/btg/ - BattleTech General

They'd inevitably get balanced out by cancer/meme clans

Clan Honey Badger
Clan Furry Sergal
Clan Sanic Hedgehog
Clan Bacon Narwhal

Speaking of RPG campaigns I over-prepared for, (Luckily, not by too much), here's the "Opening" to my Solaris 7 Campaign.

"You meet in a bar", of course, but one player was chased into said bar by the mob, and when they track him back to it, they start mowing the place down with SMG fire.

Players are guided to safety by the barkeep, but the barkeep promptly dies while fending the mobsters off.

(Yeah I know, pro GM'ing skills, but one of those "Players giving you the run-around" situation meaning that I couldn't get them to plan around each-other or make their backstories mesh.

Second part was what I was really wanting to do. Built a "Sewer" area that each players' sheets had unique skills for, so that they could start to learn the ropes of the mechanics.

...What I didn't count on was inter-party conflict caused by one player thinking that "Compulsion/Greedy" means "Compulsion/Kender", players not listening to the GM that the game was lethal, and a shot in the arm causing a low build character to bleed out and die the first hour into the game session. Cue "Why should I even care I'm not making a new character this is bullshit". My resigning to rewinding the session.

After they started getting it through their heads that they can't all be edgelords "Doing what their characters would do", and have to at least metagame a little bit to stay a party and not cause me to tear my hair out as all the dark brooding loners lone their loneliness in separate directions, the training area / escape route I built worked as intended, teaching them how to do both skilled and unskilled rolls, as well as different ways of dealing with situations.

Jesus christ, your PCs sound fucking terrible. Mine are all pretty chill, and while 3/4 of them are introverted social incompetents (the characters, not the players), they at least try to work together pretty well.

The problem I think stems from two points
1) I wasn't running the game for people who were actively pursuing Battletech, I was running it to give my D&D 4e GM a break between sessions.
2) To describe Solaris 7 using a gamer elevator pitch, I summed it up as "Las Vegas meets giant robot gladiators in an 80s action movie". Of course, every single player took Compulsion/Addiction - Gambling.

Playing with people who knew shit all about the Battletech setting and were playing for Battletech, not just because I brought it to the table as an in-between campaign (That I privately hoped would end up being long-running). I did have some handy ideas - like pre-determining how much damage mook 'mechs would have taken in a 4-way free-for-all while the player squared off with one of them, or getting easier access to certain equipment based on their stables' standing with the various spheroid powers... As time wore on, the players would even be mid-match while the Blakists start bombing the shit out of everything, and they would need to escape a collapsing arena into Solaris city, potentially joining up with the Home defence league (I think it was called).

But like I said. Don't plan too far ahead. I crunched out a bunch of this crap, but both of the players only ever played one Solaris match each before the DM just gave up DM'ing and my campaign also disbanded as a result.

Oh, also the BBEG WoB representative was going to be a renamed Rugal Bernstein, who after getting "Killed" would come back as Manei Domini. SNK was generous enough to already make plenty of art of both versions, and I don't think my players ever did any fighting games outside of Street Fighter 2.

For the record, I'm probably not much better.
One of the players was around to see me during my first year or so of "Gaming". With no experience as a player, I was expecting gaming sessions to go exactly like those Mechwarrior 2nd edition modules read like. Also had made a terrible-at-everything-equally GMPC character that was a self insert and supposed to be my descendant from a thousand-some years in the future. Partly because it was only me and one other guy when I started, partly because I just wanted to play and didn't want to GM.

While I do look back on those days nostalgically, I was a horrible GM. Now I'm just a bad GM.

I was hoping to get a chance for said player-turned-4eDM to kill off my now old and washed up GMPC from our old campaigns for fun. Never happened.

Yeah, I've tried to get away from "playing in my own campaign" a lot. At this point, I try more to openly embrace that part of the fun is that unlike the PCs, I get to play a ton of different characters and mechs, and at the same time get to watch them grow as both players and characters. The only reason I have an NPC in charge of the PCs right now is because they're all pretty new, and they need a bit of direction and guidance. Once they hit that magic level of competence though, I'll have to decide whether to let them off the leash completely, or stick around just as an adviser if they need one.

Use the IntOps FINAL from the "J Blake" archives, under Rules.

For the record, I'm currently working on that idea I'd always had - of the Hi-Scout with C3 drones?
Slow going because I'm crunching it out by hand, but so far I know the following.

