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[Taricus]

So what you're saying is that you'd willingly play as a clanner or blakist then? Aside from them there's not really any alternatives to the feudal structure in lore (And for fairly good reason too), though this is offset with planetary governments being pretty varied in how they're run.

[umiman]

I'd like to point out that cartoon villainy aside, her uncle was far more logical and grounded than she was.

Her kingdom is puny. It's a nonexistent power compared to the neighbouring superpowers.

All throughout the story we see that our idiot queen does nothing to prevent the inevitable downfall of their nation. Her uncle believes he has no choice but to intervene to save their country's future. Through a quick coup, he then allies with the Taurian Concordat which guarantees their nation's independence while granting them arms and wealth. He's portrayed as selling the soul of the nation for this.

Immediately after being kicked out, the Queen runs away to Canopus and begs for their aid. They then fund her campaign completely and successfully plant her as their now puppet ruler. But she's portrayed as a hero despite doing the exact same thing as Espinosa.

I wouldn't mind if it was portrayed as what it really was, greedy nobles vying for an irrelevant throne. But that somehow Arano is a hero for further destabilizing her nation and bringing her entire sector to the brink of war for some nonexistent reasons other than "I'm the legitimate queen!" is ridiculous. If anything, if she cared about her people she should have stepped aside. Instead she decided to obliterate the armed forces of her own country (good luck mustering the same troops you needed against foreign powers now), razed her own planets, and killed off her own leadership.

Compare this to the initial coup that destabilized her that was completely bloodless in comparison. If anything it certainly shows who cares more about their subjects as one tried his best to keep the people safe while another gives absolutely no fucks about her ruthless crusade's casualties, past, present, and future, as long as she gets to wear a shiny hat. Hell, that her entire nation didn't just rise up as one in rebellion when they heard what happened, or the fact that she had such a hard time convincing her apparently vassal planets to help her, should shed light on just how well liked she actually is.

The game would have been next level and extremely true to its mercenary roots if Espinosa reached out to you and asked you those same questions before offering you employment under his wing instead.

[ChairmanPoo]

Indeed, having two different pathways would have been a far better campaign

So what you're saying is that you'd willingly play as a clanner or blakist then? Aside from them there's not really any alternatives to the feudal structure in lore (And for fairly good reason too), though this is offset with planetary governments being pretty varied in how they're run.

I dont know what either of those entail, I'm not really familiar with the lore
Strictly speaking what I said is that I'd rather play as an Ultranaut from Revelation Space . I kind of pretend I do in career mode
And yeah like umiman said in the campaign as it is I'd rather have the option to choose a side, rather than accept Princess Daisy's claim of  legitimacy via divine right of kings.  Even if Baron Harkonnen (or whatever his name was) was just as dislikeable.
Hell, include a third option for ousting them both and hand over the realm to the pirates or something

[Flying Dice]

So what you're saying is that you'd willingly play as a clanner or blakist then? Aside from them there's not really any alternatives to the feudal structure in lore (And for fairly good reason too), though this is offset with planetary governments being pretty varied in how they're run.

[Rince Wind]

Play as a Clanner, yes. And be bound by clan honour rules. And of course you have to bid for every drop, so there is an incentive to use lighter mechs.
No salvage either, because that is just going to be inferior Inner Sphere crap anyway. You'll need to get some form of honour points and points for successful missions from which to buy access to better mechs.

[A Thing]

I wouldn't mind if it was portrayed as what it really was, greedy nobles vying for an irrelevant throne. But that somehow Arano is a hero for further destabilizing her nation and bringing her entire sector to the brink of war for some nonexistent reasons other than "I'm the legitimate queen!" is ridiculous. If anything, if she cared about her people she should have stepped aside. Instead she decided to obliterate the armed forces of her own country (good luck mustering the same troops you needed against foreign powers now), razed her own planets, and killed off her own leadership.

Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head there as to why the campaign feels so hokey. Admittedly, I've never read, seen, or played anything Battletech besides this, MegaMek, and Mechwarrior 4: Mercs but I always got the impression that 99% of the wars that happened in the setting were pointless.

Also, yeah not being able to betray was also terrible. I spent the whole game telling Arano that I just wanted money and I REALLY did not care about her but I was stuck in anyway. I really enjoyed that mission in Mechwarrior 4: Mercs where you could blow up the truce your employer was setting up after a series of missions just so you could get a ton of money from the Capellans instead. The whole campaign in Battletech made me feel less like a mercenary commander and more like a retainer to Arano mainly because I didn't have choices like betraying Arano. I might not of betrayed her anyway, but having the choice would've added a lot for me.

