Learning about the Battle of Tukayyid | Battletech Reaction

[@Kasigil0]

Member of the BPL here, start with the amaris civil war videos

[@TheDarkkilla12]

That’s two essays of videos to get into. But I agree, and time should be taken to watch it at a steady pace, it’s a lot to digest.

[@hitomisalazar4073]

I'd suggest the Mackie video myself. Since it covers the rise of the Battlemech and the state of things before Star League as a grounding foundation.

[@michealcormier2555]

Honestly the Tripitz video would be the best video to cover next. It's shorter and it explains the machinations of Comstar to explain how they managed to pull off what they did at Tukayyid. But, the Amaris Civil War videos are important. They're very long, though, so I don't know if there's a capability to cover them like the two Battletech videos now done. Maybe it it's done in parts..... But, I'm enjoying how someone is discovering a universe for the first time.

[@joemomma2189]

What is hilarious, is that The Clans and ComStar? they are both that last surviving remnants of the Star League, twisted and bastardize (or maybe not, Star League was essentially the Roman Empire, and we both know its Golden Age wasn't pure). If you have the time, listen to the Stringstorm song 'Tukayyid'. They literally call them 'Their Fearsome Brothers of Three Centuries Divide' The Clans are the surviving remnants of the SLDF (Star League Defense Force) that left with the man, the myth, the legend Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky. The SLDF had been reduced to 10% of its pre-war strength, but even then, it was a massive force, and a full 90% of that left with Kerensky, along with almost all remnants of the Star League Government, Tech, and Researchers. ComStar was built on the remains of SL ComNet, which manages the HPG Network and its last official head was Jerome Blake, who is a subject that would take me an hour to type out, but in essence they became ComStar along with a good chunk of the SLDF that chose to stay (some became mercenaries, but this was the largest chunk) under the command of Lauren Hayes, who lead the 151st Royal Battlemech Division.

[@sanguiniusonvacation1803]

And a few mercs running around.

[@bthsr7113]

I wouldn't recommend Stringstorm. There's better nerdcore out there, and they're... problematic.

[@dj11o9er]

​@@bthsr7113 The whole Stringstorm thing is taken care of, and it's history.

[@bthsr7113]

@@dj11o9er Don't know about that, and again, there's better nerdcore out there. With more variety, higher quality, and less laziness.

[@AB-ln2py]

Always pay your Bills...

[@cropathfinder]

A detail that i'm sad Tex left out about Focht is this, i forget which book this is. But it was during a post battle debrief of the battle of Tukayyid and Focht was questioned what would happen if the clanner scouts that were passing right on top of his command bunker had found it. Focht's reply boils down to that he would suit up into his 100 tonne Atlas II assault and jam their long range comms . Meanwhile he would personally keep challenging them to single combat dangling the honor of being able to take out the enemy supreme commander until they were either all dead or he fell. As long as that bunker and its advanced command and control computers were coordinating the battle COMSTAR enjoyed insane levels of battlefield awareness and coordination and them even dragging the duels out to buy time to keep those running was a victory. I think that's yet another testament to his character.

[@claytonhess5512]

Airier actually brought up another point about Focht's strategy: they didn't really have to win outright, they just had to grind them down to where they couldn't even afford to take on the Great Houses.

[@punpundit5590]

In the Battletech universe, when the Star League - basically the united Inner Sphere - fell, there was all out war. War between people who wanted to rule the whole thing, called the "succession wars". And they attacked each others' research facilities and industrial centers. Thus, most high tech was lost knowledge - known as LosTech in universe. Wars are fought over this lost technology. The Clans were basically a splinter group that left before the succession wars, formed their own insular little society far away from the Inner Sphere, and got down to fighting 'mech duels over every little thing. The Inner Sphere organizes units a bit haphazardly. 4 'mechs to a Lance, 3 Lances to a Company, 3 companies to a Batallion, lots of other various levels. The Clans organize units in "stars" of 5 'mechs (or 'mech-equivalent); stars are organized into various 2-6 star units with various cool star-like names such as "trinary" or "supernova", 5 of these units are then a "Cluster", 5 clusters are a "Galaxy". That's full strength though, usually it's a bit less in practice. But! Clans "bid down" to get their way. "You need three Galaxies? I can do it with 2 Galaxies and a Supernova" and so on. And when they bid down to a prestigious engagement, they cut away the chaff, the green warriors, the inexperienced commanders. And they just bring their best, because within this honor system they still want to eke out every advantage. They want to win, but look like they were the underdog the whole time. Comstar, with their superior communications technology, organize their units in 6s. A "Level I" is a single 'mech (or 'mech-equivalent, such as 36 infantry or a tank or a plane). A "level II" is 6 Level I. A "Level III" is 6 Level II. 6 of those is a Level IV, and six of those is a Level V, the largest unit - which is 6*6*6*6, or 1296 'mechs or 'mech equivalents.

