/btg/ BattleTech General

Why do they do this though? One of the big struggles of BT fluff is how dull most of the successor states are, and pushing on one culture just makes them seem more and more like "X, but in Space" than something unique.

Because from FASA to CGL, the people in charge of Battletech have never been particularly great at characterization past one or two dimensions.

At least with the CC in the 60s there was some in-universe reasoning for it.

Originally, it was them complaining that after twenty-five years and half a thousand designs, naming was haaaaaaaaaaaaard. So being able to just pick random stuff in other languages or even use the exact same thing in other languages let them be a lot lazier. Other guy is right that 3060 is about when it really got rolling. But after they got feedback from Huitzilopochtli and so on, they cut back until the CGL era.

Xin Sheng goes all the way back to '53. The first act of Sunny when he took the throne was to replace the classic ranking system in the military with the chinese stuff. Though the official Xin Sheng program was '57+ in terms of full societal overhaul.

So what's the best bullshit name you guys got for customs in the line of the current discussion? I'd totally have some big mixtech cloakmonster called the Mxyzptlk.

Sorry, I was going by the previous user mentioning TRO 3060. But my point still stands that there was at least, for that particular rash of naming conventions, an in-setting reason for it.

>Jesus, Millia looks so much better in 7.

I was showing my daughter some of the clips from Macross of Milia in action, and ... well, I know it was the 80's, but sometimes the animation was laughably bad. I'll just keep fondly remembering perfect Haruhiko Mikimoto paintings in my head from now on whenever I decide to wax mostalgic about such things.

I had a hard time finding a good reference for her flight suit, so is sort of mish-mash of her original suit from the TV show and Macross 7. It probably actually looks more like Hikaru's suit than any Milia ever wore.

>One of the big struggles of BT fluff is how dull most of the successor states are

They're really not dull at all. It's more that the mainline narrative rarely focuses on the interesting bits. Like you never see the Lyran Arcon host a Camp David style retreat on her personal world of Gallery where everything is basically Moria with the dwarves still in charge.

>tfw no Fellowship of the Lyre with the provincial dukes
>no Thomas Hogarth Bombadill
>no ballad of Selvin Kelswa III "for into darkness fell his star, in Tamar where the clanners are"

>well, I know it was the 80's, but sometimes the animation was laughably bad

Original Macross is a well known trash heap when it comes to animation. The animation is sheer garbage even for the horrible standards of the 80s.

By Macross 7 they caught a case of the stock footage reuse (so rampant during the oh so well known first 20 episodes).

So, I've never read the fluff that far, but if I wanted to run a campaign in the Dark Ages, is there a sourcebook specifically about it? Was there ever a sourcebook for the Clik-Tech setting?

>So being able to just pick random stuff in other languages or even use the exact same thing in other languages let them be a lot lazier.
In and of itself that's not really a bad thing, but you can take it too far, and that's how we got the Obuzaabaa. It's that arbitrarily localizing them is kind of lame, like how the Kintaro, Shogun and Samurai weren't Combine machines.

Era Digest: Dark Age is the simplest start. For more meat consult Era Report 3145 and Field Manual 3145.

Brill, I have some reading tonight!

The old dossiers, Original early 2000's Touring the Stars and Technology of Destruction are Early Dark Age. Era Digest Dark Age covers the Early Dark Age but is super glossed over, not great for a campaign. If you really want to know what's going on between 3130 and 3143, you gotta go digging in the novels. And that's a lot of material.

FM3145 and ER3145 are pretty good for updates and give you a lot of good campaign info as far as troops stationed and whatnot. But a lot of the character and exact event stuff is kinda fucked up and doesn't go into the right detail. Like you have no way of knowing the Steel Wolves in the FWL employ on the coreward border is the subgroup that's pure Aerospace unless you recognize the commander's name. And a bunch of the character art is dead wrong.

I'd personally flip through the original DA and Age of Destruction faction dossiers (not the pilot ones but those are fun if you like the notable pilot stuff in TRO's) and Technology of Destruction. Get that full DA terrible CGI experience and the briefest but most comprehensive info.

That doesn't bother me at least for Star League Era machines.

One old era solution that they should use more is that a state will call something X and then their main enemy will give it the code Y which is far simpler and standardized. Then that becomes the main name.