1) It's going to be a bad unit. More of a proof of concept.
2) Unlike the Hi-Scouts standard Holy-Fucknuts-fast drones which were little more than an engine on a hoverskirt, the C3 Drones are heavier (At 4 tons) and slower (Tracked cruise 7, Hover cruise 11, VTOL cruise 13).
3) I made the drones Battery powered with the idea that they can be recharged by the drone carrier.
4) The Drone carrier isn't finished, but I will probably use standard fusion engine at about 5/8 (Also with the idea it helps to recharge the drones). Hoping to have partial amphibious if I can afford the weight. It's already carrying a 1.5 mil MC, so it's just more on the pile at this point.
5) Probably going to be stupid expensive, but I'm hoping the BV stays low by keeping it unarmed.
6) Idea is to attach it to a C3 Company network (Already bad ideas) that are a lance short, using the drones as spotters so that troops don't have to be sacrificed.
7) It's the C3 Remote sensor, except the remote sensors have TMMs of 4+

Why not just make a drone carrier with double masters? Not like it's hopefully going to be anywhere other than hidden in a hole anyway.

Too sweet a target, I think.
Also, if the opposing force has ECM, it doesn't deploy drones. ECM is doubly bad, because it not only knocks out C3, but the drones stop working, too.

C3 masters cost 1,500,000 C-bills each, so two makes three mil, in a tank...

If it's being useless, it's less of a target. Making it the central nexus of the network, especially being unarmed and fragile, and it might as well have a "Free beer" sign over it.

Lastly, I just hate double-MC anythings. The whole network comes crashing down too easily.

Do you support this man being shot?

Not a House Lord.

Remember to get out there today and do your part for the Republic!

Is this a balanced match?

Alpha Lance
>CRD-5M Crusader
>WHM-7M Warhammer
>GOL-3M Goliath
>CES-3R Caesar
Bravo Lance
>ZPH-1A Tarantula
>TR1 Wraith
>WVR-7D Wolverine
>CN9-D Centurion

vs

Lance Un
>AV1-O Avatar Prime
>EXC-B2 Excalibur
>HGN-732 Highlander
>BL-9 Black Knight
Lance Deux
>RJN101-A Raijin
>HSR 400-D Hussar
>WHM-7M Warhammer
>WTH-2 Whitworth

FIN FUNNEL

Looks about right to me.
Though I'm not sure why you'd take the knockoff over the actual Cataphract.
Keep that Wraith alive and it'll do WORK lategame for you

Gentlemen, how do we make Battlemechs spaceworthy? If we give them enough verniers they should be fine, right?

fuck off

They're already spaceworthy if they have jump jets.
They just have shit MP compared to aerospace fighters.

>Though I'm not sure why you'd take the knockoff over the actual Cataphract.

GR + ER PPC vs LB-10X + U/AC-5 or ER PPC + LB-10X.

>With the Manei Domini out of the picture, the Ebon Magistrate’s Shock Troops are perhaps the deadliest soldiers being fielded today. Deployed in seven-man squads, these men and women can take on whole platoons. Three man-portable plasma guns backed by Ebony rifles provide a potent offense while dermal armor protects them. Mixing fanatical devotion with upgraded eye implants gives them an edge that few can match.
>Average a sixth grade education

Holy *shit* the wank here.

I'm starting to understand all the dislike of the Magistracy of Canopus over the last few years.

It's insufferably dumb, and if the Bears, FedSuns or Taurians had some blurb like that you'd never hear the end of it here, but what can you do? Fem fetish faction.

>Holy *shit* the wank here.

Yeah, it's really bad in the late Jihad and through some of the Dark Age stuff.

I don't really have a problem with the MoC getting some badass cybercommandos (especially once they hooked up with the Capellans; cross-training with Death Commandos would generate some impressive results), but the huge issue is that these badass cybercommandos pretty much literally came out of NOWHERE.

The original reason the Ebon Magistrate was a highly effective intelligence service was that they embedded themselves into the Pleasure Circuses and since everyone lets the Circuses into their realms, they had a slightly more easy access to the high-profit core worlds of Successor States than other traditional intel services. They got intel through a VERY highly-developed HUMINT program. Basically, in the pre-FCCW, pre-CapCon-sucking days, the Ebon Magistrates were the one "nice thing" that the MoC had access to. That shouldn't be a problem.

