Battletech Story Brainstorming

[S'task]

but only out to 3-hexes and cut their damage by half (and a to-hit penalty if I remember right

Thanks for finding those rules.

Critical thing here... WHICH SCALE of hexes are we talking about? Because I'm pretty sure that we're not talking about Ground scale hexes.

If Aerospace hexes that's ~1.8 km for use as point defense... and if Space hexes that provides 54 km of point defense... Both of which are enough of a chance to stop most single shot missiles. (And before people start waving are "hypersonic cruise missiles" or any such nonsense, I remind you one of the weapons here are LASERS which are lookshoot/lightspeed weapons).

Oh yeah, Space hexes are 18 km. All BattleTech weapons still have the same number of hexes of range on Space scale as on Ground scale (and on Aerospace scale). And while I wouldn't argue that Space scale hexes should be considered canon for ranges at ground level (Space scale ALSO uses 1 minute rounds as opposed to Aerospace AND Ground scale using 10 second rounds, as well as lacking things that shorten ranges like friction and atmospheric attenuation), it's yet more evidence of the "BattleTech weapons are super short range" meme is just that, a meme and not actually true.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Any small laser, MG, or anti-personnel gauss can be used as PD weapons, as long as heat and ammo considerations allow.

Note that the MG (and later small lasers) in this configuration is what led to the AMS system.

In addition to this, on any spaceframe, you can use standard weapons (basically anything that isn't an MG, Small Laser, or AP Gauss) as anti-capital missile weapons... but only out to 3-hexes and cut their damage by half (and a to-hit penalty if I remember right).

So gang batteries of standard weapons can be used as hillbilly AMS against capital missiles if needed.

In addition, 'misses' in the game context are "didn't hit the armor the right way", "missiles failed to detonate on-target", or 'got deflected' in addition to literal misses... and the rules specifically have our equipment completely and utterly screwed (BAR-10 armor has a -3 damage penalty to 'rifle cannon' (i.e., our tank guns) while our BAR-5 armor gets penned by medium lasers (or small lasers, don't have the rules on me)).

If you're insisting on the use of game mechanics, all small weapons can be used as PD weapons but only fire once per round, and only to a range of one hex; only dedicated AMS can fire at multiple missiles per round. Even dedicated AMS is expllicitly incapable of engaging ballistic shells, as they are "too small and inert for targeting computers to track effectively".

Using standard weapons as anti-missile weapons, doing to need a reference for that, because I literally have the Strategic Ops sourcebook right here, and I don't see anything about it. The section about using small weapons as point defense even explicitly says that only weapons so labeled in the chart are capable of PD mode.

 

[Spartan303]

Honestly, I just see Earth swarming any landings with massed Air Power, Artillery and then armored assaults. Literally drowning them in firepower and bodies. Earth has concentrations of troops that wouldn't be seen outside of House Lords homeworlds. The issue is Areospace fighters and the Fleet, if we are talking about the Clans.

 

[S'task]

Honestly, I just see Earth swarming any landings with massed Air Power, Artillery and then armored assaults. Literally drowning them in firepower and bodies. Earth has concentrations of troops that wouldn't be seen outside of House Lords homeworlds. The issue is Areospace fighters and the Fleet, if we are talking about the Clans.

Yes, they can swarm them, but not really fast enough to make a difference. Even with the lead in time of being able to see them coming from the jump point, remember that dropships can just alter their landing approach at the last minute to avoid any major concentrations of forces and land in undefended places. Sure, the planet would be immune to a pirate raid due to massed firepower, but a full house unit like a Sword of Light would result in such casualties on both sides that even if they manage to resist the FIRST such attack, subsequent ones are going to be... even harsher. And while Earth's ability to manufacture and uptech would be helped from the salvage, it's not going to be fast enough to counter the second wave... assuming Earth CAN even uptech based on the BattleTech equipment they gain. Just because we have examples of myomar, BattleTech armor and maybe even working fusion reactors doesn't mean we can replicate them, and even once we can, mass deployment of such tech and infrastructure would take YEARS to retool lines, integrate the tech, and build the factories necessary.

And that's assuming the landing doesn't happen in somewhere like Russia who might, out of desperation, drop nukes on the invaders. Once that happens all bets are off as the Great Houses and Clans will no longer be making landfall but rather sitting in orbit and dropping nukes or warship bombardment on the planet until it surrenders.