[@andreykardashov6343]

6:21 interseting fact is this canonical, memorable, and supper important battle was irl decided tunament fashion by actual players who acted out each clan and each opposing unit. This history was made by players on actual tabletops.

[@Sorain1]

You have to wonder how the Smoke Jaguar player feels about that.

[@Mechabang]

​@@Sorain1 🥲

[@claytonhess5512]

​@@Sorain1🤣🤣🤣

[@nitesy381]

give us the battle report. i wanna read it.

[@theguywiththename888]

So my favorite little bit of lore from the clan invasion is set on the quiet world of Sheliak in 3051, a planet of such little worth that when the clans landed there was no military garrison on planet to speak of. So the government decided they’d issue the clans a different type of challenge, and challenged them to an ancient Terran game called “American football”, thinking the invaders from beyond known space would know nothing about it. Unfortunately for the Sheliak government, the invading clan was Clan Ghost Bear, and they fucking love football, and bad news for the home team, the 8ft tall power armor operating “elemental” shock troops are the ones that play football for the Ghost Bears. Sheliak lost 84-3.

[@Spymaster001]

Lol clan ghost bear just said skill issue to them lol

[@magni5648]

@@Spymaster001 The Ghost Bears also paid mad respect to that entire football team, both for sticking it out the whole match and for doing an insane play to get that field goal for pride's sake.

[@arsenalxa4421]

Strongest Inner Sphere Linebacker vs weakest Ghost Bear Linebacker.

[@ShasOFish]

@@magni5648 worth mentioning that the Ghost Bears went even as far as to offer the Sheliak quarterback membership in the Clan solely so that he could coach them in football once they figured out what the Sheliak team was doing for the 3 points. Also worth mentioning that the Rasalhague American Football League would eventually be started, with the Bears as active (and enthusiastic) participants.

[@Sh1tbagActual]

@@ShasOFishRasalhague and Ghostbear is absolutely the most wholesome result of the clan invasion. IIRC they are to date the only Clan which reintegrated into the inner sphere fully.

[@Kalebfenoir]

One thing that also helped contribute to the Clans defeat on Tukayyid was that the Clans had geared themselves for high intensity, short duration battle. Which meant a lot of their mechs were rigged with autocannons, missiles, and other stuff that required ammunition. In the past, they HAD steamrolled their opponents because their tech was better, and they could inflict staggering damage in a short amount of time. They hadn't run into points where they ran out of ammo before they ran out of opponents. Tukayyid was different. They went in with that same 'Fast Blitzkrieg' mentality... but were forced to draw it out over DAYS. When you're used to fighting battles that maybe, MAYBE last hours, so you just pour all your effort in at once, you run into difficulty when it lasts longer. Which it did. Oh, did it ever. It's kinda hard to fight when your Ultra AC/20 ran out of ammo 5 days ago, in the first battle, because you doubletapped every single time you pulled the trigger in your FIRST engagement. LoL. Their logistics were screwed all to hell because, as the Invaders, they didn't have the ammo reserves they needed to fight that fight, among other things. Even if they HAD had the reserve ammo, they would have bid it away in the Bidding, as a sign of honor in the form of 'I can take my objectives easily without needing resupply'.

[@marley7868]

yeah and regardless shipping that ammo would have been risky hence clan wolf just brought alot of lazers and energy weapons

[@Kalebfenoir]

​@marley7868 and I think they lost honor for it in the process. One of the many reasons they ended up as the last to drop. They didn't hold back good units and didn't bid away much, which left them in a 'poor' position among the other clans. But it helped them achieve their objectives. Which no doubt pissed the others off because they viewed it all as cowardice and fear to bid away.

[@marley7868]

@@Kalebfenoir oh yeah they did but the other clans where demoralized and the only ones that had any pride left was jade falcons and ghost bear granted falcon got a pity draw

[@d112cons]

Comstar held huge reserves of Star League era mechs in secret. The rest of the inner sphere suffered a major tech regression after centuries of war. Even at 500 years old, their mechs were dramatically better than anything the great houses had left.

