Battletech BattleTech discussion thread: May the light of Hanse Davion guide us

Atarlost

Well-known member
Seekers are like 1 lead warrior, maybe some other warriors but maybe not, his chronicler, and a few techs and other support personnel. The Scorpions can certainly spare a handful of guys to run around looking for some SL era junk, it's not like the Empire will collapse if a star of warriors gets the flu and is out of action.
Right, but it's a religious obligation. Shouldn't every high caste Scorpion, or at least every pious Scorpion that can find a berth based on whichever caste is the bottleneck, be doing a term as seeker? That's the most trustworthy segment of the warrior, scientist (assuming chroniclers are from that caste), and technician classes all going on multi-year research sabbaticals. Combined with the short functional lifespan of a Clan warrior that's a lot more than the equivalent of one star down with the flu at a time.

And these Scorpions aren't around to influence the direction of the empire allowing the Nueva Castilians to outnumber real Scorpions those not currently acting as seekers by a greater margin accelerating the collapse of Clan culture.

The Yuan stopped being Mongols before they were deposed. The same should happen to the Clanners in mixed societies where they are the smaller population, and Seekers reduce the population of loyal and true Scorpions. This accelerates the destruction of the Clan at a rate proportional to the ratio between their population and the population absorbing them.

Probably not. A few guys in a Leopard or something small hitching a ride on a jumpship is going to mean the clan is down one small dropship and take up one collar on jumpship, I don't think that will really impede the clans operations overall. Even if thry have a dedicated jumpship, I don't know how much that would impact them. Particularly as they nations thry conquered had jumpships of thier own and the clans would have captured them during the war, so giving some jumpships out to the seekers would at worst reduce the number of surplus jumpships the clans have outside the ones in thier own inventory.
Most of the jumpships of the conquered nations need to be there to keep the economy running. Seekers going out need dedicated jumpships to travel outside the trade network of the conquered nations. Those jumpships are gone for years and there should be not single digit jumpships, but one jumpship per probably 1-5 pious warriors or scientists (whichever is the tighter bottleneck, and assuming that seekers aren't going out more than a star per destination) at some point in their professional lifespan and they're gone for months or years, same as the people.

Imagine what would happen to the Draconis Combine if every Samurai from the Azami worlds requisitioned a jumpship and dropship for the Haj at some point in his adult life. That's about what should happen to the Scorpion Empire. Proportionately fewer expeditions since there can be some sharing, but each expedition is longer since the Azami worlds are pretty close to Sol while most Star League sites are very far from the Scorpion Empire.

It was stupid, just like everything else done with the Clan from War of Reaving on.
On that we're fully agreed. For all their implausible worldbuilding they were a good excuse plot for gaming group sized giant robot battles until the idiots decided they should flip all of the tables instead of just the one corporate HQ demanded be flipped.
 

S'task

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Right, but it's a religious obligation. Shouldn't every high caste Scorpion, or at least every pious Scorpion that can find a berth based on whichever caste is the bottleneck, be doing a term as seeker?
No.

The selection process for being a Seeker is quite rigorous and was normally vetted carefully... specifically BECAUSE of the issue you're talking about. To be a Seeker you first had to be given permission to go on a Necrosia vision quest, which while most Warriors would try that once, the rituals around seeker ones were special IIRC and more intensive. Then any vision would be very heavily scrutinized to make sure it was an actual viable vision and that the Clan wouldn't be wasting resources pursuing it, assuming you HAD a Seeker vision, there's a good chance you wouldn't. THEN the Seeker would have to convince others to join the quest and if they couldn't, they wouldn't be allowed to pursue it. Seekers weren't GIVEN support, they basically had to earn it themselves for their quest, this was why the Menagerie was so important for Seekers, it showcased their ability to earn and keep followers and succeed in pursuing their quest.

Thus while it was certainly more than a single Star of Seekers out at any given time, it was likely no more than a Trinary, a small Cluster at very most.
 