So the Caps have the Yinghuochong, and since it's basically a meaner Firebee, they call it the Bumblebee or something.

Even a little bit more fluff on a scale further back would be nice. The FWL at least puts in half an effort to fluff out its constituent states and how they are different. The other nations just sort of pretend they have interesting things going on. And all the politics boil down to "lolspacefeudalism"

The press for homogenization is what really makes it difficult. CC was more interesting as "Grab bag communists and socialists" than as "its just China"

Even China as such could be interesting. There's still lots of really interesting shit you can do with China but they went for the most bland thing imaginable.
In essense, they're real China. They're yellow, they're successful and the Average Joe knows fuck all about them aside from the fact they use a weird language and are led by a communist party.

Most of Battletech is interesting at its core, where it came from. Steiners and Davions are generic white guy protagonists. Kurita and Liao are generic yellow peril in varying flavors. They didn't really give a shit about anyone else until later.

Caps aren't even that anymore. They're "What if the Dracs were Chinese and didn't have a traditionalist problem or an honor code." They got it the worst of the homogenizing.

Dracs have well fleshed out substates, though basically only three are left now after they lose so much stuff. And those three are the Japanesest of the states.

Davions have four and all are memorable but as the guys that generally have to get everyone else to work together, we don't get to explore their personal problems as much. It was really bad in the early DA because the march rulers were all first cousins. They were tied at the hip.

Lyrans. Lyrans only really have 3 main memorable sections despite having like ten substates which fucks them. You rarely hear anything about Alarion or Timbuktu. Their current map is a horror show but you only feel the impact of the individual worlds like Hesperus falling, not what's going on in the provinces. This one is an easy fix if they would get off their asses.

Compare all that to Mariks whick have 4 main states all fleshed out, half a dozen substates with similar love, and dozens of independent member worlds. Though it is important to note, they didn't get any of that kind of love in the larger narrative until the DA/Jihad. So I guess that means good things in the future, maybe. Not like this particular skill has been lost.

Right, thanks for that, I'll get digging.
Much appreciated for the help,

>Yinghuochong
People don't give The Pack Hunter But Gooder the respect it deserves. The Yingpingchingchong manages to get twice the armor and more jump than the PH while going up only 32 BV.
And it can TAG and sensor dispense.

>So we're the Dracs now right?
>Yeah
>With none of their weaknesses and a patron author?
>Go on
>Well hold on to your shorts, because here's our Panther

I remember when that happened back in 3028

I've never played The Crescent Hawks Conception, but I have a scanned copy of the recognition manual. One question though, who is the lady giving you the instruction supposed to be?

Uninteresting, rather.

My old waifu before I left Steiner. You treat her well.
Also she's a graphic that showed up in some old BT books.

And it's Inception, not conception.

Iunno, out of all of those only the Mariks feel like there is any effort put in. The Capellans used to have some more personality with Tikonov and St. Ives, but that has been long quashed.

You say the Dracs and Davions have memorable sub-states, but they are mostly military areas. Barring the Azami I guess, do any of the sub-divisions of those states have distinct cultures?

The Lyrans were actually a little bit better, but still it was pretty broad brushstrokes. "Space Scotland, Space Ireland and Space something or other, all Germanized". But the substates themselves were never really given love.

Well, I would treat her well if I knew her name!

Inception eh? Obviously I'm looking at the beta. ;-)

Is there any ever reason to not put the medium lasers on the front of the Quickdraw? Why would they design a mech where at base the firepower is strongest in the rear?

Well the Dracs had Rasalhague, and the Azami. But yeah, the "yellow peril" factions being one-note is hardly shocking. They have been gutting them slowly over the last few decades till they're parodies of their former selves. It's a wonder why people glom onto 3025; everyone had more flavor back then. It's all homogeneous as milk now, and boring because of it.

I think she was first seen in the very first Mechwarrior edition. Her name might be in there.
If I am right, I think that Jeff Laubenstein guy drew her.

Because brawling happens more often than not in Introtech and they thought having weapons in the rear would be useful on cav designs.

Ah okay, so she's not actually a character in the game. Thanks!