Somewhere along the line, somebody got the idea that Ebon Magistrates were all Shadowrun-style hyper-chromed street samurai James Bond types. If that concept had come around as a *result* of the Jihad and all the recovered tech they had to work with and the cyber-commandos had rolled out in the Dark Age, it MIGHT be OK. But the way they actually did it? Coming out with a huge number of commandos prior to the Jihad? Yeah, it's complete fan-wank and Herb should have bitch-slapped Kit for pushing it.

>6th grade average education

This, however, isn't a problem. A couple hundred home-schooled illiterate farmers will mathematically negate a single highly-trained person, and at BEST, the Ebon Magistrate is pushing ~10,000 personnel. That's out of a 70 billion (with a "B") person population in 3130**. You could give the entire MAF 2 PhDs each, and the average education in the MoC wouldn't even budge.

**source: warrenborn.com/Fiction/Touring The Stars/TouringTheStars45.html

>cont

A further thought about the prevalence of cybernetics in the MoC post-Kit (ie, post-3057).

I would have LOVED to see that shift in the faction clash with the MoC joining up with the anti-cybernetic FWL (instead of joining up with the CapCon). There's a built-in story there, because allies who fundamentally differ on parts of their worldview is compelling. When the FWL and MoC basically just *exist* next to each other, then it doesn't matter. But if they'd been allies, this would be a built-in point of conflict, and that creates interesting storylines.

The sixth-grade education is *for the MAF*
The national average is probably worse

Aw shit, that sucks for them. Still, I'm sure most of the Ebon Magistrate (hard to type that with a serious face) are literate.

How important is literacy and grade-school education to being a soldier anyway? Just point a gun and shoot.

Mate, I wish English was a better language, because I keep thinking of you as an "MOC fan", and that's not a fair word to use.

When we say say somebody is an FWL fan or Cappie Fan, we're talking about people like MadCap or Medron who defend their faction at all hazards and who think that their faction is literally perfect: incapable of making mistakes or being wrong, and everyone who doesn't like their faction is themselves an actually bad person IRL.

You acknowledge the things that are wrong or dumb about your faction, and while you do defend your faction, you draw a line between what's worth defending and what's not. That's the way I wish more people were about their factions, and I don't know what word to use to describe people who do that besides "fan", which unfairly dumps you alongside Medron and MadCap and Kit and Ben.

tl;dr, English is stupid. Jeder sollte Deutsch sprechen.

>How important is literacy and grade-school education to being a soldier anyway? Just point a gun and shoot.
Anyone who's ever had the grave misfortune of interacting with the Afghan National Army will be able to tell you that it's pretty fucking important

I feel like fan (for reasonable types) VS fanboy (for kit, medron, madcap, ect) works well enough in english

...

>The sixth-grade education is *for the MAF*

I'm sorry, I remember that quote as applying to the MoC in general. I'm more than willing to admit I'm wrong, but could you source that quote, please?

With that said, it doesn't change the basic point all that much. The MAF is going to have a population of somewhere around 1.5 million once we include all the infantry and support staff and so forth. A few thousand commandos who have, say, equivalent to a bachelor's aren't going to mean much.

It's actually an interesting question I haven't really considered. asks how important a traditional school education is to a soldier. It significantly depends on the equipment and doctrine of the military unit in question. If the equipment you're using is black-box/non-user-servicable, then you could probably train your basic infantry more or less "by rote" and get some servicable results. Especially en masse or against poor opponents (see also: pirates, farmer uprisings). Even fairly complex machinery can be operated by people with a very poor education: anyone who's been in the Army and has talked with 19Ks (M1 Abrams armor crewman MOS) can attest to that.

I would maintain that it's probably not unreasonable for the AVERAGE education across the MAF to be at a 6th grade level. The mistake is in thinking that the level of education in the MAF doesn't go higher than a 6th grade level. Among special forces (which is what we're talking about, really), specifically, education level would *have* to be very high simply as a function of their jobs. But when there's only a few of them, you can have very high education levels among a very small number of people and still have a very low *average* education level among the troop population writ large.

>When we say say somebody is an FWL fan or Cappie Fan, we're talking about people like MadCap or Medron who defend their faction at all hazards and who think that their faction is literally perfect: incapable of making mistakes or being wrong, and everyone who doesn't like their faction is themselves an actually bad person IRL.