[@bthsr7113]

Not quite. The houses had been improving their arsenals in the wake of the Helm Memory Core being shared. So they had Star League level tech, just not military wide.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

11:30 To be fair to the Clans, the Inner Sphere way of doing things is exactly why the Inner Sphere is technologically regressed and backwards. Tends to happen when you blow up your industrial base with nukes. That and Comstar preventing technological research.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

ofc Comstar has a hand in that as well

[@mali5698]

@@TheLegitWeebs They can't be the rulers of a re-established Star League if they let the Great Houses get ahead. ComStar's and the Federated Sun's respective Secret Services actually got into a Shadow War because of that mandate.

[@Jonnyg325]

​@@TheLegitWeebs SSSSHHHHHHH, IT'S A SECRET, but yeah comstar us levels of fucked up even the Admech would be disturbed by

[@reecedignan8365]

@@TheLegitWeebs *PRAISE BLAKE*

[@MiriOhki]

@@TheLegitWeebsyep. Operation: HOLY SHROUD was... disturbing.

[@EndlessInfinity1]

16:26 keep in mind that the Clanner way is to settle a conflict with a small-scale duel (or a squad vs squad) as a "trial", as opposed to the total war the IS was fighting throughout the succession wars. Also worth noting is the clans that won basically went "if these guys aren't fighting with honour than neither will we"

[@marley7868]

that said they had a bad habbit of not telling people there terms of engagement ahead of time then complaining that they didn't obey or understand there rules also the uh clanners really cheated and got lucky since they were rushing what is effectivly deescalated border zones since raselhaque sorta meant that steiner and kurita didn't need proper armies on the border and well raselhaque mainly did light raids on occasions so it took awhile for the armies to redeploy from there other untrustworthy neighbors

[@frankb3347]

The Clanners win battles. The Inner Sphere win wars.

[@oldeskul]

Even before Tukayyid, the war was slowly turning against the clans, Tukayyid was the big f-u nail in that clanner's coffin. In the Inner Sphere, it had been a common tactic among MechWarriors for hundreds of years to close in on your enemy with all guns blazing until you were in knife fighting range, then start throwing hands. Often they'd throw multiple 'Mechs at their enemy, hitting them, with both guns and fists/feet from every angle possible until their enemy was destroyed or they were destroyed. The clans preferred to face their enemy in one-on-one fights where they'd fire at each other at range, purposefully avoiding intentionally targeting the cockpit, until one yielded. It was essentially ritualized combat. They would even have a third who would stand to the side and serve as a referee. On one side you had an enemy who had genetically engineered warriors who were specifically engineered for specific traits, on the other side you had an enemy who were the survivors of 4 incredibly destructive wars that often saw the tech base of entire worlds bombed back into the stone age, sometimes with the fire of weapons of mass destruction.

[@gibberingmouther710]

Clan Wolf were the last one's to drop a full 5 days after the initial invasion. Of course they were the only ones to achieve their objective they had time to pay attention and adjust. Ghost Bear dropping 3rd and still managing to force a draw is more impressive in my opinion.

[@marley7868]

and jade falcon just threatened to keep fighting unless they got a pitty draw so they didn't lose too much prestige

[@tenchraven]

The Wolves also had folks like Natasha saying "they aren't like us, this is what they'd do" and because of her bloodname people listened.

[@voidofhope6259]

The Wolves were also secretly trying to sabotage the invasion itself. They were against it.

[@Beriorn]

It's not all failure when a Batchal (which is just shorthand for Battle Challenge) gets called. One time a Draconis Combine world under Clan Ghost Bear attack had a plan: they would challenge the Clanners to a game. If the Clanners lost they would leave and swear an oath to never attack the planet again. But if they'd win they'd be given control over the planet with no resistance. The game in question? American Football, an ancient and obscure game that only a few people still played in the Inner Sphere. Now, while this was a very clever plan it encountered a snag when A: the Clanners had a few people who still played this game as a hobby and team building exercise and B: the Clanners in question were Elementals. Now, Elementals are the pilots of the exosuits of the same name whose primary tactic against Battlemechs is to swarm them, use their jump jets to jump into the Mech's cockpit and blast the pilot directly. Elementals are also genetically engineered to be about 8' super soldiers, on average a full head taller than a Space Marine. And these muscle mountains went up against the unaugmented players of the Draconis Combine. Let's just say that you'd have more luck trying to tackle a brick wall. Victory for Clan Ghost Bear!

