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The Jags were in the middle of a reorganization at the time, supposedly getting geared up to make a hard push into the Combine. I admit that the total rout was just total BS. As much as the IS learned how to fight the clanners since the invasion the clanners had learned to fight the IS. The idea that clan warriors would hold to zellbrigen at that point is just total crap. Maybe a reinforcing clan but not one that had been stuck in it for a decade or more. They'd know to expect the IS to fight with zero clan honor. The Jags were curb stomped to make a point. The writers needed to totally sideline the clans. If they had the IS just totally steamroll a clan they could use the excuse that it could happen again. Hopefully that would cow both the clans in the universe and the fans out of it.

Now, even if you accept that the Jags got wasted, not saying you should but assume they do. Why did the clans as a whole not slaughter Serpent and Bulldog to a man? The fear that the IS would find the homeworlds was THE issue that launched Revival. Why did the clanners just seem to so blasely accept the IS's presence in the homeworlds. They should have been annihilated completely. No one should have ever heard from either force ever again.

The Wolf/Falcon war was another contrivance. They needed to pull the fangs on both clans to neuter the Lyran side of the invasion corridor. So they had half the wolves start to defend the Lyrans and the other half fight the Falcons. Now even on their best day the Falcons are not a big clan. The Wolves are one of the biggest. Even split in half they'd at the least number as many as the Falcons. Top it off with Wolves being some of the best pound for pound warriors in the clans and they should have destroyed the Falcons. A draw? Please.

Tyyr wrote:The Jags were in the middle of a reorganization at the time, supposedly getting geared up to make a hard push into the Combine. I admit that the total rout was just total BS. As much as the IS learned how to fight the clanners since the invasion the clanners had learned to fight the IS. The idea that clan warriors would hold to zellbrigen at that point is just total crap. Maybe a reinforcing clan but not one that had been stuck in it for a decade or more. They'd know to expect the IS to fight with zero clan honor. The Jags were curb stomped to make a point. The writers needed to totally sideline the clans. If they had the IS just totally steamroll a clan they could use the excuse that it could happen again. Hopefully that would cow both the clans in the universe and the fans out of it.

For me, I could accept one or two Clan worlds being caught off guard. Even if that means the loss of two full Galaxies. That would still be okay. Its not impossible to do that, and those losses would hurt the Clans hoped for Next Gen Invasion. But, was we agree. The whole Smoke Jaguar Clan being manhandled like a fraking tabby cat was just bull. The Jags were never a top 5 clan. Never had a chance at being the Ilclan. But still, no single IS army group should have stood a prayer against them.

Now, even if you accept that the Jags got wasted, not saying you should but assume they do. Why did the clans as a whole not slaughter Serpent and Bulldog to a man? The fear that the IS would find the homeworlds was THE issue that launched Revival. Why did the clanners just seem to so blasely accept the IS's presence in the homeworlds. They should have been annihilated completely. No one should have ever heard from either force ever again.

Damn right, the Clans have laws that say if you're not a Clan you can't have these worlds. WTF is up with them just sitting there? How did the Clan Council not say "Hey, they just broke the truce! Fair game now bitches!" Every Clan should and would have gone racing out to claim fresh worlds since the whole treaty would be void. Fresh resources just waiting to be tapped.

The Wolf/Falcon war was another contrivance. They needed to pull the fangs on both clans to neuter the Lyran side of the invasion corridor. So they had half the wolves start to defend the Lyrans and the other half fight the Falcons. Now even on their best day the Falcons are not a big clan. The Wolves are one of the biggest. Even split in half they'd at the least number as many as the Falcons. Top it off with Wolves being some of the best pound for pound warriors in the clans and they should have destroyed the Falcons. A draw? Please.

