Swindle1984 wrote:What sort of firepower do Battletech infantry lasers have then? I recall Justin Allard's laser hidden in his prosthetic hand was capable of slicing off the lower half of a multi-ton door made of solid bronze, and it certainly wasn't as powerful as an infantry laser rifle.
It depends...... Using the RPG calcs though, the laser rifle would probably be in the KJ at best. It depends on how you calc the power point, using the gasoline generator from MW3 or the like. The power requirements MAY be lower though, since solar generators can be used to recharge laser rifles quickly.
And it amazes me that Clan Wolf, one of the most powerful Clans, fields as few Galaxies as it does. Considering that even during the 3025 era the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere fielded dozens of mech regiments (108 mechs) as well as many, many more vehicle and infantry regiments, how the fuck did they manage to invade so deeply into the Inner Sphere and how did the Inner Sphere forces, especially when combined, not drive them out again entirely? The tech advantage the Clans share isn't that great, especially by the 3060's when the IS has not only partially caught up in terms of weapons tech, but even has weapons the Clans never thought of.
The Clans tactics, training and technology combine to give them that edge. Again, the average IS mechwarrior using game mechanics misses 1/3 of the time. Any "real" situation means that a mechwarrior misses over 50% of the time, and probably 75% once range and movement is factored in.
In terms of population though, the "official" figures are problematic. The Clans birth thousands of genetic babies yearly. Once freeborn babies and normal population growth are included, the official population statistics from bean-counting are off. Probable explainations are the strict society and limitations on population growth by lack of resources, caste restrictions and marriage/growth, and the Dark Caste. Militarily wise, the Touman consist of 3 tier of forces. Frontline, Secondline/PGC forces and militia/paramilitary units. The last are explictly stated not to be included in Touman descriptions and Steel Viper probably uses conventional infantry garrisons to help man those paramilitary units. I'm not very happy with the merging of the RPG secondline forces with the PGCs. If you read Invading Clans, the PGCs were explictly stated to be cluster forces designed for garrison purposes. Subsequent fleshing out of the Clans now merged the RPG secondline forces(old rejects and rejected trueborn) into the PGCs and garrison units. The Secondline Mechwarrior RPG class was then merged into the garrison forces and PGCs were no longer "special". Of course, it does make one wonder why bringing in PGCs were considered both so problematic as well as done so easily, if they were considered part of the Clan normal military. Easily, cause said units would had broken the Clan bid, difficult as Ghost Bear and other Clans were hesitant to bring in such specialised forces, although they were perfectly willing earlier on to bid secondline forces to invade the Inner Sphere.
And in terms of troops... Clan Smoke Jaguar and Ghost Bear committed 12 mixed galaxies to the battle, both secondline and frontline forces. Even if one discount the SJ "smaller" galaxies, that's 60 clusters worth of troops and equivalent to approximately 30-45 mech regiments using the "standard" clan configuration. That's comparable to the FWL and CC central forces in 3050 and considering Clan training and equipment, comparable to their frontline units as well.
Heck, even in terms of tactics the IS has the Clans largely beaten. The Clans do their retarded duels and bidding system and, except for the Hell's Horses don't even field combined-arms units.Except for Elementals (and the later battle armor suits), the only time they field infantry is when they need a suicide attack to throw their elderly and shamed warriors at the enemy to buy time.
Wrong. The Clans are more intergrated in combined arms than any other major power other than the Comguards, ELH and to a certain extent, the FC RCTs. Their air and infantry units are organic and intergral to any major combat operation. Unlike the IS, infantry units are not set aside as "secondary" forces, even though Elementals are prized less highly than Mechwarriors. Similarly, they actually have a higher ratio of aerospace fighters to ground element than the IS variant(a "lean" mech unit could count on 10 aerospace fighters to 30 battlemechs, compared to the IS "standard" doctrine of 6 fighters to 36 battlemechs. Larger mech units may have more mech points than fighter points, but a standard fighter point ALREADY contains 2 aerospace fighters. Using the "standard" organisation of 5 binaries, that means 20 aerospace fighters may be contained in a "standard" cluster.)
Even when we compare actual order of battle, the Clans intergrate aerospace and infantry units tighter and have a higher percentage than the IS. The sole difference is that the IS maintains a significantly larger component of free aerospace, conventional VTOL/ fighter and infantry contingent, and lastly, they include armour units whereas the Clans don't.
As for suicide infantry, that's the Jade Falcon trilogy. Conventional infantry garrisons exist in the Steel Viper as mentioned in Invading Clans. Furthermore, committing suicide for the sake of suicide does not earn glory and entry into the genepool. A SUCCESSFUL suicidal attack does. Which is no different from how Clan mechwarriors are willing to suffer higher rates of losses in training, as well as combat tactics that would result in higher casualties in order to win victories whereas the Inner Sphere won't.
The Inner Sphere wages total warfare (with all that it involves) and fields ungodly numbers of tanks, VTOL's, and infantry, as well as far more numerous mechs.
Errr... The Clan equivalent of the regiment is a Galaxy. This contains more aerospace fighters, more battlemechs and depending on how you play with the organisation chart, similar numbers of infantry units as armoured infantry.
The Inner Sphere has more troops and more worlds, that's why any Clan invasion after Tukayid was doomed to fail. But thats their strategic advantages.
The Clans don't even use artillery for pete's sake.
For fuck sake, no, no, no. Look up Von Strang World and how Clan Jade Falcon used artillery bombardment(Arrow IVs) and elementals to crack open Von Strang series of fortifications.
At best, the Clans don't use Snipers and Thumpers and dedicated Long Tom vehicles are no longer in their arsenal.
Let him land on any Lyran world to taste firsthand the wrath of peace loving people thwarted by the myopic greed of a few miserly old farts- Katrina Steiner
All I've got is the supplement to the Mechwarrior RPG and the TRO: RE in dead tree format. But as I said, I know quite a few people with access to some of the harder-to-find source material.