[@A88mph]

One of my favorite anecdotes in the setting. The planet that tried to pull a "Space Jam."

[@dj11o9er]

Meanwhile the Clanners played fair and square. Not a single cheating moment. The world did score a few times, but still got absolutely dominated

[@miss_bec]

And in the aftermath, it wasn't all bad. If you're about to have your world conquered by a clan, Ghost Bear is probably one of the better ones. At least they won't raze you out of a petty tantrum [glares at Smoke Jaguar]

[@SSKazega]

19:40 A Galaxy is an Army. Clan Army organization is based on "Stars" a Star is made of 5 points, a point is a Mech, Tank, VTOL, or Infantry squad A Nova is a Star of Mechs with a Star of Infantry Support , these are rarely used. 2 Stars make a Binary (10 Mechs), 3 Stars Make a Trinary (15 mechs) A Super Nova is a 2 or 3 Nova, again these are rarely used A Cluster is 3-5 Binaries or Trinaries (30-75 Mechs plus supporting assets like transportation and Logistical support) a Galaxy is usually 3-5 Clusters (90-400 Mechs plus supporting assets, Command Center and command structure) In this instance Clan Smoke Jaguar committed well over 750 Mechs/Tanks and VTOLS. They committed the least amount of their invasion force so they can be the first ones on the planet. All the Other clans: Nova Cat, Steel Viper, Diamond Shark, Ghost Bear, Jade Falcon, and Wolf, committed more than this. That's 4,500 Mechs if they all brought the same as Smoke Jaguar, and the others brought more. 24:00 Clans are highly Tribal. Clan Jade Falcon hates Clan Wolf and Clan Ghost bear is content to just enjoy some hot tea while Clan Smoke Jaguar makes an mockery of itself. Clans were developed by competing on the Clan Homeworlds, During the Clan Invasion, rather than work together to get to Terra faster, they spread out in order to maximize the Honor and Glory they would attain for their respective Blood Heritages by conquering more space than their rivals. This all came to a head at Tukayyid where they would work to make the their clan win more than the other clans. And you are correct. Comstar's commander studied the Clan War Philosophies and used all of this against them. The Clans should have won if they worked together, but they just couldn't

[@marley7868]

such as clan wolf giving away intel and the other clans simply not underbidding there starting drop and taking this battle seriously

[@EndlessInfinity1]

24:17 the worst part is they *did* know - clan smoke jaguar lost when they tried to take Luthien, the capital of the Draconis Combine, and they got lead into a massive minefield among other shenanigans

[@stevenclark2188]

I almost wonder if letting the Dragoons onto the planet was as much for bait as anything else.

[@EmperorPylades]

Part of the problem is that the Jaguars were, even by Clan standards, absolute raving psychos. Their arrogance and bloodlust made the Jade Falcons look sane.

[@bthsr7113]

@@EmperorPylades And their vindictiveness... well just look up Turtle Bay on Sarna...

[@KrawmKruach]

if i remember correctly, the battle for tukayyid was an scenario that was played by the player base who then mailed in their battle reports and FASA used those to determine the victor in lore. in essence the battles recorded are the results of player battles, which is pretty freaking cool way to do things.

[@claytonhess5512]

In short: "Players, YOU decide the fate of the Inner Sphere!"

[@Yacovo]

Smoke Jaguar wound up being completely destroyed after this. Thanks for the video.

[@moriskurth628]

19:40 A Galaxy is, in Clan terms, their largest military formation, kinda comparable to a Brigade, or roughly 2000 men on average, though they can be much smaller or bigger than that, depending on what's inside of it, as their smallest component unit, the Point, can be either 1 Mech, 1 Aerospace Fighter, 2 Combat Vehicles (Tanks, APCs, Hovercraft, etc.), or a squad of 5 Elementals (Power-Armored, genetically-enhanced Infantry), which can mess with the numbers quite a bit. The Clanners have this weird thing where they name their different formations after celestial bodies, except for their smallest, going Point, Star, Nova, Binary, Trinary, Supernova, Cluster, and Galaxy. So I understand the confusion. Everyone else in the setting, like the Great Houses, mostly uses normal unit names, like Squad, Platoon, Company, Regiment, and so on. Even if the "Lance" thing for Mechs stands out.