 

[Spartan303]

Yes, they can swarm them, but not really fast enough to make a difference. Even with the lead in time of being able to see them coming from the jump point, remember that dropships can just alter their landing approach at the last minute to avoid any major concentrations of forces and land in undefended places. Sure, the planet would be immune to a pirate raid due to massed firepower, but a full house unit like a Sword of Light would result in such casualties on both sides that even if they manage to resist the FIRST such attack, subsequent ones are going to be... even harsher. And while Earth's ability to manufacture and uptech would be helped from the salvage, it's not going to be fast enough to counter the second wave... assuming Earth CAN even uptech based on the BattleTech equipment they gain. Just because we have examples of myomar, BattleTech armor and maybe even working fusion reactors doesn't mean we can replicate them, and even once we can, mass deployment of such tech and infrastructure would take YEARS to retool lines, integrate the tech, and build the factories necessary.

And that's assuming the landing doesn't happen in somewhere like Russia who might, out of desperation, drop nukes on the invaders. Once that happens all bets are off as the Great Houses and Clans will no longer be making landfall but rather sitting in orbit and dropping nukes or warship bombardment on the planet until it surrenders.

So essentially you'd need some way to negate the space advantage.

 

[Aaron Fox]

Thanks for finding those rules.

Critical thing here... WHICH SCALE of hexes are we talking about? Because I'm pretty sure that we're not talking about Ground scale hexes.

If Aerospace hexes that's ~1.8 km for use as point defense... and if Space hexes that provides 54 km of point defense... Both of which are enough of a chance to stop most single shot missiles. (And before people start waving are "hypersonic cruise missiles" or any such nonsense, I remind you one of the weapons here are LASERS which are lookshoot/lightspeed weapons).

Oh yeah, Space hexes are 18 km. All BattleTech weapons still have the same number of hexes of range on Space scale as on Ground scale (and on Aerospace scale). And while I wouldn't argue that Space scale hexes should be considered canon for ranges at ground level (Space scale ALSO uses 1 minute rounds as opposed to Aerospace AND Ground scale using 10 second rounds, as well as lacking things that shorten ranges like friction and atmospheric attenuation), it's yet more evidence of the "BattleTech weapons are super short range" meme is just that, a meme and not actually true.

Space hex rules, from what I remember.

If you're insisting on the use of game mechanics, all small weapons can be used as PD weapons but only fire once per round, and only to a range of one hex; only dedicated AMS can fire at multiple missiles per round. Even dedicated AMS is expllicitly incapable of engaging ballistic shells, as they are "too small and inert for targeting computers to track effectively".

Using standard weapons as anti-missile weapons, doing to need a reference for that, because I literally have the Strategic Ops sourcebook right here, and I don't see anything about it. The section about using small weapons as point defense even explicitly says that only weapons so labeled in the chart are capable of PD mode.

...

Ok, this is because I've been playing with MegaMekLab, but... from what I gather for space, it isn't exactly the case. The funny thing about how things turned out is that when I was playing with various ships' heat sinks, their damage potential skyrockets (we're talking over 350 (EDIT) 100 capital damage in Alpha Strike-scale for a handful of Heavy NPPCs and NL55s, and the broadsides getting absolutely disgusting (EDIT: to a tune of 415 in Alpha Strike)). So, apparently, space combat (due to turns being 1 minute long, compared to the 10 seconds of aerospace/ground and the 2.5 seconds of Solaris 7... which has an AC2 firing every 2.5 seconds) has its weapon capabilities not dominated by RoF but by heat management (the only way to make the jump of firepower make sense). However, this requires a lot more investigation to confirm.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Space hex rules, from what I remember.

...

Ok, this is because I've been playing with MegaMekLab, but... from what I gather for space, it isn't exactly the case. The funny thing about how things turned out is that when I was playing with various ships' heat sinks, their damage potential skyrockets (we're talking over 350 (EDIT) 100 capital damage in Alpha Strike-scale for a handful of Heavy NPPCs and NL55s, and the broadsides getting absolutely disgusting (EDIT: to a tune of 415 in Alpha Strike)). So, apparently, space combat (due to turns being 1 minute long, compared to the 10 seconds of aerospace/ground and the 2.5 seconds of Solaris 7... which has an AC2 firing every 2.5 seconds) has its weapon capabilities not dominated by RoF but by heat management (the only way to make the jump of firepower make sense). However, this requires a lot more investigation to confirm.