Battlegrinder

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Obozny
The Yuan stopped being Mongols before they were deposed. The same should happen to the Clanners in mixed societies where they are the smaller population, and Seekers reduce the population of loyal and true Scorpions. This accelerates the destruction of the Clan at a rate proportional to the ratio between their population and the population absorbing them.

Yes, but I'm sure conquering groups have managed to remain culturally isolated from the previous targets in the past as well, and it seems like a rigidly hierarchical system like a clan would be particularly resistant to that sort of intermingling?
 

Blasterbot

Well-known member
So not sure how many people play MW5 but the Rise of Rasalhauge DLC is out now. I like the crusader so i got it.
 

bullethead

Part-time fanfic writer
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I am waiting for a good deal so I can just get the game, all the DLC, and all the mods and go.
 

Blasterbot

Well-known member
I am waiting for a good deal so I can just get the game, all the DLC, and all the mods and go.
My intro to the series was mech warrior 2 so I am keeping up with it. I was terrible at that game every mech was loaded with PPCs and nothing else. I had fun generating heat and overriding the shutdowns till my mech would explode. MW4 I was a bit better. I would supplement the PPCs with other long range weapons. still prioritized PPCs over all.
 

Blasterbot

Well-known member
Sarna.net has made yet another editorial that is pro woke. they latched on to Stackpole saying that BT has always been woke. Sean is quite the brainlet and is saying that "woke" is defined as "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination." he is pretty clearly a default leftist and hasn't really paid much attention to it.

on A side not I accidentally borked my MW5 with mods and am reinstalling it. very sad.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Sarna.net has made yet another editorial that is pro woke. they latched on to Stackpole saying that BT has always been woke. Sean is quite the brainlet and is saying that "woke" is defined as "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination." he is pretty clearly a default leftist and hasn't really paid much attention to it.

on A side not I accidentally borked my MW5 with mods and am reinstalling it. very sad.
Huh. To quote the article...

Things got a lot better with the introduction of the Clans, with its egalitarian society that cared little for race or gender, only whether you were born in a test tube with combat-capable genes. And the problematic similarities between the freebirth/trueborn argument and racist ideology steeped in geneticism get addressed in books like Freebirth and characters like Phelan Kell and Alaric Ward (although Alaric has his own problems, that's a topic for another editorial).

Well... I guess it's kinda mask-off to see them talking about how great Clan Society is and how woke and egalitarian it is.
 

Skitzyfrenic

Well-known member
Right, because a tribal take on fascism is so grand, so great. Being property of the Clan/State is such a wonderful thing. Being told who to marry, which the Scientists do for non-warrior castes IIRC, totally fine, Eugenics is great. Having a Ritualized Crab Bucket which gleefully includes murder, so woke.

Fucking hell.
 

Blasterbot

Well-known member
Huh. To quote the article...

Things got a lot better with the introduction of the Clans, with its egalitarian society that cared little for race or gender, only whether you were born in a test tube with combat-capable genes. And the problematic similarities between the freebirth/trueborn argument and racist ideology steeped in geneticism get addressed in books like Freebirth and characters like Phelan Kell and Alaric Ward (although Alaric has his own problems, that's a topic for another editorial).

Well... I guess it's kinda mask-off to see them talking about how great Clan Society is and how woke and egalitarian it is.
eugenics has been a lefty idea for over a century. that they like the authoritarian society of the clans is unsurprising. clans are a caste based society that discourages caste mobility heavily and looks down on "free births". shouldn't be suprised though with how the depopulation agenda is going.
 

Culsu

Agent of the Central Plasma
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I've.... never thought BTech was anything but egalitarian with regards to race and gender. Was that ever really an issue? I always thought the Clans with their weird mix of tribal Mongol khanate bullshit and iron womb planned warrior line genetics were the odd man out of the bunch?! And now they are the positive example? What the hell?
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I've.... never thought BTech was anything but egalitarian with regards to race and gender. Was that ever really an issue? I always thought the Clans with their weird mix of tribal Mongol khanate bullshit and iron womb planned warrior line genetics were the odd man out of the bunch?! And now they are the positive example? What the hell?
The closest I feel one could reasonably say is that in very early Battletech, the two "Evil" factions were both asian cultures while the two "hero" factions were both derived from European cultures. The Free Worlds League barely existed, honestly, and still seems to get no love.