[@dj11o9er]

Tbf the usage of lance is often. Iirc mechs and vehicles both use the lance term, as for them the lance essentially forms a platoon of these type of things. Lance is four, vehicle platoons are four iirc, so it works

[@plaguegroup7066]

Great video, and a great starting point. Please note, that the BPL mech videos give a lot of background, and world building.

[@elchjol2777]

Much of this Lost Technology was in the process of being recreated,but that process was not complete by the time of the invasion. Thus assembly lines for this soon to not be lost tech were not ready. Meaning any mech with original Star League components was invaluable sincen Star League tech is just behind Clan tech at the time of the battle. A mech with Star League weapons and armor is a near peer adversary to a Clan mech where as a more common Inner sphere mech would stand little chance due to lack of weapon range and heat ineffectivecies. Also when he said Khans,those are basically national leaders for the clans. Each one that died cut the very topmost head off the serpent more or less. Thus chain of command went out the window.

[@unlucky2day451]

Gotta love some good old asymmetric warfare

[@taemien9219]

Eight years later, the Houses of the Innersphere formed the 2nd Star League. One of their actions was to invade the clan home worlds and annihilate Clan Smoke Jaguar before throwing down a Trial of Refusal at the Clan capital world and won. Tukayyid and later Operations Bulldog and Serpent crushed the clans to a point of not really being a threat for nearly a century. The clans did make a come back however, and the repercussions are still being explored in new content.

[@marley7868]

just please note the ilkhan is kinda dumb and more half baked than the jihad which is also dumb and halfbaked and both come from someone in a boardroom saying we need to advance the setting and they do it in away that reads like skipping 1860-1980 in a history book and the only things there explaining things are like 5 bullet points

[@dj11o9er]

Wait, the Inner Sphere actually counter invaded? Ngl I never knew this

[@taemien9219]

@@dj11o9er Yep, MechCommander and MechWarrior 3 covered part of this. MechCommander focused on Operation Bulldog which liberated Draconis Combine worlds held by Smoke Jaguar, and MechWarrior 3 took place on Tranquil during the tail end of Operation Serpent, the last mech production facility world of Smoke Jaguar, as well as eliminated Brenden Corbett before he could reconsolidate the remaining forces. Operation Serpent culminated with The Great Refusal at Strana Mechty where the Second SLDF forces fought against the Crusader clans in a small version of Tukayyid, this time it was a straight up trial and not a killing field. The Inner Sphere forces won after Archon-Prince Victor Steiner-Davion beheaded Smoke Jaguar Khan Lincoln Osis in one on one combat with a katana (mind you Osis was of the Elemental phenotype). That effectively ended the Clan Invasion.

[@nemamiah7832]

There is actually a rulebook for this called "Battle of Tukayyid" with complete rules, "tracks" - mission, tables for building your forces and tons of lore. A lot of goodness. Me and my friend maybe played it for months each Friday for months. A lot of fun.

[@ShasOFish]

We’re playing through the Jade Falcon set of missions right now. It’s a terrible amount of fun. Doubly so because they did a great job of emphasizing the asssymetric aspect of it. That river crossing is absolutely murderous. 5 turns is not a lot of time, but absolutely bloody.

[@nemamiah7832]

@@ShasOFish We've found that it's very tough on Clanners, generally speaking. Because, boy they are outnumbered. Especially at the higher number of points, where a Binary can find itself fighting 4 Level IIs. Very much an uphill battle for Clanners all the way. What makes it worse is the fact that pilots get better over time, but that doesn't actually affect the pointcost of units, so if Clanners fail to eliminate enemy mechs efficiently enough or headcap good pilots, they lose the Skill edge over time by the end of the campaign

[@nemamiah7832]

@@ShasOFish Biggest saving grace for Clanners is the amount of Sentinels in ComStar RATs :D The do not perform.

[@thegeneralmitch]

Clanners: "What's the fastest way to terra?" Comstar: **racks shotgun** "back the way ya came!"