[Mephansteras]

The campaign was definitely cliche and cheesy. Admittedly, Arano is a better person than her Uncle, ultimately (you know, not committing atrocities and jailing large numbers of her own people on a death planet), but it questionable if her actions will ultimately be better for her nation or not. Me being me, I'd help her over her Uncle regardless, but not having any options really did take the 'mercenary' feel out of it. Not to mention that the story throwing mechs and money at you also cut down on that struggling merc company vibe.

It's a better game without the Story, and I'm glad they seem to be realizing it. I hope we get a lot more that fleshing out the merc company aspects of the game.

[Flying Dice]

I wouldn't mind if it was portrayed as what it really was, greedy nobles vying for an irrelevant throne. But that somehow Arano is a hero for further destabilizing her nation and bringing her entire sector to the brink of war for some nonexistent reasons other than "I'm the legitimate queen!" is ridiculous. If anything, if she cared about her people she should have stepped aside. Instead she decided to obliterate the armed forces of her own country (good luck mustering the same troops you needed against foreign powers now), razed her own planets, and killed off her own leadership.

Yeah I think you hit the nail on the head there as to why the campaign feels so hokey. Admittedly, I've never read, seen, or played anything Battletech besides this, MegaMek, and Mechwarrior 4: Mercs but I always got the impression that 99% of the wars that happened in the setting were pointless.

Also, yeah not being able to betray was also terrible. I spent the whole game telling Arano that I just wanted money and I REALLY did not care about her but I was stuck in anyway. I really enjoyed that mission in Mechwarrior 4: Mercs where you could blow up the truce your employer was setting up after a series of missions just so you could get a ton of money from the Capellans instead. The whole campaign in Battletech made me feel less like a mercenary commander and more like a retainer to Arano mainly because I didn't have choices like betraying Arano. I might not of betrayed her anyway, but having the choice would've added a lot for me.

This is the Inner Sphere in a nutshell. A bunch of neofeudal assholes squabbling over the ashes of a throne that ceased to exist centuries ago, interrupted by a brief interlude courtesy of the resident barbarians, who were quickly Romanized, thus allowing the expanded party to get back to the same old petty bickering with slightly improved technology. It's not as static as 40K, but it's close.

As for the plot of this game, you're an Arano retainer not only functionally but literally. Remember, in the tutorial you're vetting your 'mech with your co-worker, the head of her personal guard, preparing to escort her to a high-profile political event. When shit goes down you are one of the two people she implicitly trusts that isn't a family member. If you want to read a little more into it, the rescue of you and your 'mech wasn't coincidence. It (potentially) didn't just so happen that a random band of mercs who just so happened to be wanting to recruit a leader also just so happened to be in orbit when the coup went down and just so happened to rescue you.

If you want to be cynical about it, Arano used a third party (possibly a plant in the merc crew) to arrange your rescue, as you'd proven to be one of a handful of people she could trust. Odds are she paid off at least one of the officers of the merc company to guide things toward placing you in charge, giving her an independent and deniable force firmly in the hands of a member of her personal guard.

Practically speaking, very little time is spent as a pure mercenary before she re-establishes contact. The story is functionally of [player], the retainer of Arano, posing as a mercenary to conduct grey- and black-ops missions against her uncle, rather than [player], the mercenary, hired to help her retake the throne. Frankly the "gimmie lodes of monee" options are only there to provide the illusion of it being an actual merc campaign.

[Parsely]

If you want to be cynical about it, Arano used a third party (possibly a plant in the merc crew) to arrange your rescue, as you'd proven to be one of a handful of people she could trust. Odds are she paid off at least one of the officers of the merc company to guide things toward placing you in charge, giving her an independent and deniable force firmly in the hands of a member of her personal guard.

Unfortunately that's far more interesting and clever than the actual story plays it. And that's the problem, the Btech and MW writers are all far too optimistic to give us some tasty Legend of Galactic Heroes style realpolitik.

[Paul]

I think the whole member of personal guard thing is how you're supposed to play it. That was the vibe I got from the start of the storyline. Was much less frustrating being railroaded when I just went in with the mindset that I'm a loyalist to the crazy lady.