I thought we just call them "fags". I've seen the word "fan" be thrown around harmlessly here before a lot, and while NEA is a MoC fan he's sometimes also a MoCfag. Just depends on his mood and the point being discussed, I think.

Old school frontier 6th grade education was pretty decent. They were actually taught more than a lot of the warmed over nannying you have leading into a modern liberal arts degree, in America at least. An 1850's settler kid could do more advanced algebra than the girl who got a C in Freshman Algebra.

Though I suppose that's more standards shifting than anything, what with undergrad becoming essentially the new highschool in terms of job qualification the last thirty or so years.

With the dearth of institutions of higher learning in Battletech, either education has moved back toward the older ways (which considering you have whole planets without colleges that still need doctors and engineers and everything else is pretty likely, thought they say the master apprentice system is super common but not institutionalized the way it is in grad school) or the newer trend is exacerbated and 6th Grade is now equivalent to 4th or 3rd grade education. At least it's still literate.

>either education has moved back toward the older ways...or the newer trend is exacerbated and 6th Grade is now equivalent to 4th or 3rd grade education.

This is a really solid point, and one that I don't *think* is dealt with in the primary source material anywhere.

Honestly, this would be the sort of question that actually should go up on (*spits*) the OF in the Ask the Writers section. "What does an education level of X actually mean?"

>is a MoC fan he's sometimes also a MoCfag

To be clear, there is not a single person in the Battletech fandom who likes a faction who does NOT exhibit this behavior regarding their faction sometimes.

Beyond education, there's also the extremely important question of what kind of service culture a parent culture and as importantly if not moreso military history like that of the MoC would create

If the timeline had just stayed in 3025 when Battletech was good, none of this fanwank shit would have happened. Yet another reason why there's no reason to play anything beyond that date.

I got a weird question. Are there any recipies in Battletech fiction? Like for beer, or food or anything, anything that would fill out the fluff. I seem to recall some people making real world drinks called the PPC and whatnot, but I don't know where they are at this point. Anybody heard of anything like this?

What would be some cultural foods for various factions in BT? Would there be a lot of hikikomori in the DC eating ramen all day and junk food?

This is just merely a fluff question.

>reaction image makes no fucking sense whatsoever
>bait text

Well, there's this for drinks.

home.arcor.de/cwaidner/archives/downloads/bartender.txt

Frankly, it would be pretty fucking terrible. The biggest killer would be the fucking bribery for rank system, especially considering how most people with money in the MoC would have made it. I mean, it's universally known in western militaries that butterbars range from dumb and mediocre at best to downright atrocities at worst. Imagine how much worse it would be if rather than just dumb collage kids, your 2nd LT was an actual pimp or opium salesman. Add that to the general hedonism and poor education of the rank and file, and you'd have a recipe for something downright BAD

>I am mad
>mad at minefields

It's like... they basically got nothing but somewhat tough minefields and you're really mad about that.

>How important is literacy and grade-school education to being a soldier anyway?

Important enough for grade-school to have become mandatory in Europe for military reasons during the long 18th century.

That's really not true though. I think the Internet has coloured your perception of the matter. I know I don't act that way.

How is their system materially different from Britain's? You had to buy officer commissions there, too, and while they had that system, they had the best Army in Europe for quite some time in the 1800s. Just requiring a commission purchase doesn't guarantee a shit military.

Looking at HB:MPS, an ensign rank costs $10k unless you want to go into a prestigious unit. That's less than a year's salary for an officer, so I can't imagine they couldn't get a loan for that, even from the state if you're talented enough. And the text does explicitly say that even if you have the money, you have to pass through a battery of tests as well and be approved for the rank from higher command, so you aren't going to end up with a completely degenerate opium saleman as your CO just because they bought their way into the MAF on a whim.

If anything, it's not a bad system, if you consider the "skin in the game" principle to be founded on reality.

have you ever defended your faction from criticism instead of just agreeing with the critic? (Yes, you have. Don't lie.) Then you've engaged in factionfaggotry.

so yes. Everyone does.

Plus the rampant sexism against the sex actually geared towards soldiering. I know it's probably silly complaining about realism in a universe with mechs, but I can't see why men would let themselves be politically and socially dominated by women.

Nope. If I can't cite a book to support a view I don't get involved in a factional debate. Why bother without proof?

>Plus the rampant sexism against the sex actually geared towards soldiering.