It's not actually their firepower changing, it's the BV rating. MML's BV algorithm applies an overheated-weapon penalty for weapons that exceed the ship's cooling capacity and those overheated weapons only count as one-fourth of their normal BV value. Add sufficient heatsinks, and the penalty goes away, but adding further heatsinks beyond this has no effect.

(Other than, in principle, allowing you to still adequately cool after losing heatsinks to battle damage.)

----

As for the PD rules, I was directly paraphrasing from the Strategic Operations sourcebook. If you want to see it in MegaMekLab, create a WarShip and mount a Small Pulse Laser in one of the weapon arcs; you'll see that MML will group it in "Point Defense Bay" rather than the normal "Pulse Laser Bay". You just have to be aware that MML follows the more restrictive rules as written: "Weapons capable of functioning in this way are labeled as Point Defense Weapons in the Aerospace Weapon Classes Table on page 352 of TechManual", which means the ER Small Laser is *not* PD capable.

Edit: I don't have the Tech Manual, but playing with MML indicates that Point Defense capable weapons are: Small Laser, Small Re-Engineered Laser, Micro Pulse Laser, Small Pulse Laser, Machine Gun, Flamer, ER Flamer. Notably not point defense capable are ER Micro Laser, ER Small Laser, ER Small Pulse Laser, Small VSP Laser, Small X-Pulse Laser, Small Heavy Laser, and Small Chem Laser.

 

[LordSunhawk]

*urge to come up with a new shared Modern Earth in BTech story thread rising*

 

[Doomsought]

I think it is important having a large mercanry company, the kind that has its own ASF, show up to bolster Earth's defenses for the first arc of the story.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

There's certainly plenty of "stuff we don't have, but can easily make if we're made aware of the tactical niche" in the modern inventory.

For example, heavy surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles with armor-piercing warheads. No such weapons are in production, but Raytheon could literally come up with designs in a few days, have prototypes in testing within weeks and early production within months if operating at 'war emergency' priority. With something like BROACH warheads, they would be hilariously lethal against ASFs.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Seriously -- we literally already have a lot of the "hyper advanced" tech that was invented late into the Battletech timeline. The BROACH warheads I mentioned straight up are the Federated Commonwealth's vaunted "Tandem Charge" warheads that were developed after the Clan Invasion, only without any special rule that they can only be mounted in short-range missiles, and cut ammo capacity in half.

And we've had tandem warheads for much longer than that; it's just the "standard" RL tandem charge is built with twin shaped charges to defeat explosive reactive armor, whereas the BROACH has a penetrator charge followed by an standard explosive designed to cause maximum *internal* damage, which is what FedCom TC warheads are described as. Battletech doesn't actually have an equivalent of the anti-ERA tandem charge to counter reactive armor.

 

[Spartan303]

*urge to come up with a new shared Modern Earth in BTech story thread rising*

Doooo eeeeeet.....give in to your feelings!

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Honestly, given their small sizes and the volume fired, SRM and LRMs are really more equivalent to the guided version of the Hydra-70 rocket system than "normal" modern-day missiles. The autoloader systems for those are one of the relatively few actually impressive things in Battletech, even discounting the absurd 'teleport reloading' implied if you take game mechanics literally.

1950s Air Force is definitely impressed.

 

[Jormungandr]

Ya know, aside from Modern Earth (in the future) pulling a Clan Wolf and sending out feelers posing as a mercenary group, their later setting up a front company and acting as an arms merchant by selling modified Modern Earth hardware to the Inner Sphere could also work.

Hell, even modified Android tablets as a starting product would be a hit, I think (also, it'd be fucking hilarious if one of the more batshit insane Houses tries to get Android working on a Battlemech or vehicle or something, hah).

It'd be a great cover for raising C-bills and acquiring more Inner Sphere (and later Clan) technology though purchases and salvage.