Hell, the Wolves weren't one of the largest clans, they WERE and maybe even still are the largest of the clans. After taking over the same number of worlds as six other clans combined and the losses to go with them. They then split in half. Then they took on the whole of the Jade Falcons and only lost because they were denied replacements and their leader went along with it to buy more time to ship more troops and goods to the IS. Follow this by the fact that by the end of the Jihad, Clan Wolf was already competing for the Ilclan again and this was without the Exile Wolves. This is what they rebuilt with only HALF their foundation! Chalk up the beatings the Falcons took from the Vipers and you've got half the Falcons either out of action or stuck in the IS protecting their holdings. The beating the writers gave CSJ at the hands of Bulldog and Serpent is the very beating CJF should have taken from the Wolves!

It comes out to the fact that the IS couldn't for the life of it stop the clans. So the writers just tried to kill the idea of the clans, and ended losing half their fans. Instead they could have just halted the Clans in place under a simple logistical reason. The Clans needed around a full Galaxy per planet. One Cluster on the planet, one Cluster heading home to be reinforced, one Cluster at home being reinforced and last but not least one Cluster heading back to the IS to rotate out the Cluster on the planet which by now needs to be reinforced. It shouldn't have been to hard for the writers to put in that the Clans just didn't have the numbers needed to continue expanding at that rate. From there they could have done just about anything since there wouldn't be any Treaty or Dead Clans to deal with.

The fun part wit the Clans being unstoppable, is their population base. The Clans had a total of ~1.2 billion people. All Clans, all castes, Warrior and Crusader, the entire Clan population was about 1/6 of Luthien alone.

If the BTverse wasnt full of sheeple, every single planet would have required at least a Cluster to control, maning that Smoke Jaguar would have only been able to control 39 planets. Now the fun part is when the Clans start hiring locasl to serve as auxiliary troops, in exchange for technological repairs and advancement. That would have allowed them a far larger military force, combined with higher (and closer) logistical supplies.

Ths would have given the clans a much greater threat. They are providing planets that have been hit by the war a resurgance to the original Star LEague (and more advanced) technology. Water purification, communications technology, materials science, computer technology, medical technology, etc, all sorts of stuff would be used to improve the lifestyle of people that have been conquered by the Clans.

Combine that with overall education, health, medical, and technological improvements would result in a massive increase in overall living standards on the conquered planets.

Which means in a decade after the Clans initially arrived, the factories on those planets would be churning out OmniMechs assembly-line style, with great masses of troops operating as garrison style, the best of the garrison teams used to conquer more planets, and Strike teams that are the original Galaxy forces. The only ones that are eligible for Bloodnames are the members of the Strike teams.

The Wolves and Ghost Bears did the very things that you are talking about. In which for many of those people on those worlds, decided to stay with the Clans rather then return to the IS way of life.

To be fair though towards the people of the IS. They've been at none stop war for more then three hundred years. Planets have changed hands dozens of time. Many of the IS leaders only use troops from their homeworlds since they're the only ones they can trust to stay loyal.

Precisely, for many people in the IS there is no real connection between them and their nation. The only thing they have to do with it is the flag over the capitol building, the face on their money, and the name on their tax forms. Why give a shit about getting invaded? Why start an insurgency? You'll just get invaded again in a few years by someone else. Why risk your life when you can't really change anything? So the clans come along and their lives improve... fuck their home nation. OMG they're a totalitarian dictatorship... so were the last guys and the guys before.

The wars were so bloody for so long that all that was left was an almost Knight vs Knight deal. Rather then being on horse back, they're in Mechs now. I'd bet a lot of the IS citizens were happy that the Clans had a stable form of Government. If two Clans go to war. Only the warriors get hurt. That's a lot better then the first two Succession Wars where whole planets got nuked time and again.

I can barely begin to expression just how little I care about the Jihad. The entire Word of Blake has pulled a military out of its ass "just because," without so much as the slightest indication they had jack squat before it all started. I wanted to see the story of the universe continue, not get sidetracked into a big ass Mary Sue hissy fit.