[@vykryl65]

Should probably watch the 2 part Amaris Civil War vids. They set the stage for this video

[@paulkleihege1509]

Beyond even the initial shock of the loss, this battle continued to defeat the clans for a generation of warriors to come. Especially in the books in the aftermath, you see younger clanners disregard and disrespect those few surviving veterans of Tukkayid because to them, that loss was the fault of poor warriors and poor leadership, not the fault of Clan ways. The damage Focht did on that sleepy farming world broke the Clans so badly, not o ly did it set up Smoke Jaguar's utter destruction, it would be the first seed planeted that would sprout the Wars of Reaving and the ultimate and bloody split of clanner ideals. Come the IlClan era, only a ha dful of Clans still exist within the Inner Sphere, and while they are a force to reckon with to be sure, they truly aren't any more special than any of the other great houses. Focht dealt the mortal blow that killed their whole way of life.

[@Atlas3060]

The negotiation for the 15 year truce was actually a neat moment in the novel. Originally Focht asked for a completely end to the war. Ulric said no, his people live for this quite literally. Ulric's counter proposal was barely a year, quite generous in Clanner terms. Focht then asked for a century, Ulric said no to that "A century? I could sell the Grand Council the idea of forever sooner than I could a century. Five years." Focht brought it down to 60, Ulric countered 10. "We are but mayflies to you" he said to Focht, because of how the Clans value lives and longevity. "We are tortoises" Agreed Focht and eventually the negotiations were settled on 15 years. 13:20 A lot of those Mechs Comstar had were ancient, centuries old. It's ironic that these titans of war probably stood on the very ground to protect Terra from the Amaris Civil War that killed the Star League, only to be reused in yet another war by forces looking to save Terra once more from a group proclaiming themselves the Star League reborn. These old war horses have seen more sunrises and sunsets than any warrior sitting in their command chairs. 24:00 The Clans were at a disadvantage fighting not only Comstar but competing with each other. Think of it like a toxic MOBA team where it's you versus 9 other players in a supposedly 5v5 game. Tukayyid became a cursed name, a world the Clanners hated. It wrecked their culture, shattered some souls, caused some Clans to rethink everything. It also showed the power of Comstar, it showed the Inner Sphere what they could do. They weren't just the shadowy funny phone company. They were a force to be reckoned with, for better or worse. Even a century later in game, the hushed voices speak of Tukayyid still. 29:40 Your thoughts on this ever happening to the Clans again in the future. You're slightly wrong, it happened twice. Once when the revived Star League came to Smoke Jaguar's territory to utterly destroy them. The second time in what's called the Wars of Reaving. That's another harrowing battle for another soul scarring time. Let's just say Clanners don't do well with hurt feelings, they take them out on each other in very deadly ways. So deadly in fact the survivors don't like talking about it to outsiders.

[@EndlessInfinity1]

13:17 100% yes. So, 300-500ish years before this, all the great houses decided to form a mutual alliance centred around the, now extinct, central Terran Hegemony called "Star League". This was all good until there was a massive civil war that lead to Star League dissolving, Star League's military going into exile, and all the remaining great houses nuking eachother in the hopes of rebuilding Star League with them on the throne - 4 seperate Succession Wars. Because industrial centers were prime targets and production became so specialized, the inner sphere lost a lot of its tech (eg. Hard to build a gauss rifle when the planet that handled building the specialized magnets is now radioactive glass). Comstar, I should note, hoarded all the tech they could and often facilitated its public destruction.

[@cropathfinder]

Just to clarify some things. But Clan Wolf (ignoring their mary sue status) did actually try to warn the other clans to amend their tactics and thinking for the battle and it ignore the bidding and just put all their forces in. All the other clans in all their pride and hubris told them to fuck off (that is me putting it politely). Guess which clan is the only one to fully complete their objectives, it was wolf tho even then i have to clarify that wolf only won as well as they did because when they dropped they were only facing nearly completely depleted units that Comstar had pulled off the other battles. A good IRL comparison would be Operation Overlord with Clan Wolf being the allies who yes faced German "divisions" but those were divisions in name only as all were undermanned and often filled up with osttruppen and barely functional soldiers sent to france to rest. In other cases there were armored units with no tanks or any armor and some that did had woefully obsolete interwar equipment and even then they had few machines that were barely functional and had other problems besides like crews lacking training on those machines. Once you know that it really puts how inept the allies were that with all the advantages they still struggled against such forces.