 

[S'task]

Again... you all keep handwaving "oh these modern Earth weapons are equal or superior to BattleTech", but you constantly keep ignoring the stated advancements in material sciences that BattleTech has. For instance, Endo Steel is explicitly stated to require zero gravity manufacture and "uniformly mix high-density steel with lower-density titanium and aluminum. Rhenium is also used in this process." And while yes, this is one of their "advanced" tech items, even standard BattleTech armor technology is considerably more advanced than what we have now, and protects against a wider array of weapons. BattleTech armor handles circumstances like REENTRY HEAT just fine, whereas we have to make specialized heatshields to handle it (again, remember Aerospace Fighters are designed to go from and to ORBIT and beyond under their own power and they don't have special heat shields to do it, just regular old BattleTech Armor!).

That's also something folks here and neglecting in their analysis. Earth has no technology or armor designed against BattleTech's weapon grade energy weapons. While Lasers are likely one more easily understood, PPCs are a complete outside context problem from a defense standpoint for Earth... and PPCs are both very long range, common, and POWERFUL. Even the Lasers are outside of anything Earth has, and likely do tremendous damage to most everything they encounter. A single Large Laser is an effective counter to pretty much all airborne attacks, since none of our aircraft are designed against that kind of firepower nor do they have countermeasures for it, and would utterly wreck helicopters.

And again, as per BattleTech lore, Earth doesn't have the range advantage that you all seem to think it has. Any weapon with a range of 8 hexes (ground scale) is stated to actually have "to the horizon" range or longer in the case of indirect fire weapons, and while they do lose damage and accuracy when shooting beyond their normal "max" range per the rules (which, let's be honest here a moment, makes more sense than weapons going from 100% effective to not existing that the normal weapons ranges imply) that still means that modern MBTs aren't just going to be shooting at Mechs without response. In fact, if you assume shoot to horizon ranges for things like lasers and the like, BattleMechs being so tall actually becomes ADVANTAGEOUS as it gives them a longer horizon and visual lines for firing their weapons.

And finally, as to massed artillery, that's why I keep bringing up aerospace fighters. They would be able to easily wreck any artillery set up and Earth HAS NO COUNTER to them. Everyone here seems fixated on BattleMechs and Dropships, but frankly, but those aren't the real threat: Aerospace fighters are. Earth has no weapon that can reliably knock them out of the sky, as again, while they might work on the same principles, there is nothing indicating that modern missiles, even these "BROACH" would reliably be able to work against BattleTech's armor and be able to knock them out of the sky.

Finally, this is ALSO working from assumptions of perfect knowledge. People here can go "oh this Earth tech counters/is more effective then BattleTech's X" because we have perfect knowledge of BattleTech's technology and can spend the time to pick out it flaws. In a fair scenario that's not the case: Earth forces would have no way to know that massed artillery is a potential counter to things, or that they would need to be trying to shoot down BattleTech's aerospace fighters with specially designed ANTI-TANK weapons. Rather they'd be forced to use what they have on hand, which would lead to serious issues... and even assuming they could get their hands on examples of BattleTech technology unless out in the deep periphery, they'd not really have the time to retool things to actually be able to counter the full might of a Clan or Great House.

 

[Jormungandr]

Again... you all keep handwaving "oh these modern Earth weapons are equal or superior to BattleTech", but you constantly keep ignoring the stated advancements in material sciences that BattleTech has. For instance, Endo Steel is explicitly stated to require zero gravity manufacture and "uniformly mix high-density steel with lower-density titanium and aluminum. Rhenium is also used in this process." And while yes, this is one of their "advanced" tech items, even standard BattleTech armor technology is considerably more advanced than what we have now, and protects against a wider array of weapons. BattleTech armor handles circumstances like REENTRY HEAT just fine, whereas we have to make specialized heatshields to handle it (again, remember Aerospace Fighters are designed to go from and to ORBIT and beyond under their own power and they don't have special heat shields to do it, just regular old BattleTech Armor!).

That's also something folks here and neglecting in their analysis. Earth has no technology or armor designed against BattleTech's weapon grade energy weapons. While Lasers are likely one more easily understood, PPCs are a complete outside context problem from a defense standpoint for Earth... and PPCs are both very long range, common, and POWERFUL. Even the Lasers are outside of anything Earth has, and likely do tremendous damage to most everything they encounter. A single Large Laser is an effective counter to pretty much all airborne attacks, since none of our aircraft are designed against that kind of firepower nor do they have countermeasures for it, and would utterly wreck helicopters.