Seemed to me that a lot of the WoB forces were Comguards. Which to me is totally fine. What bothers me is that somehow NO ONE AT ALL noticed that the Comstar was no longer in control of the bulk of its armed forces. Also, what the were the Clans doing this whole thing?

It's not just the Com Guards. They can account for a good number of troops but they're moving a lot more than just renegade Com Guards can explain. It's the legions of new mechs and new designs. New fighters, new warships, new dropships. They're just pulling a brand new military out of no where.

True enough. How did all of that production go unseen and unaccounted for? They even had a battleship or two IIRC and those beasts take years to build. You can't tell me no one ever saw that.

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As to the other point, there has been talk of starting another Combat RP like our 40k ones. Though I thought maybe we could look to something different. We could adjust the OP rules a bit to make it more like DH to cut the learning curve.

Mechs could be based on Dreadnoughts, Elementals could be based on Terminators.

That could work. If we could find rules for Warhound Titans or Knights that'd be a perfect analogue.

Tyyr wrote:That could work. If we could find rules for Warhound Titans or Knights that'd be a perfect analogue.

I don't know if they have those. But to be honest. We really only have to form up the armor ratings. The weapons, abilities, and speeds are already there.

Deepcrush wrote:True enough. How did all of that production go unseen and unaccounted for? They even had a battleship or two IIRC and those beasts take years to build. You can't tell me no one ever saw that.

(Caution, this is a bit long)

The House Intel groups did know the WoB troops were in the 50 regiment range minimum (Comstar brought 50 regiments to Tukayyid, after all), and guessed up to 200 for a worst-case. For ships, all you need to do is station them at Terra, and just refer to them as a 'training command', 'Technical training center', etc. You basically hide them in plain sight for the balance sheets, and physically far away.

One of the books had WoB skimming ~15% from the Free Worlds League (Star Lord, IIRC). That gives them a heck of a money supply. Combine that with Comstar had been reactivating the factories on Terra, and you have an industry base. To put it in perspective, the main manufacturing plants in the Star League were on Terra. You also have a single planet where the entire population deals with fusion technology on a daily basis. Federated Suns has a fully automated Valkyrie factory that produces over 100 Mechs per year (even after the Succession Wars). You feed in raw materials at one end, and out come Mechs at the other. It is not listed among the top ten facilities.

That should give you an idea of the industry that WoB has had given to them. Comstar paid for the factories to be reopened, and WoB took over. Since then, they've had over a decade of relative peace to absorb the output of those factories into their forces (peace for them, everyone else was fighting). You've seen what happened when the Grey Death Memory Core got distributed to the Successor States. Comstar/WoB has had that technology for over three hundred years. As an example, the false Marik turned around the FWL, effectively making the industrial center of the Inner Sphere when the Clans came around.

Next up is the series of attacks they started. Instead of fighting DC and FedSuns directly, they leak information about FS POWs over the border to the right person, and let the FS troops attack. They hide communications for the rebel groups in the Draconis Combine, and watch them rebel. For the FWL, they had been upgrading the fleet, and likely added program traps and similar to take control. For the Capellan Confederation, they just had to stir up the Capellan March in the FedSuns again, and kick back. For the Lyran Alliance, I forgot what they did, but it probably dealt with the FWL and the Clans. Stir up pirates and Periphery states (especially Taurians vs Davion again) to provide more threats.

So most of the attacks during the Jihad are the WoB taking advantage of existing problems, and letting them all go at once. Imagine if WW1 had been started because someone bribed Gavrilo Princep to shoot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. You may get an idea that the guy was bribed, but good luck finding the person who paid the money while trying to survive WW1. Maybe not quite the same ratio, but that is what the WoB did. They took existing strifes, set them all off to distract the Houses, and quietly consolidated their forces, while seizing critical industrial centers. Of course, they also did revenge strikes on the three Houses that killed the 2nd Star League, so they were identified fairly quickly as the main bad guys (Tharkad was bombarded from orbit, causing an industrial reactor's sodium coolant to be exposed to snow; New Avalon was invaded, but the invaders were beaten off the first time; and the Capellan Confederation's Home world was bombarded as well, and Sun-Tzu nearly killed).