Does that really matter in a setting where even an Urbanmech with nothing but a light laser is enough to terrorize and control a city's population?

I feel like I already referred to that in my post...

It would be bad if the MoC had a stealth battlesuit, but they don't so... They have a highly trained cybernetic commando force that is outclassed by DEST, The Rabid Foxes, Loki, and the Death Commandos. The only reason they aren't outclassed by SAFE is because even with Achilles suits they will deploy to the wrong planet or something.

Jokes aside wasn't Eagle Corps pretty good?

...but the sexism isn't "men are useless" it's "men are great grunts but have a poor temperament for command"

You can have an amazing special forces unit but it's useless if the rest of your intelligence apparatus can't point them at the right target.

But that's objectively wrong and dumb to even assume. Even in the BT universe the number of successful female commanders is vastly dwarfed by the number of male ones.

...but to answer your question yeah I think they were decent.

>But that's objectively wrong and dumb to even assume.
Welcome to sexism.

Where did the "SAFE is useless" meme start? Someone on the OF suggested it was a joke stemming from the lack of fact checking in "Ideal War" when the author wrote that the Smoke Jaguars had used nukes on Turtle
Bay, and Stackpole flanderized it in "Bred for War."

From the MoC point of view. Hans was a great strategist, but a typical male warmonger. Kerensky turned his back on the people he was sworn to protect, someone with some mothering instincts wouldn't have. Amaris... everything, the RWR really needed a woman running the show... Just like real world sexism, wrong but easy to defend.

Safe sucks get ovet it. Clan watch operations look good compaired to them

OG House Marik book IIRC. They were said to be the most ineffective of the intelligence agencies because of the amount of enemy agents infiltrated into them.

So basically your secret agency is shit if it can't keep secrets.

Not that somebody like C* isn't worse in that department after the schism.

The original intelligence operations handbook I think

I'll have to dl that and read it.

Those novels he listed are older than that. Anything fanpro is automatically post-fasa and therefore post OG novel era.

Too right m8

Hey NEA, we never got your thoughts on the "MOC as a FWL province" idea a couple threads back. Any ideas? I'll copypasta the original post if y'all'd like

So, looking it up, the 1993 Intelligence operations hand book points to the fact that SAFE answers to a Committee in Parliament as the historical source of their incompetence, it goes on to say that Thomas Mark is taking steps to rectify the situation with the help of.... WoB ROM....

Noooo.... Not the Guide to Covert Ops for 3rd ed mechwarrior, the Intelligence Operations Handbook for 2nd ed Mechwarrior.

Damn democratic trappings.

>SAFE "killed a coordinator and pinned it on the Lyrans" is worse than the Clan "can't even keep their scientists under control" Watch

He's harmlessly meeming.

Since it's frankenmech edition, can we get a design contest going? Make a production Frankenmech a la the Cataphract for 3145. Not enough of those running around.

Bonus point for amusing fluff.

I've got a broke leg and am stuck on my shitty laptop.
So yeah, I've got nothing better to do. I'll get this done tonight.

Newbie question about the fluff. I perused the old Shrapnel collection of stories and wanted to know about the fight between and old Warhammer against an Atlas. I know how that one ended, but has there ever been anything in canon about that type of match up where the underdog nailed something that clearly overpowered it? I love stories like that.

There's a short story in one collection where a bunch of farmers get some shitty WorkMechs and the like to fight a terrifying menace and his Urbanmech. They lose.

Two words. Gray Noton. The man made a career out of that shit with a bog standard Rifleman. He was just that good.

A Warhammer easily beats an Atlas at long range, since its movement allows it to keep the Atlas at a range that is good for the PPCs and bad for the AC/20.

The entire GDL series desu

A frankenmech using Cataphract parts on a Marauder

BUT CGL SAID IT WAS A RIFLEMAN II, BECAUSE THERE'S JUST NO WAY ANYONE COULD BE THAT GOOD. DON'T YOU BELIEVE THAT HE SOMEHOW GOT AWAY WITH THAT FOR A DECADE+, OVER WINNING IN A RIFLEMAN?

That's just recursive. A Cataphract is already a Marauder/Shad Frankenmech.

>BUT CGL SAID IT WAS A RIFLEMAN II, BECAUSE THERE'S JUST NO WAY ANYONE COULD BE THAT GOOD. DON'T YOU BELIEVE THAT HE SOMEHOW GOT AWAY WITH THAT FOR A DECADE+, OVER WINNING IN A RIFLEMAN?