Dracs have Galedon (Well Galedon itself is gone but the MD is still there) which is old school mega samurai Drac. Benjamin is cyberpunk super corporate Drac. And Pesht is basically the Taurian New Colony region before the Taurians got their asses in gear. Sparse rugged frontier worlds like the Outback minus the capital at Luthien.

Then you have the current four marches of the FS. Crucis which is the golden worlds, education, money industry Murrica fuck yeah. Draconis which is super anti-drac yet super Japanese. Periphery which is the Outback, full of poor uneducated robe worshippers with cool hats. And Capellan which is super traditional and knightly. A place where everything from the top down still runs like it's 3020 in terms of nobles and personal forces. And that's not even including the hotshot hindu pilots from the shipyard worlds.

Where are these differences outlined? Most I heard is personality differences between forces serving in the varied military areas

She's most likely a riff on things like this.

Mostly the original house books, where everything is most completely outlined at the base level and then subsequently forgotten or summarized by later authors. I mean there's whole damn Marik states that don't even have a sarna entry detailed in there.

>Protectorate Guard has an entry but Border Protectorate still doesn't
Fuck me

Xin Sheng didn't start until 3059 and the Chinese ranks didn't start until 3062 or 3063.

I'm surprised that the Capellans weren't more successful historically. Generally centralised statist powers are more efficient militarily and industrially than feudal ones. The CapCon should have been the one rolling over the Suns, it seems to me.

Yeah, quite probably. Anyway, I found her in the original Mechwarrior RPG. Unnamed, alas.

Not as happy either! But then, if you're a mechwarrior having to use a man-portable SRM, would you be?!

I shall name her: Lydia Linette Lyran, the blondest of all the blondie Lyran warriors.

What part of "yellow peril" do you not comprehend?

>are more efficient militarily and industrially
It really depends on the Chancellor.

Yes, but Stackpole and FASA were really, really bad at writing antagonists that were actually threatening, so instead the CapCon just sucks, has let's say less than stellar mechs and overall military capabilities, a leader that eventually goes insane from the stress of losing the 4th Succession War and then a second leader who's just completely batshit crazy from the outset. And Sunny was looking like he was headed in that direction for the short time Stackpole was writing him before Coleman took over.

At least now in the Dark Ages the caps are taking a bit out of the Feds. I look forwards to dying inside a little more at the Fedsun's inevitable turn around where they force back the CC and Dracs.

You are aware Julian already took back New Syrtis and is winning on the Capellan front right?

Capellans were never supposed to be properly threatening anyhow. They were like Korea. Always a little place full of die hards that survived solely by being too much of a pain to take out while the big boys were on your doorstep. Dracs were threatening, until they fell all over themselves in the 3050's. Caps becoming the literal largest power in the DA is fucking porchtastic though. They really should be putting up a bigger fight right now. The RotS only had ten goddamn regiments of real Battlemechs and the Caps didn't fight the Mariks at all in the DA. They made all sorts of deals with both Oriente and the Anduriens instead. So that should leave the bulk of their force for the Fedsuns war.

>Lydia Linette Lyran
A fine name indeed.
And now I shall retire with her SRM inferno tubes on my mind.

No, I wasn't aware. I must have missed that, which book is it in?

And I always thought of them as more Russian/Chinese rather than Korea. I mean, the Dracs are clearly a bigger threat in terms of size as a nation, planets controlled, etc, but then it was the CC that got invaded in the 4th SW rather than the DC, which is a bit weird since both the Feds and Lyrans could have hit it as they both share a border. But anyway, that's besides the point; I don't think it makes much sense to have one of the five major factions in the game (at the time) exist as a non-threat. I will agree to disagree with you here.

I fully agree on the second half though; the Feds like everyone else disarmed hugely in the wake of the Jihad, the CC not only didn't but also had 2 wars with the RotS which means that they actually have an experienced military, alongside modern units. They actually thought about guarding their other borders so that they could focus on this. It actually makes sense that they should be doing well! There should be more progress by 3145 than that little finger of an incursion a dozen or less planets in size.

TRO3150 is where that info is, along with other infamous offscreen shit like the entire Regular War in the FWL.