From there, look what they were using in most of their attacks - nuclear weapons and poison gas. Those are designed for a smaller force to annihilate a larger force, not to actually engage those heavy forces. For their attack on Wolf's Dragoons, they used mercenaries that were already on-planet. After the Dragoons performed a F-you raid on Mars, the WoB overreacted, with nukes.

If you are wondering how they managed to get from one location to another without anyone noticing, figure that there are over a hundred uninhabited stars for every listed star. The reason they are not used is that most of the Jumpships are patched together, with a rare few being brand new. Short version is that you want to go through inhabited systems in case you have a problem. With the Titan Yards (the Comstar Precentor in charge of those yards faked an evac order then handed the yards over to WoB) the WoB can build new Jumpships that are much more reliable.

Also, there is a lot of speculation (in-universe) that the WoB's original plans were for a Jihad, but not against the Inner Sphere. Their goal was a Trial of Annihilation against the Clans. All of them. That was going to be their main gift to the 2nd Star League. Figure the Rasalhague Republic, Draconis Combine, and the Lyran Alliance would be very happy to have their worlds back. Add to that various tech upgrades and similar gifts to the other nations, and they were pretty much going to do a "Here is what we can do to help" gift. They have also been trying to do the following:
1) attack the Clans (their original goal)
2) Punish the Houses (they broke the star League, and must be made to pay)
3) Keep the Protectorate safe (WoB offered safety to these systems, and has to keep their word)
4) Expend the Protectorate (seems like a nice idea, to help others)
5) Keep the Public Relations campaign going, to promote their image as the 'good guys'.

WoB simply tried to do too much. They should have tried making a new Star League out of the nations that wanted to continue, and let LA, FS, and CC simply wither outside. Let the remaining states take full advantage of WoB technological development, and the FS, LA, and CC lose worlds due to their populations simply deciding to leave. FWL, Rasalhague Republic, and DC grow at expense of LA, FedSuns loses worlds to Taurians, the Clans get hammered back making the RR happy, etc. Eventually the three House Lords are brought back in, as 'probationary' or 'minor' members. Heck of a slide from what was the super-state (Federated Commonwealth, composed of Federated Suns and Lyran Alliance), or maneuvering by Sun-Tzu Liao.

You're not really telling me anything I don't know. Is there ways to do it in the CBT universe? Sure. Is any of it likely? Is it likely that all this would happen, that all the great houses would dance to the Wobblies tune and dive on one another like they have? No it's not. The problem isn't that it's 100% impossible, it's that its just barely possible and for everything to have worked as well as it did strains credulity. When something like that happens in fiction it's typically referred to as "author fiat," or the group being a bunch of mary sues.

The problem is that building Mechs has never been a problem for Terra. The problem is building the ships to transport them. Drop Ships and Cruisers and Battleships are MASSIVE projects in time, money and material. The idea that no one noticed the first IS Battleship in over a hundred years is a stretch. The idea that the WoB built an entire fleet and no noticed or acted just bites the bull. Also figure that most the Mechs being turned out by the IS were absolute crap. The Comstar and later WoB weren't using cheap-o-tech but the latest and greatest the IS could produce.

A second trouble is, as Tyyr pointed out, it makes no sense that ALL of the great houses would just go "Okay, we'll kill each other off while you build a massive fleet in orbit of Terra". A number of the houses were looking into rebuilding their losses and repairing their infrastructures. Falling on each other like starving wolves is just not a part of that.

Both the Lyran Alliance and the Draconis Combine were in shit shape. Neither of them were really in a position to start another war with anyone. With them and the Comstar having to worry about renewed clan attacks. Picking fights just isn't smart.