The Magistracy is also not very woke. It's the woman-dominated culture but it's not shown to be superior to all others.
 

S'task

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The closest I feel one could reasonably say is that in very early Battletech, the two "Evil" factions were both asian cultures while the two "hero" factions were both derived from European cultures. The Free Worlds League barely existed, honestly, and still seems to get no love.

The Magistracy is also not very woke. It's the woman-dominated culture but it's not shown to be superior to all others.
The Capellan Confederation, especially Maxmillian Liao, also arguably played into classic "Yellow Peril" tropes in design and actions. Some might argue the Combine did too, but the Combine is such a mish-mash of Japanese culture that it actually ends up avoiding it, I think. It doesn't use the anti-Japanese tropes of the 80s, when it was written, nor does the in setting propaganda harken back to the anti-Japanese stuff of the 1940s even though the Combine is much closer to being WW2 Japan in Space than it is 1980s Japan in space.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
The Capellan Confederation, especially Maxmillian Liao, also arguably played into classic "Yellow Peril" tropes in design and actions. Some might argue the Combine did too, but the Combine is such a mish-mash of Japanese culture that it actually ends up avoiding it, I think. It doesn't use the anti-Japanese tropes of the 80s, when it was written, nor does the in setting propaganda harken back to the anti-Japanese stuff of the 1940s even though the Combine is much closer to being WW2 Japan in Space than it is 1980s Japan in space.
You're getting way too complicated for woke thinking.

The two factions shown as good in a couple of books have white people. The two factions shown as evil have yellow people. There is no major faction made all of brown people.

That's as far as the thinking goes, not nuanced stuff about the kind of culture. Skin color is what counts.


And don't mention how we kept hearing about guys like Duke Hasid Ricol being a high-ranked Combine noble despite clearly not being Japanese in ethnicity, name, or customs.
 

Culsu

Agent of the Central Plasma
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I always thought the obvious elements were more cultural rather than ethnic markers.
 

Skitzyfrenic

Well-known member
They would have to be cultural markers. There simply aren't enough Japanese people to populate like 300 planets to be the utterly dominant ethnic group in the DC by the time the Star League forms. Same with the Chinese in the CC.

(Honestly, the stars are a little white in BT, with 2 and some change Great Houses and and 2 of the Major Periphery Houses being headed by what I think are 'de facto' white even with the Azami or the old Hindu worlds. They've got the population in the 80s to be among the 'people we want to send out to relieve pressure on Terra' when the Space Age and Colonization actually get going.)

Culturally though, yeah. Yellow Peril WW2 Japan and Yellow Peril Mao-ist China w/Soviet Scare Russians added in for flavor.

And it is a lot more actually egalitarian than it first looks. But you have to pay attention.

That's the problem. These people think 'culture=race' far more than is healthy for 'anti-bigots.' It why you can be obviously African, but if your culture is white... Or why actually putting in effort for a Japanese Tea Ceremony (something I hear Japanese people love to see) is horrifically racist. Culture and race are so intertwined to them.

It's why one of the most prominent DC characters is a black man mainlining the dominant, state enforced culture isn't the woke thing to do.

A Black Person in BT should obviously deal with modern racism and overcome it to spit hate at white people. Like the complaints about Forspoken about having a female PoC isekai. She's a poor black girl arrested and eventually sent to a world with magic, but because she doesn't continue to face racism in the world with magic (black people are perfectly normal and no one gives a shit IIRC), it's not a black story.

What 'woke' means changes over time but it's always pro-sterotype, pro-white saviour, pro-white 'ally,' pro-use as a political weapon.
 

Robovski

Well-known member
It was so disappointing to read that on sarna. I'm concerned CGL will fall in line with this BS more formally once the kickstarter is settled, not like they didn't already kick Blaine Pardoe for the woke crowd.
 

Knowledgeispower

Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Ah yes battletech being "woke" meanwhile there's a world that's literal space south Africa over in lyran space
 

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