Caps are the Commies in flavor but they have always been the little guys who were too much of a pain to crush. They could fight and win if they had equal footing but spent themselves almost entirely in the First Succession War then didn't have the infrastructure to hold their gains. They're the guys who were never even considered a great house for the four suites of a drax deck.

>but then it was the CC that got invaded in the 4th SW rather than the DC, which is a bit weird

It probably would have been the Dracs, and the Lyrans did invade them anyway, but Operation Rat was because of two things.
1. Hanse had it out for Max ever since Max tried to replace him with a puppet double.
2. He had Justin as a spy right smack in the middle of the enemy camp boning the princess

>2. He had Justin as a spy right smack in the middle of the enemy camp boning the princess
Oh right I forgot, the nation with the best national security and information network had its head of intelligence be a Fedsuns spy because competence is for other people.

Boy do I sure dislike FASA and Stockpole's writing.

What? At the time, Justin Allard was leading the Kittery Training Battalion. His father Quintus was the head of MIIO. Read the material before bitching user.

>stackpole writes BT
>its retarded

>stackpole writes SW
>fucking x wing series is practically mandatory sw bible study fucking reading

Seriously, is he like, a multiple personalities disorder crazyman or something?

He's talking about how Justin was head of Davion info at MASK. And how his own aide was a Feddie spy.

Show of hands, how many people in this conversation right now have actually read the Warrior Trilogy?

Me. But it was a while ago, hence why I'm not weighing in

Plus I totally torrented all 243 fucking novels of battletech. Got a chronological order thingy too to read em in.

It's actually pretty good. Justin gets fucked by the Fedsuns and goes to live his life on Solaris. Makes sense the Caps might pick him up, especially in a place where every single nation is represented and is full of every kind of information trading you can imagine. Him coming back around to the swords was the twist.

You forget a ton of people call X-wing shit these days too, and often for similar reasons. They're pretty straightforward heroic stories with some fun and ham.

Thoughts on the Agrotera? Seems like a pretty good protag mech, if only because it's supposed to succeed the P-hawk.

Phoenix Hawk, Damn Capellan Suburb edition.

It's a very good spiritual successor to the Phoenix Hawk. A bit too good for the MoC, even with help, but eh. At this point it seems like they're steaming ahead with the homogenization of the tech level across all worlds for the most part, so I'm wagering we're going to be seeing some new players in the big rollover update for 3250.

Speaking of new toys, and since we were on the topic of the Dracs, I just whipped this up as a buddy for the Dragon II (in its 2K config anyway).

>They're pretty straightforward heroic stories with some fun and ham.

Which is fine for Star Wars which is all about the black and white good vs evil. When your setting instead is about interstellar politics, people expect a smidgen more grey. I mean, maybe Battletech was meant to be more black and white back then, but from what it became since, looking back it's frustrating to see.

At least, that's my viewpoint.

I forget the contrarianism of reddit and new Veeky Forums means anything good is 'REEEE it r shiiiittttt' and things that are truly abyssmal like Disneywars are 'omg best thing ever better than sex". Fucking underage.

Yo.

He's good at writing trashy WWII pulp fiction with strong black-and-white morality. That's great for Star Wars. Also, like 95% of the characters in X-Wing were his own; not so much with early BT.
I do admit, though, it's like Stackpole suddenly turns into Kevin J. Anderson when he's writing about 'mechs.

Or maybe people have opinions about why they genuinely like or dislike things and it's deeper than just children being contrarian, a la But it's easier to to think that everyone who disagrees with you is dumb and can be ignored. Disneywars is trash, by the way, and while I want the Mortal Engines film to be good in the wake of modern cinema I can't help but think "How are they gonna fuck this up?"

>I mean, maybe Battletech was meant to be more black and white back then

It was. The grey was the stagnation of the Succession Wars, and Hanse Davion was the guy who was going to shake things up with the power of friendship and jailbait princess love. Even then, Hanse was a bastard. Loveable bastard, but bastard all the same.

It was much more modeled on like an old Shakespearean play than real politics. Definitely rule of cool and drama in effect. Like St Crispin's day type speeches and stuff. Honest Space Opera.

That honestly sounds like ComStar propaganda. Original House book written by ComStar?

