Doomsought
Well-known member
If someone is very cheeky, they can try and land in the starport. The wrecked dropships would provide some cover, but that is easily solved by remote sensors or some infantry squads and LRM fire.
Battletech Welcome to the Jungle
- Thread starter Speaker4thesilent
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Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
“Am I a joke to you?” Whiskey Company, probably.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Dracs already know Weber has lots of mobile artillery, is not afraid to use it and knows how to use it effectively. People are loathe to endanger their difficult to replace Dropsips thus the first attempt is most likely to land a considerable distance from holdfast (standard tactic in this era), with the invading force experiencing the wonders of Catachan flora and fauna. Then the next attempt goes for combat drop, in order to avoid the flora and fauna, but finds out the hard way about the orbital defences.
Another problem for Dracs is that in few years the Lyrans will be able to translate their increased military production into more offensive stance so it will be harder to assemble sufficiently strong task force for the follow up assaults on Catachan. Now OTL, in only few years the Dracs managed to pull out of nowhere six regiments worth of mechs to create Ryuken and Genyosha, but the increased casualties will make that much harder, Sevren alone cost them two battalions worth of mechs.
Another problem for Dracs is that in few years the Lyrans will be able to translate their increased military production into more offensive stance so it will be harder to assemble sufficiently strong task force for the follow up assaults on Catachan. Now OTL, in only few years the Dracs managed to pull out of nowhere six regiments worth of mechs to create Ryuken and Genyosha, but the increased casualties will make that much harder, Sevren alone cost them two battalions worth of mechs.
Well within range of his new sub capital lasers I believe.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Well that and the capital grade guns(if light ones) recovered from the Pinto make a raid trying to land anywhere near the holdfast dicey unless its a strictly one way trip using drop pods
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
The thing is, though the Dracs don’t make as many ‘Mechs/year as the Commonwealth they’ve been salvaging quite a bit of the Commonwealth’s production for decades. The Dracs have reserves. Canonically, they stand up a half dozen new Mech regiments in the next couple decades. Allesandro, on the other hand, did some dumb things when he was Archon.
They’re not sub-capital they’re full up, if small, capital weapons. NL-35s are no joke and the light Naval PPCs are twice as nasty.
Did the fedcom accords happen here? If so comstar's shitty plan has probably already failed since Katrina would share the core with hanse and the dracs will get fucked on both sides. Operation doppelganger would have happened though so he's probably more focused on the crappies right?
Skitzyfrenic
Well-known member
Not time yet.
It's the lead up period, but the accords in the OTL are signed in 2022.
I believe there should be the under the table alliance, if nothing else. The one Ian Davion set up and Hanse kinda stuck with IIRC. But Katrina would send out her call for peace in 3020. Which is in the ball park of the next year since it's October as per 4-AH's start and December at 4-AH's end.
We're closing in on the FedCom accords, which nothing has happened, I don't think, that would stop them. Weber's Warriors were wildly successful but the LCAF hasn't been, and the Lyrans would benefit from a short peace. Katrina should still send out her peace proposal. Same time frame-ish seems reasonable.
There's no reason why Hanse wouldn't be looking at his Dana memorial when the proposal comes across his desk if Speaker still wanted the FedCom to happen. Hell, if MIIO/DMI know that the Lyrans have a datacore, Hanse might request that the FedSuns receives a copy as part of the peace, even if the FedCom doesn't happen.
Weren't most of those mechs from comstar or is that later?
paulobrito
Well-known member
The Comstar mechs appear in the War of 3039.
The missing ones are the ones used to create the Ryuken regiments.
Like Fasanomics, FasaStocks are plot motivated.
The missing ones are the ones used to create the Ryuken regiments.
Like Fasanomics, FasaStocks are plot motivated.
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Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Honestly the big problem with the Ryuken is that fact that if the dracs had that many mechs, ASFs, and dropships laying around most of them would have been sent to replace lost equipment of existing units or formed into new units ages ago
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PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
My guess is that apart from blatant fiat, one of ways Coordinator kept the Warlords under control was to keep back a certain percentage of military production unassigned so there was perhaps regiment or so worth of mechs (also tanks and ASF) kept on Luthien so Coordinator could keep playing Warlords against each other for deliveries of these ''totally not surplus'' machines. They would also use all dirty tricks on the book to get the privately owned mechs that were not in the DCMS service to sign up, either for Ryuken or to fill the gaps left by Ryuken recruitment. They would also divert most of the production to supply creation of Ryuken shortchanging the districts, especially the Pesht and Rasalhague, which contributed to the success of operation Götterdämmerung. Though I don't believe this could fully explain where they got some 600 mechs in only couple of years.