Funny enough, CGL just made a rumor about it like space squids and blakists with hyperspace bases on the surface of the sun. But man did I hate seeing those posts you're making fun of on the OF back when I actually used to visit. And that was years ago.

>That's just recursive. A Cataphract is already a Marauder/Shad Frankenmech.
That's the point

NEA's defense is good, though he does confuse a few things. The Ebon Magistrate isn't the entire Magistracy intelligence organization. The Magistracy Intelligence Ministry is the overall organization, and it got its start like NEA said, with its main claim to fame being its Human Intelligence operations based around the pleasure circuses (though its very very very early years was more of a SpecOps-type of usage).

The current MIM is much like any other intelligence organization.

The Ebon Magistrate however, is a sub-group inside the MIM, similar in scope to the Rabid Foxes. It isn't the entire MIM. The entire MIM isn't running around as cybernetic monstrosities, though it wouldn't surprise me if MIM members had access to cybernetics to help them along in some cases.

As for the education system, the Magistracy has had issues, but I'll point out this line from the 1st Edition Periphery book.

>The average Canopian soldier enters service at the age of 16. If the individual is male, he will typically have the equivalent of a 12th-grade education; females have slightly higher education backgrounds.

This is on page 96 of the 1st Edition Periphery book, and repeated on page 38 of the 2nd Edition Periphery book, just incase people hate the 1st Edition book.

Imperial Scarab sounds dope. Psycho Hornet and Cyclone Octopus also have potential.

>all the dark brooding loners lone their loneliness in separate directions

I quickly started telling players during character creation "DO NOT make an edgy, antisocial, back-stabbing lone ranger. You must have a reason to hang with the party, even if that reason is only 'I trust these guys not to stab me while I sleep'"

Hurry up, I wanna see.

>better than Death Commandos
>better than DEST
>better than ROM - even post-Jihad ROM
>better than Rabid Foxes
>better than Eagle Corps

Fuck Loki tho

On the one hand I have a hard time imagining the male EM operators being that motivated, and on the other seeing the women being able to compete with top-tier male agents from other states, and on the gripping hand they don't seem to actually *do* much.

IMO the EM should have stuck to HUMINT and sneaky bullshit instead of pulling ELITE OPERATORS OPERATING OPERATIONALLY out of nowhere. See also . Speaking of which...

>Somewhere along the line, somebody got the idea that Ebon Magistrates were all Shadowrun-style hyper-chromed street samurai James Bond types.

This is really what a lot of the FWL intel community should be about, as they fuck around with the megacorps. Just as the MoC having chromed-out agents would be neat conflict with the FWL, it would be nice for the FWL's agents themselves being stuck between competing with the corporate guys and the nation's dislike of cybernetics - especially after the Jihad, when they're wondering just who got a little too buddy-buddy with the WoB...

>interesting storylines
Can't have that, sorry - this the the Ghost Bear Power Hour feat. Xin Sheng

That wasn't a standard Rifleman

>Clan Imperial Scarab
Oblivious Egyptian themed clan

>Clan Psycho Hornet
ALWAYS ANGRY ALL THE TIME WHY AREN'T WE KILLMURDERING YET?

>Clan Cyclone Octopus
Experts in rapid siegebreaking tactics, very tactical

Too lazy to download their pdf and read it, but here's what Sarna says: "Instead of attending Officer Training School, those selected as officer candidates (where there is a marked bias toward females) are posted as military aides-de-camp to an officer on duty in a regular line regiment. Nowhere is the concept of on-the job training taken more seriously than in the MAF. An official commendation from a candidate's "sponsor" makes it possible for him or her to purchase their first commission (often with their sponsor's assistance)."

So they do get informal training, and purchasing a commission isn't apparently too difficult at the low levels. However, iirc they also purchase non-com ranks, and it gets much more difficult for the officers as they go up.

Historically there are a lot of issues with purchasing ranks, and those issues should impact the MoC more than they seem to do. The British weren't good because of the purchase system, but rather in spite of it, or at best it balanced out and other factors pushed them ahead. Also, the purchase system was around for quite a while, and the British army had a lot of ups and downs throughout that time. For a decent chunk of time the British army was largely irrelevant.

I've got it!
CAESAR parts on a Marauder!

Let's spice it up
Caesar parts on a Rakshasa