And again, as per BattleTech lore, Earth doesn't have the range advantage that you all seem to think it has. Any weapon with a range of 8 hexes (ground scale) is stated to actually have "to the horizon" range or longer in the case of indirect fire weapons, and while they do lose damage and accuracy when shooting beyond their normal "max" range per the rules (which, let's be honest here a moment, makes more sense than weapons going from 100% effective to not existing that the normal weapons ranges imply) that still means that modern MBTs aren't just going to be shooting at Mechs without response. In fact, if you assume shoot to horizon ranges for things like lasers and the like, BattleMechs being so tall actually becomes ADVANTAGEOUS as it gives them a longer horizon and visual lines for firing their weapons.

And finally, as to massed artillery, that's why I keep bringing up aerospace fighters. They would be able to easily wreck any artillery set up and Earth HAS NO COUNTER to them. Everyone here seems fixated on BattleMechs and Dropships, but frankly, but those aren't the real threat: Aerospace fighters are. Earth has no weapon that can reliably knock them out of the sky, as again, while they might work on the same principles, there is nothing indicating that modern missiles, even these "BROACH" would reliably be able to work against BattleTech's armor and be able to knock them out of the sky.

Finally, this is ALSO working from assumptions of perfect knowledge. People here can go "oh this Earth tech counters/is more effective then BattleTech's X" because we have perfect knowledge of BattleTech's technology and can spend the time to pick out it flaws. In a fair scenario that's not the case: Earth forces would have no way to know that massed artillery is a potential counter to things, or that they would need to be trying to shoot down BattleTech's aerospace fighters with specially designed ANTI-TANK weapons. Rather they'd be forced to use what they have on hand, which would lead to serious issues... and even assuming they could get their hands on examples of BattleTech technology unless out in the deep periphery, they'd not really have the time to retool things to actually be able to counter the full might of a Clan or Great House.

I was actually thinking after they've reverse-engineered/acquired some Battletech technology they'd go into weapons and such because, yes, I do think once we understood how to make their shit, we'd do it better/improve on it, which is why I said "modified Earth hardware" (though, I guess I should've said "new Earth hardware based on information and knowledge gathered/reverse-engineered from the Inner-Sphere/Clans" but designed alongside existing Earth weapon doctrines and principles because, yes, the warfare in the Inner-Sphere/Clans is more like LARPing with high-tech weapons and consists of boneheaded tactics).

Anyway, initially such a company would start off with consumer-based goods to "get the ball rolling" (such as modified Android tablets and such -- and, yes, even ten year old Androids are better than what's known of noteputers) and acquire funds/networking opportunities from there.

Also, keep in mind that in the last forty or so years since Battletech came out, military and computing technology have leapfrogged ahead in most areas, so we're in a weird position where, yes, Battletech's stuff like the armour you mentioned is high-tech and would be in real-life, but real-life military weaponry has also advanced in a way FASA hadn't foreseen/guessed in their effectiveness, capability, and levels of destruction because they were still thinking along what weapons were around in the 80's and such and using those as measuring tools.

It's a bit of a paradox.

 

[stephen the barbarian]

"oh these modern Earth weapons are equal or superior to BattleTech"

i think he's comparing an extrapolated 2020 to the extrapolated 1980 of battletech.

now to me that's drones everywhere, metal storm style ac's, loitering ammo, and guided Gauss rounds.

 

[S'task]

Anyway, initially such a company would start off with consumer-based goods to "get the ball rolling" (such as modified Android tablets and such -- and, yes, even ten year old Androids are better than what's known of noteputers) and acquire funds/networking opportunities from there.

Why would people purchase our shitty, designed to last only three to five year consumer electronics? They'd have no way to guarantee replacement, couldn't fix it themselves because there's nowhere to buy parts or effective distribution to purchase parts from, and while they have higher performance the existing noteputers already do everything that Android tablet can do while also having a lifespan measured in decades AND being repairable with a mature supply chain.

Realize: trading Earth goods is gonna be difficult no matter what. Interstellar travel requires jumpships and, well, there's no Earth tech that will alter the limitations of Jump drives in BattleTech. It ain't a computational limit that slows down jumpship travel, but hard physical limitations of jump drive recharge times. This means many weeks of travel to get places and fairly limited cargoes. Earth is also going to have issues with orbital lift. The initial lift will be limited to whatever dropships can be captured, which will mostly be smaller military oriented dropships, not cargo ones (and there is a massive difference). It would likely take years, if not decades, for Earth to be able to build its own dropships. This is not a "just throw money at the problem" problem. There's layers upon layers of infastructure needed to build even the smallest dropships that Earth simply doesn't have.

