many players want to play with their models as the appropriate unit—either out of an urge to have everything match nicely and neatly, or, more often, because they're still learning which models are which and adding in too many proxies may quickly confuse things. If you're reading this, it's probably trivial for you to write down that your Rifleman is actually a Hatchetman and not get it mixed up with your Blackjack standing in for a Griffin, but newer players often have trouble keeping track of which one's which even with pictures on their record sheets or cards. So, either they get to play with, in all likelihood, a whole bunch of proxies until they can collect lots of assorted minis, or they can run into the same problem more experienced players do: flipping back and forth trying to find the right Wasp variant in the chaotic sea of 'Mechs.

Some of the availabilities are a bit odd as well. As expected, non-'Mech availabilities are very noticeably slimmer than 'Mech availabilities, and almost all are simple vanilla, milk toast units. Want Mobile HQs for a cheeky initiative boost? Coolant Trucks to take your Awesome hot tub on-the-go? Karnovs or Planetlifters to drop infantry? Nada.

In fact, as a big aerospace player, I have to especially point out some oddities in the aerospace availabilities. Despite having much ado about conventional fighters in the section on force building, neither Force Manual appears to have any conventional fighters available. Just as bafflingly, Force Manual: Davion's has absolutely no salvaged aerospace fighters available. Force Manual: Kurita does, but it also lists the Sabre as being Uncommon, which I find highly suspect considering that it's not only a design of Combine origin, but one of if not the most ubiquitous aerospace fighter in all the Inner Sphere and Periphery. For the ground-pounders in the room, imagine a Locust LCT-1V being supposedly as rare in the Combine as a Lancelot.

Other Rules, Other Problems
To start off with the good news, Force Manual: Davion has finally fixed a long-standing exploitable rule regarding how far you can stray from a combat command's listed composition and how much of that composition your force actually fills. Now, no longer can a light 'Mech regiment deploy 53 assault 'Mechs without issue, but suddenly has to care about weight the moment they field 54 'Mechs. Same for Green commands at just under half-strength filling their ranks with Legendary MechWarriors. Now you always need to care at least a bit, and at more than a third of a command's strength you have to care a lot. There's just one little problem...

They forgot to update Force Manual: Kurita.

So, going by RAW, right now, Kurita forces operating at less than half a regiment have a pretty insane amount of flexibility compared to Davion forces. There's tons of problems and oversights, and that's a pretty big one right there.

The rules for supplemental mercenary commands are also absent, depriving players of the option to spice things up by throwing mercs into their house lists. My hope is that this is not a total removal, but that it's simply been put into Force Manual: Mercenaries only and isn't duplicated in other Force Manuals.

There are plenty of other issues as well—some units have multiple entries with conflicting rarities in availability lists as well, Piloting and Gunnery for all Unique Characters are all backwards, so on and so forth. The errata threads have been filling up quickly with countless errors both one-off and persistent. While jarring and inconvenient for fluff, but not immediately relevant to the game, the mountain of small and sometimes not-so-small errors in the crunch means I can hardly even call the Force Manuals authoritative to their own force construction rules, let alone the game it's supposed to supplement.

The Final Verdict
Unfortunately, the weakest link of the Force Manuals is what they try and focus on most: the crunch. While there were some good ideas, I don't think many of the updates from the Combat Manuals make for a good foundation for the Force Manual line to grow on in the long term. And, unfortunately, due to the quality issues with several key parts of the books, I can't really recommend them in a vacuum either. It's clear that Catalyst's editors are stretched far too thin, otherwise there would have been far beyond enough time to catch, at the very least, the errors I found skimming the books over lunch as they came out.

I was, perhaps, the most excited for the Force Manuals in this community. I regularly pestered various CGL folks about the status of the books every few months whenever I could make it to a Q&A. Unfortunately, after this disappointing showing, I'll certainly be abstaining from the first printing of Force Manual: Mercenaries, and may well drop the series altogether until I hear word that the quality has drastically improved. Unfortunately, the reboot we waited two and a half years for may need yet another reboot.

Sad to say, save your money, or at least stick to the PDF version that will hopefully get updated with errata. There's not much point in buying a physical copy unless you really need something light to skim through, wait for the errata and pick up the corrected second printing at earliest.
« Last Edit: 03 November 2024, 18:31:28 by pokefan548 »
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GuyIncognito

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Thank you for the in-depth review.

ColBosch

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This echoes a lot of my own feelings on Force Manual: Davion, which has held me off from buying FM Kurita.
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MarauderD

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My own pet peeve hit me with Force Manual: Davion.

The editing. 