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
Never underestimate what a determined people can keep ahold of in the face of difficult circumstances. Part of what the Dracs use to their advantage is their generally lower standard of living.
They don’t need to divert as many factories towards civilian infrastructure or civilian goods. As a result, they can focus more of the manufacturing base they have on war fighting.
As a result, they have a higher percentage of a lower total amount, versus the Lyrans lower percentage of a higher total amount.
In a setting without FASAnomics and where tech recovery was slowly underway, this would have come back to bite the Dracs in the 3030s and later as the need to build up infrastructure ran into their relative lack of existing infrastructure to build on, but Magic Bushido Hands because FASA.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
Exactly, you can do this over short period of time (economical mobilisation during WWI and WWII) but overdo it and it will bite you in the ass, like it happened to the USSR. Dracs and Capellans however avoid any bite marks on their posteriors through magic.
I mean everything in fiction is fiat, but there are some boundaries where it becomes annoying, though it varies from person to person.
I mean everything in fiction is fiat, but there are some boundaries where it becomes annoying, though it varies from person to person.
I see it as a combination of three factors in cannon, the dragon having a private reserve for dealing with uppity warlords, surging their factories, and comstar. Comstar likes the state of affairs and has the largest not committed mech force out there. They are also willing to tip the scales.
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
It’s justifiable. The first thing to keep in mind is that BattleTech is the future of the ‘80s. The Internet wasn’t a thing back then. We didn’t have instant access to information from Zimbabwe or Siam. No look-down satellite views or Google maps. As a result, the design of the BT universe isn’t built on Information Age assumptions. There is no multi-planet information systems, and, in fact, maybe a half-dozen planets in the Inner Sphere would have an Internet the equivalent of ours.
What this means: it is easier for state-controlled media/propaganda organs like The Voice of the Dragon to basically be Soviet-era Pravda … or what current Russian media is doing about their coverage of the ‘special military action’ against Ukraine. When there are no dissenting voices the average person can hear, the average person has no reason to believe that there are any dissenting voices at all.
So if your culture has been deliberately shaped by the Order of the Five Pillars for literal centuries to believe enduring hardships is not only moral and upright, but a duty-bound requirement for the defeat of those dastardly reprobates that are to blame for your suffering in the first place for their failure to kneel before the Dragon’s rightful claim to being First Lord of the Star League. The same people who committed atrocities against The Dragon in the past …
Yeah, you can build a culture that will accept some pretty severe restrictions in liberties and living conditions. Especially when the occasional ‘unproductives’ that try to change things end up deader than dirt thanks to the ISF.
The trouble with that notion is Comstar. Everyone must let the Comstar News Bureau operate under threat of interdict. After the FedCom Accords, Comstar is pro-Combine and they've probably been pro-Capellan for a long time, but before the FedCom Accords they would have been pro-Lyran and anti-Drac because the threat of the Combine taking enough Lyran industry to snowball is probably the greatest threat of someone winning the Succession Wars. The number two and three threats being the FWL or Feddies collapsing the Capellans when the other isn't in position to take "their" half.
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
See my previous post about standard of living. Do you think the average Combine serf has a TV that can get Com*’s news broadcasts? For that matter, does the average Combine serf even have a TV? Just because the broadcasts go out doesn’t mean hundreds of thousands of people are listening.
As for physical locations, Com* usually has their broadcast site and maybe one or two more per planet.
Planets are big places, and the population density of most worlds in the IS isn’t actually that high. Hard to have much impact outside the immediate area around the HPG station/hospital/library that they’re based around.
So, yeah, Com* might be looking at the Combine with a gimlet eye for a few years yet, but they pretty clearly haven’t decided that there’s any urgent need to do anything. Again, the inner sphere is a big place and the 3SW is mostly raids by this point. When nothing is changing there’s no compelling need for action.
Yellowhammer
Well-known member
To piggyback on this, from what I read IRL North Korea's domestically produced TVs and radios* require a soldering iron and some practical knowledge of electronic design/electrical engineering to pick up anything BUT the official state media channels (like say South Korean radio and TV one border over**) because the only broadcast channels you can receive are literally hardwired onto the motherboard (and funnily enough are all run by the NK government in those allowed broadcast ranges).
I'd not be surprised the same thing holds true for the Voice of the Dragon and Celestial Wisdom of Sian's 'captive audiences' when it comes time to pick out a big-screen for the common worker. Last time I looked ComStar isn't running Battletech!Best Buy (or the Geek Squad did a really damn good job hiding the bathrobes and toasters when I was there last).
*The stuff for the workers and lower classes, of course. If you're part of the NK Elite you potentially have more options should you need to get Netflix.
**I also know of at least one dissident group who specialize smuggling transistor radios into NK that don't have the domestic restrictions specifically to try to break the information blockade.