Personally I kinda dislike Jihad and DA for that reason. Everyone is depicted as these huge douchebags that would kick puppies for fun. Especially I like the fact how badly Jihad shat on pretty much on anyone who did anything noteworthy on previous eras. VSD is inept fool who gets Comstar's navy and large part of their army killed in Case White. Most of the larger merc companies are killed off what whatever reason, some of the more notable characters are even killed offscreen by assasinations. And then they are replaced way worse written characters.

And then you Dark Ages, where rape comes a standard background event for female characters, Maximilian rate loony Rapey McRapeface is leading FedSuns. Xing Sheng is still running strong. Draconis Combine has bad case of Black Dracon Society and they go full retard.

Taking back New Syrtis isn't really winning, it's a single win. The Cappies are still tiny yellow balls deep in the march and have taken or ruined just about every world worth taking.

They all are. Comstar wrote almost everything in universe until Wolfnet ganked their top spot right before Wayne Waco got his final revenge. That's real though. That Chancellor was a total nut but his daughter is the woman who deftly steered the Confederation through the first half of the First Succession War.

Those little blurbs in the old books are some of the best stuff and you don't see them anywhere else. Like that one planet with dinosaurs that you can synthesize a revolutionary anti-psychotic drug from but the Davions tell everyone to fuck off their property.

Probably something FWL cooked up, they really disliked Capellans at that time when that book was published, probably even more than Lyrans who they only distrusted.

I would defend that as a problem of bad execution rather than as a flaw in grey morality storytelling/setting in and of itself.

>have taken or ruined just about every world worth taking.

Three best worlds in the march are New Syrtis, Kathil and Panpour. And they only ever got one of those, the politically important one. And now they've lost it. Only other vaguely important world they took was Taygeta and that's just a military staging world. There's no industry on it.

>Which is fine for Star Wars which is all about the black and white good vs evil. When your setting instead is about interstellar politics, people expect a smidgen more grey.

There's nothing wrong with well written black and white stories. Battletech is not really all that complicated, either.

The problem here is that they gave people the option to go with and autism all of these factions before throwing selected ones under the bus.

Imagine how "well liked" Code Geass would be if they first got people to feel for China, Europe, Japan and all the others before Britain starts wiping them off the map and Lelouch starts removing them in their stead.

Lelouch is someone just about everyone ends up loving to bits but had you been empathetic to the people fucked over by his schemes or British sheer dominance, you'd also grow to resent him.

Code Geass is very much like BTech. Some heroes, some factions, robots are king, Anglos absolutely buttuck everyone else and there is not really anything they can do.
It's a classic there and trash storytelling here precisely because FASA forgot they sold people a box with those factions as viable picks.

That is incredibly well put, and I applaud you user. (though I've never seen Code Geass) That's the real sticking point- you have these factions, and they're all shown to you as viable factions for you as a player to be interested and invested in, and then you find out that actually no two of the factions are designated bad guy factions to get shat on, one is the second fiddle faction to the premier good guys, one is the good guys, and one may as well not exist for all the attention it gets prior to self destructing in the wake of the Jihad.

It just kinda feels crappy. Though I still think for it to be a good, well written black and white story you should have antagonists that are actually threatening, as opposed to how the CC was compared to the Fedsuns back in 3025 era. It's kind of hard to see the Feddies as the good guy underdog fighting a hard fight for freedom and the benefit of the people kept under Liao's thumb when the CC is pretty bad off, militarily.

Personal opinion, grey morality does not make characters interesting. Especially when it means that the character is written to be total dickback which is about 95 % of all these grey characters.

>as viable picks.
This is not true. In the old days, they just ran it like any historical deal. Some live, some die. Now these days, they're a bunch more careful about permanently crushing factions. Herb was the last guy with the balls to clean house even if he was too zealous about it and his inglorious death boner could never be sated.

What really gets me is that most of the people who bitch about this kind of 'viability' and 'balanced faction' stuff just plain didn't exist when all this stuff was happening. So they're retroactively getting made about things that happened probably twenty years before they started playing the game. It's like when I see randos pop up proclaiming for the Hogs. It's surreal, like being in an episode of the Twilight Zone.

That's... the very definition of badly done grey morality, user. Well done grey morality is explicitly that everyone isn't total dickwads. Instead that are fleshed out, three-dimensional characters with good points and bad points.