For the most part, I'm not talking about content.  Content is subjective--I won't get into the quality or value of it.  Frankly, I expect any of us posting here to know enough about the 5 houses and using the MUL that these lists are superfluous.  I think they are great for beginners of two stripes:  1) the hobby, and 2) a specific faction.  If you don't know BattleTech or House Davion, this book is for you.  If you know both, it is just a really good looking resource for Combat Commands.  You certainly don't need it to craft a Succession Wars era Assault Lance, for instance.

What I'm talking about is all the formatting mistakes and outright typos.  As both a House Davion fan and an Alpha Strike player, I've been looking forward to this sourcebook since 2016 (Combat Manual Kurita's debut).  There are upwards of 40 errors in the book that you don't need to know BattleTech to catch.  Headers, spelling, typos, punctuation, you name it.  It is so many, in fact, that I'm guessing the folks who edited it weren't looking at the 'final copy' so they couldn't fix the mistakes.  I say this as someone who was a copy editor on a law journal for a few years--my job was always to correct errors without changing the authors content or voice.  "Fix the boo-boos" if you will.  I'm bummed that it detracted from my enjoyment of the tome. 

I'm happy to see the re-released Force Manual Kurita is better in that regard, but it still has silly, unforced editing errors.  I'm no Earnest Hemingway, and have never claimed to be.  Who do we PM around here to offer help with the editing?


pokefan548

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My own pet peeve hit me with Force Manual: Davion.

The editing. 

For the most part, I'm not talking about content.  Content is subjective--I won't get into the quality or value of it.  Frankly, I expect any of us posting here to know enough about the 5 houses and using the MUL that these lists are superfluous.  I think they are great for beginners of two stripes:  1) the hobby, and 2) a specific faction.  If you don't know BattleTech or House Davion, this book is for you.  If you know both, it is just a really good looking resource for Combat Commands.  You certainly don't need it to craft a Succession Wars era Assault Lance, for instance.

What I'm talking about is all the formatting mistakes and outright typos.  As both a House Davion fan and an Alpha Strike player, I've been looking forward to this sourcebook since 2016 (Combat Manual Kurita's debut).  There are upwards of 40 errors in the book that you don't need to know BattleTech to catch.  Headers, spelling, typos, punctuation, you name it.  It is so many, in fact, that I'm guessing the folks who edited it weren't looking at the 'final copy' so they couldn't fix the mistakes.  I say this as someone who was a copy editor on a law journal for a few years--my job was always to correct errors without changing the authors content or voice.  "Fix the boo-boos" if you will.  I'm bummed that it detracted from my enjoyment of the tome. 

I'm happy to see the re-released Force Manual Kurita is better in that regard, but it still has silly, unforced editing errors.  I'm no Earnest Hemingway, and have never claimed to be.  Who do we PM around here to offer help with the editing?
Agreed. No BattleTech book is perfect, there are always issue that slip through the cracks, but I was finding multiple glaring, obvious issues just skimming through the books over lunch as they came out. The quality control in editing is some of the lowest since CGL took the reins, at least from the pubs I've read.
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In a recent podcast the German MechForce Germany leader was also very sad about all these errors and said that they could offer a lot of manpower to read for errors (for free if I got that right). Other fan groups would surely offer this too, but Catalyst doesn‘t seem to see the massive problems or doesn‘t want to integrate fans in the process. The Alpha Strike 7.0 rulebook has a very confusing errata when it comes to trees and line of sight because there were new sentences added but one of the old ones wasn‘t removed, so it‘s really confusing. I wonder if only a single person proof-reads the books.
« Last Edit: 13 November 2024, 01:01:03 by Frank Olson »

Arkansas Warrior

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I tend to agree with this.  There was a lot that could be fixed with a good copy editor.  Having done a bit of that myself in the past, it was dismaying  I've actually tried looking at CGL's site before to see if they ever post any job openings for that sort of thing, but they don't seem to have an employment page, I guess it's invite-only.  A lot of it is simple copy & paste error, but there are other odd choices as well, like giving full writeups to destroyed units, like the 33rd Avalon Hussars, while surviving commands like the 11th, 39th, and 41st just get the bare bones.  I wish there were write-ups for every unit, like the Field Manuals had, but I guess they needed more space for art, painting tips, and record sheets.  Speaking of the art, it's wonderful, but the choices are often...strange.  Consider, for example, page 43, where there's a write-up about a 10th Deneb Captain who drives a Spider.  The art right next to his write-up?  A Fourth Deneb Enforcer.  The Davion Assault Guards featured mechwarrior is notably piloting Ian Davion's old Atlas.  The pic next to his paragraph? A Heavy Guards Marauder.  Wouldn't it make more sense to show the guy being talked about, or at least a mech from his regiment?  Seems like that could confuse the sort of new player that the book is apparently for.