First you need foundries capable of making the required high end materials for constructing dropships. Then you ALSO need the factories to manufacture fusion cores for the dropships to provide power... and the factories to manufacture the fusion torch drives (plus any prerequisite foundries to make the raw materials to make these), then you need an assembly yard of sufficient scale to make the dropships. All of these things cannot simply be brought online overnight.

And then you have the bottleneck of Jumpships. Those explicitly take specialized ORBITAL factories to manufacture, as well as ready access to large quantities of germanium... which is a rare Earth element that is difficult to extract and produce in "large quantities". Heck, to be frank, without both a working example AND considerable data like that from a complete Helm Core I don't think Earth COULD easily replicate Jumpships in anything less than thirty years (building up the orbital infrastructure is the real killer there...).

As such the idea that Earth could easily trade it's "better" computers to build up Cbills actually has a LOT of bottlenecks JUST from infrastructure alone. Assuming we CAN actually retroengineer a lot of BattleTech's hardware, we still lack the machines to build the machines to build the machines for a lot of it, and that would not be something we can bypass or repurpose.

 

[Spartan303]

Why would people purchase our shitty, designed to last only three to five year consumer electronics? They'd have no way to guarantee replacement, couldn't fix it themselves because there's nowhere to buy parts or effective distribution to purchase parts from, and while they have higher performance the existing noteputers already do everything that Android tablet can do while also having a lifespan measured in decades AND being repairable with a mature supply chain.

Realize: trading Earth goods is gonna be difficult no matter what. Interstellar travel requires jumpships and, well, there's no Earth tech that will alter the limitations of Jump drives in BattleTech. It ain't a computational limit that slows down jumpship travel, but hard physical limitations of jump drive recharge times. This means many weeks of travel to get places and fairly limited cargoes. Earth is also going to have issues with orbital lift. The initial lift will be limited to whatever dropships can be captured, which will mostly be smaller military oriented dropships, not cargo ones (and there is a massive difference). It would likely take years, if not decades, for Earth to be able to build its own dropships. This is not a "just throw money at the problem" problem. There's layers upon layers of infastructure needed to build even the smallest dropships that Earth simply doesn't have.

First you need foundries capable of making the required high end materials for constructing dropships. Then you ALSO need the factories to manufacture fusion cores for the dropships to provide power... and the factories to manufacture the fusion torch drives (plus any prerequisite foundries to make the raw materials to make these), then you need an assembly yard of sufficient scale to make the dropships. All of these things cannot simply be brought online overnight.

And then you have the bottleneck of Jumpships. Those explicitly take specialized ORBITAL factories to manufacture, as well as ready access to large quantities of germanium... which is a rare Earth element that is difficult to extract and produce in "large quantities". Heck, to be frank, without both a working example AND considerable data like that from a complete Helm Core I don't think Earth COULD easily replicate Jumpships in anything less than thirty years (building up the orbital infrastructure is the real killer there...).

As such the idea that Earth could easily trade it's "better" computers to build up Cbills actually has a LOT of bottlenecks JUST from infrastructure alone. Assuming we CAN actually retroengineer a lot of BattleTech's hardware, we still lack the machines to build the machines to build the machines for a lot of it, and that would not be something we can bypass or repurpose.

The only way I see Earth viably rising post war is if they had a benefactor/Ally. Someone like, say, Clan Wolverine. It's literally a perfect marriage of necessity for both sides.

 

[S'task]

The only way I see Earth viably rising post war is if they had a benefactor/Ally. Someone like, say, Clan Wolverine. It's literally a perfect marriage of necessity for both sides.

. . .

I'm not going to get into my opinion of Clan Wolverine, but, frankly, they're a setting bugbear that needs to die, and further, why should they ally when they could just take what they want from Earth? Just because they were the "less evil" group of Clanners doesn't actually change the fact they WERE in fact Clanners who were more than willing to enforce their ideals and will on other people by warfare.

And no, I'm not talking out my ass, rather than survivors of Clan Wolverine going and joining the Inner Sphere and warning them of what Nicolas had made, they instead staged a series of raids and then fucked off into the unknown.

They're pirates, not heroes.