>Well done grey morality is explicitly that everyone isn't total dickwads. Instead that are fleshed out, three-dimensional characters with good points and bad points.

That's true to all character types. It's just that I haven't come across a grey morality character or setting that everyone isn't huge dickback that need they teeth kicked in.

Then I don't know what to tell you.

>It's kind of hard to see the Feddies as the good guy underdog fighting a hard fight for freedom and the benefit of the people kept under Liao's thumb when the CC is pretty bad off, militarily.

That's exactly how the US has portrayed itself in basically every war since WWII though. Except the underdog part. But the Feddies were never portrayed as underdogs either. You don't have to be in an inferior position to proclaim yourself the good guy. Whether anybody else thinks you are though, is up in the air. Also, the CC was threatening in the only way they could be, underhanded schemes. Sword and Dagger is about them getting thiiiis close to swapping Hanse out for a Capellan guy who was gene treated and surgically altered to be a perfect double. They tried to uptech their army first, though that exploded in their face. And the Caps even had the Duke on that border actively working with them to betray New Avalon for his own bid at the throne. We can look at it all now and complain that it worked out well in the end, but you didn't know that at the time. Like Hasek stepping up with the balls for real plans instead of weaseling about like he was talked about in his younger years was a real surprise. And that Max was really damn clever, more clever than Hanse probably, but got fucked by an intelligence screwup almost identical to Culper Ring stuff.

Hanse had the biggest balls of all though which was made him so endearing. Launching the 4th War with all the Lords gathered on Terra for the first time since the Fall of the Star League with Comstar actively working against you. Solid brass on that guy. Still one of the most memorable lines in the setting "I give you the Capellan Confederation"

Everyone loves keikaku doori. As cheap and as simple it may be, if you make people like the character, you can get away with pretty otherworldly foresight and people will throw praise your way.

>though I've never seen Code Geass
Watch it. For moot's sake.

Right, but I can't look at it as "how it was in the moment" because I'm not in the moment, I'm in the now and looking back on it it seems really, really one-sided. And yes, so is stuff in real life. We look back at things and wonder how the Japanese could be so fucknuts insane as to declare war on the US in WW2, or Hitler to go to war with Russia. At the time, with the "fog of war" as it were, those decisions didn't seem absurd.

But the key thing I'd point out is that Battletech isn't real life, it's a setting for a tabletop game. And seeing the same factions getting very little while others get a lot, repeatedly, gets frustrating and seems, in hindsight, like a big glaring case of "you should go back to college and take writing classes"-itis.

Now, things have changed since then, obviously. I'm just trying to explain why, to me looking at it now, as someone who yes wasn't playing BT back when it was first around, hell, wasn't even born when BT was created, those earlier times feel.... feel less satisfying, especially when seen alongside how things would develop.

>At the time, with the "fog of war" as it were, those decisions didn't seem absurd.

Neither was absurd if you know history.
Nazi invasion of USSR was a sound move. It was a bet they ultimately lost but it's not like they had any real alternatives. Stalling would just let USSR get its army together (as it had even under the invasion) and push their shit in quickly.

Japan had a similar disposition. US was intent on colonising China. US China means an end of Japanese Empire. They would either act right then and try to get the embargo lifted or end up starving the nation and having the US colonise China, and from there, the rest of their empire. Waiting was not an option. The moment US took Phillipines with the intent of establishing a Chinese colony was the moment Japan would end up in war with them at some point.

Japan's actions didn't help Japan all that much with the whole independence thing but it gave the anti-US faction in China the chance they needed and put a definite end to the prospects of China becoming the next Phillipines.

Right, that's what I'm saying. When you know the situation and how things were then, it makes sense. But if all you do is give someone the full knowledge of Germany's military power at the time and compare it to Russia's, and both their industrial and manufacturing capabilities, and knowledge that Russia was now building T-34s and KV-1s, it seems a lot more one-sided and, lacking the context of how things were at the time, seems like it would be crazy to declare war.

It's a historical game set in the future. It's not 40K where you build some faction army and then people adjust lists based on whatever new rules get adjusted. It's just not what it is. Like the first person to make a nuke becomes a superpower, the first state to make real peace with another in Battletech becomes a superpower. The amount of military force you get is just insane.