A campaign where you're an actual merc and there are various branching storylines you can pursue with different factions would be much better though. This game would have been great with a random campaign generator. Take your background and generate a campaign based on it with additional modules on the side. Get vengeance on the guy who betrayed you or get back at the family who exiled you. Maybe have some basic dynamic storylines generated on the
 fly. Like faction X has a cold war with faction Y over reason Z. You can pick a side or just play for whoever pays the most.

[Parsely]

Just play Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries instead.

[Greiger]

Every time someone mentions Mercs I pine for my Shadowcat.  Battletech is literally the only other game I've played in the universe and it does not have my favorite mech of all time.

Here's a question for folks who might know more of the lore, if everyone is basically using the same old technology how does clan have access to mechs no-one has seen before?  Do they actually know how to make new mech designs from scratch?  And if they can why can't anyone else?

[A Thing]

Every time someone mentions Mercs I pine for my Shadowcat.  Battletech is literally the only other game I've played in the universe and it does not have my favorite mech of all time.

Here's a question for folks who might no more of the lore, if everyone is basically using the same old technology how does clan have access to mechs noone has seen before?  Do they actually know how to make new mech designs from scratch?  And if they can why can't anyone else?

Not an expert on the lore but from what I remember the Clans are descended from members of the Star League Defense Force who screwed off into deep space after the Star League fell apart. Most of the Inner Sphere's issues with development (and losing old tech) come from the constant wars after the fall of the Star League. The Clans had wars too, but I think their honor rules prevented them from destroying too many factories/archives.

Also, the IS does start making new mechs/rediscovering old ones during the renaissance era that happens between the succession wars era (where this game takes place) and the Clan Invasions era. They just end up being behind when the clans invade because the clans didn't have tech decay for 500 years like the IS did.

Edit: To give an idea of how far the clans are out, here's the universe map from MekHQ circa 2981. (The clans are that rainbow mess at the top.)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Flying Dice]

Every time someone mentions Mercs I pine for my Shadowcat.  Battletech is literally the only other game I've played in the universe and it does not have my favorite mech of all time.

Here's a question for folks who might know more of the lore, if everyone is basically using the same old technology how does clan have access to mechs no-one has seen before?  Do they actually know how to make new mech designs from scratch?  And if they can why can't anyone else?

Because Aleksandr Kerensky took eighty percent of the surviving SLDF and fucked off out of the Inner Sphere to uncharted space.

That included most of humanity's operational WarShips, and more than 1,300 JumpShips, along with a vast quantity of SLDF material.

In short: the Clans were originally colonies founded by the remnants of the SL military. They suffered (with some exceptions) very little high-intensity warfare, giving them the opportunity to continue building from what they saved.

Meanwhile the Inner Sphere spent 400-odd years getting torn apart by massive interstellar wars before the Clan Invasion. The Great Houses burned up pretty much everything that was left of the old Terran Hegemony's infrastructure. Worlds were razed left and right, industrial centers buried or destroyed to deny them to enemies, supply lines cut, irreplaceable equipment and weapons destroyed either directly or as collateral damage. Much of the Inner Sphere had, by 3025, regressed to various levels of pre-spaceflight civilization, kept in contact with the rest of humanity only by occasional JumpShip visits.

Very long story made very short: SLDF took a bunch of material and ran away, then all the crazy assholes trying to slip onto the throne after the fall of House Cameron tore apart pretty much every piece of functional advanced industry and military material left in explored space in their attempts to beat their neighbors into submission. The real build-up happens later, after the rediscovery of the Helm Core by the GDL in 3028, just after the time when this game is set. Bear in mind, a decent chunk of the 'mechs in 3025 were new creations, albeit often ones made to fill roles formerly occupied by 'mechs that couldn't be repaired or replaced. Case in point, the Cataphract was a frankenmech the Cappies developed in 3025 using parts from (I think) three 'mechs which they could still produce.

[Hanzoku]

The universe suffers a great deal of whiplash as it advances from 3025 to 3050+. Basically, it's the result of the writers shifting from a 'in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only Mad Max style FrakenMechs left because everything has been bombed to shit, and your 'Mechs are barely functional patched together 200+ year old hulks fighting over the last scraps of fallen empires' to a noble bright 'look, thousands of new 'Mechs and dozens of new designs walking off the lines within five years, and everything is getting better if it wasn't for those Clanner scum coming to take over!'