It also struck me as odd how much the book pushes the term Command for an administrative region.  Now, the term doesn't originate there, it appears in 20 Year Update, which says that the term "Command" replaces the PDZ and a portion of a Lyran Theater.  FM:FS mentions that during the united FedCom years PDZs were called commands.  Once.  But the Force Manual?  It's all in for Commands.  Something like half the March Militias have "Regional Specialization (New Syrtis PDZ/Command)".  It's used multiple times without /PDZ in several unit write-ups (especially for March Militias), etc.  And you know what?  It's a super confusing term.  the AFFS has the High Command, individual RCTs are often referred to as commands, the Ceti Hussars are divided into Combat Commands.  The CO of a unit is the Commander or Commanding Officer.  If you search "Command" in this document, you will get 334 hits in 138 pages.  It's so much easier to find PDZ, because the term isn't used in 65 different ways by the AFFC/S.  I wish they'd done a very minor retcon that only 3 people would have noticed and no one would have cared about and just dropped that usage of the term "Command" entirely.


Was I the only one very confused about what year this book is set in?  There's no fictional "This document put together by Ardan Sortek for the use of SLDF Commanding General Victor Steiner-Davion, dated 6 December 3062" framing device or anything like that.  The opening fiction is from the War of 3039.  It refers to some units destroyed in the clan invasion (like the aforementioned 33rd Avalon, destroyed 3052) in the past tense with notation of the year they were destroyed.  But it still uses a lot of AFFC jargon, so it's surely pre-FCCW.  There's a half-page discussion of Operation Guerrero, so it can't be earlier than 3058.  Why they set the Force Manuals within a half-decade of the Field Manuals, which are better and more detailed, I don't know.  They'd have ben much more useful if they were set in 3150.  Or even 3130, on the eve of the Blackout.


Speaking of that, I found the talk of rank structure on 22-23 to be incredibly confusing.  There's a sidebar, "Davion Ranks" that claims to be listing the AFFC ranks, but skips at least one (there's an entry for Sergeant that also talks about Sergeant Major and Command Sergeant Major, but neither is listed separately) includes one (Leftenant Colonel) that didn't exist in the AFFC, and gets some wrong (the AFFC replaced Colonel with Leftenant General, the chart lists both and clearly believes that Leftenant Generals outrank colonels)  It also suggests that a ground Captain/Hauptmann and a naval Captain are equivalent, which...I've never heard of that anywhere.  Then on Page 22 there's a rank chart that...doesn't match the sidebar (notably including Sergeant Major but not Command Sergeant Major as a separate rank, where the sidebar seems to consider them both just a type of sergeant).  The next page has a different, much more elaborate rank chart, which includes five (5!) enlisted ranks that aren't mentioned on page 22 at all, and even the officer ranks, which do match, (with the addition of Marshal of the Armies)) but the insignia are different (except for Cadet/Subaltern).


All in all, if you have FM:FS and aren't a completionist or a zealous FedSuns fan?  I would skip this one.  I am a FedSuns fan, and I'm pretty disappointed.  I doubt I'll bother with any of the other Force Manuals if this is what we're getting.  I already have the Field Manuals, and they're better and more detailed.  I'll miss out on some nice artwork, notable pilots, a short story, etc, but that's not worth the price of the book.  I want to say specifically that this is in no way meant to reflect on Geoff Swift, the primary author, whose writing I've generally enjoyed and whom I know to be a zealous and passionate BT writer and fan of long vintage.  Few if any of the complaints I've offered seem like the kind of thing that would've been his decision.
« Last Edit: 18 November 2024, 15:25:50 by Arkansas Warrior »
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ColBosch

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Excellent point on the time frame being confused. The vision for these books was that they'd be set in the Clan Invasion era, which I assumed meant 3052ish. But Force Manual Davion feels unmoored in time. It's like it was stitched together from drafts for three different books, each set in a different year.

As for the actual continuity errors, I get it. My Era Digest: Age of War lists the signatories to the Ares Conventions, which I stand by, but it has been reported that several of the people could be different depending on the sources used. FASA wasn't big on factchecking, as has been previously pointed out. But again, it feels like bits and pieces of completely different books were combined past the author's level, and nobody did a proper pre-press pass to make sure everything was in agreement.
BattleTech is a huge house, it's not any one fan's or "type" of fans.  If you need to relieve yourself, use the bathroom not another BattleTech fan. - nckestrel
1st and 2nd Succession Wars are not happy times. - klarg1

BrianDavion

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I feel the force manuals are intended to basicly cover 3025-3058 and this has ups and downs as some formations doubtless saw signfcigent changes.
The Suns will shine again

 

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