Earlier times were actually more satisfying in a lot of ways because you didn't have the repetition and long retardation that became trends in later stuff. Everything was new and shiny. And stuff swings back and forth all the time. I mean you know how long the Lyrans kept their 4th War gains in real life? Less than a year. Then the clans rolled in and took all that plus gobbled up Tamar because fuck you. Then you look at the Capellans on their continued stomp of everything since 3132 and they've been going at that same campaign over fifteen years in real time. Wow, Catalyst really needs to get illClan out and let us know how this wraps up already.

>Those little blurbs in the old books are some of the best stuff

Damn straight.

>Where's the Beef
God I miss these references. Now it's just like "She broke her back" Galactica stuff for dying warships.

>Back when everything was new, everything was new.

Everything should still be new for people starting today. I mean I was born the year they did the Gencon fights for Galahad II. Like the old folks say, if I ain't seen it, it's new to me.

It's sad that CGL went and Warcrimed this event.

>seeing the same factions getting very little while others get a lot, repeatedly
This line of thought is going to break down around how different people measure "getting," "little" and "repeatedly."

Like, the Capellans have been losing ground since the succession wars started; does that count as repeated bad things, a single bad thing, or just a neutral part of establishing the nation's baseline character? Likewise, the Free Worlds League has gained against its neighbors since the succession wars started, gets a ton of player attention when the Dragoons are there, suffered a few minor setbacks in the 3020s and 3030s, reversed those setbacks by 3058, then broke into permanent civil war in the Jihad. Does omnipresent infactional fighting make them less, or more, viable as a player choice? Does their relatively middling, neutral experience up to that point count as "bad?" How much does it matter that they aren't spotlighted in early novels?

And that's just what could make those things (un)satisfying for a given reader. "Take writing classes" is a whole other basket of eels; like, is the story about "will the Federated Suns win," or is it about examining two national leaders in parallel, and about Justin navigating treacherous places where everyone has competing hidden motives?

That's what Yorinaga's arc is for, right? I mean, sure it's a trilogy, but he's trying to compress three fronts of an interstellar war into basically two short books, all while foregrounding the spy games. It's not surprising that the spy games come across as caricature.

>Nazi invasion of USSR was a sound move.

Considering how they only managed to knock out Russia by instigating a civil war in it during WW1, they pretty much were doomed to fail the moment the rear units started mass-murdering the locals as per the plan.

It was a dumb move by dumb people.

>Japan had a similar disposition. US was intent on colonising China.

You mean the US that had the upper echelons be all gun-ho about colonial adventures while the population was pretty much united under white power and absolutely against spending money on tropical regions and/or regions dominated by niggers? They sure loved the idea of colonization, god they used its language in the Pacific war propaganda nonstop, but they also realized that there were millions and millions of niggers out there and that they'd tread on every road America would build. And they sure didn't want any of that.

The occupation of the Philippines was not something voters took pride in either, it was just money thrown to niggers to them.

>Patently false. Hell, in the same era the FWL had one province secede
And Hanse Davion sponsored lots of little uprisings in the FWL to keep the FWL distracted during the Fourth Succession War. Again, what I'm saying is that the thing the FWL is known for isn't *just* these extreme, top-level examples you're giving.

>the Capellans had two secede, the Suns had a provincial leader attempt a coup, the Lyrans had two attempted coups
We're talking about armed strife, not assassination attempts or bloodless changeovers.

>and three provincial rebellions,
I remember the Skye crisis in the 3030s. Remind me what the other two are?

>the Dracs had bleeding Rasalhague and two warlords attempt secessions or coups, etc.
You're double-dipping the Ronin War, and - correct me if I'm wrong - I don't think the other coup attempt got more overt than assassination.

Gotta get the narrative to stop focusing on top level politics.

>I don't think it makes much sense to have one of the five major factions in the game (at the time) exist as a non-threat.
They were originally supposed to be threatening in different ways. The Suns and Dragons had different flavors of military strength, Free Worlds and the Lyrans had different flavors of economic strenth, and the Capellans were sociopolitically manipulative. I agree that things didn't always come across that way, though I disagree that the Capellans or Dracs were ever non-viable as player choices.