[@reecedignan8365]

13:35 So to talk on here In the Inner Sphere, there was a technological *BOOM* under the united coalition of the 5 Great Houses and Terran Hegemony known as the Star League (the periphery were brought in under… more forceful means). During the star league era, tech did see an upswing with stuff like Guass Rifles, Pulse Lasers and ER lasers, AMS, CASE, etc. tho even tho this was stuff found it wasn’t common, even by the end of the Star League you’d likely only find this commonly in the Royal Regiments of Star League and uncommonly amongst the standard line and rarely in the houses when they got the handful of chances to acquire such tech. After the collapse of the Star League and the looting of its essential corpse, the 5 Great Houses essentially grabbed as much tech and designs as possible and put em through the ringer to pump out enough stuff for the coming succession wars. You can even look at the difference between their 2750 armies and their 2778 armies at the start of the succession wars, the houses in many cases expanded their armies almost trips the size. Well… so began the 1st succession wars and… so began the use of nuclear, chemical and radiological weapons (essentially choose a mass scale weapon of war and it was there) and soon that technological boom started to falter as “asset denial” became a common thing towards the middle and latter states. Entire factory’s instead of being captured were getting hit by nukes to deny their opposing house access to them and some final bits of tech that were once rare in the star league era became completely lost as their last remaining factory lines and engineers were turned to radioactive ash. And that’s not the worst. By the end of the 1st there was a heavy decline but something that could be recovered from. The 2nd and the actions of both House and the newly religiously zealed ComStar (Blake passed away by the end of the 1st succession war and his essential protege turned ComStar into a full on religious order who venerated him, and one of their main acts was to essentially reduce the IS back to such a technological decline that when they were ready, ComStar would step from the shadows and bring them back from the technological collapse as saviours and heroes with the house leaders overthrown). And as such with the second succession wars, those uncommon items became gone. Tech such as Gauss Rifles, pulse lasers, CASE, AMS, everything slightly more technical than just your basic everyday equipment was lost in hellish fire and destruction. Even the final warships of the Inner Sphere went down in flames and the destruction of so many jumpships actually forced the rule between all houses that Jumpships were not allowed to be destroyed by any reason as they literally couldn’t replace them as fast as they’d be lost. Even Battlemechs went from being a common line unit to essentially rare hand me down with entire conflicts and raids by the end of the 2nd and during the 100+ years of the 3rd being over just recovering enough parts to keep your mechs up and running properly. And yes, due to the mass technology fall out, the era of the end of the late 2nd succession war and essentially the full 3rd succession war became known as the Lostech era, where low intensity and low tech warfare was common - low tech for the sphere anyway. You still had aerospace fighters, dropships, Battlemechs and stuff like small, medium and large lasers and PPC’s , autocannons, lrms and srms, but nothing overly technical. It actually became a quite notable thing when units came across advanced tech (known as lostech) which gave them a boon. The discovery of an old Star League cash of a double heat sinks able to equip 1 battlemech was something enough to potentially get you a noble title at times. It wouldn’t be until 3025 and the unfortunate events on Helm, that the mercenary unit The “Grey Death Legion” led by Grayson Death Carlyle (first book series ever published in Battletech) found the Helm Memory Core, a artifact created by some of the last Star League members who pulled as much scientific and technological knowledge into a single memory core to be preserved before leaving their hidden fortress with notes for it to be one day located… which were practically turned into a nuclear no go zone for 200 odd years after a kuritan fleet couldn’t discover the sight so just left the planet a nuclear hellscape. It was through sheer luck the GDL discovered them and instead of just keeping them ransom let em free to everyone - there’s reason and I’d suggest reading the books further (trilogy is known as the Grey Death trilogy; Decisions at Thunder Rift; Mercenary Star; Price of Glory;). And yeah from that point onwards it’s a very slow advancement again into tech. It’s not like everyone gets everything back immediately even basic stuff in later eras such as Double Heat Sinks aren’t fully developed again until around 3040 and even by the time of the clans, only the top elite amongst the houses have any percentage of them and even by the time of the FedCom Civil war in the 3060’s while more common, you’ll still find it’s maybe only a 50/50 split for most regular units between double and single. As for the difference between clan and Inner Sphere. Well here’s a few examples I think show it well. A standard IS medium laser in table top does 5 damage, produces 3 heat per trigger pull, and has a short range of 3, medium 6, and long 9. A Clan standard ER medium laser which is their standard laser, does 7 damage, produces 4 hear and has a short range of 5, medium 10, long 15. Another example. An Inner Sphere LRM 10 rack does 1 damage per missile, produces 3 heat per shot, and has a minimum range of 6 (firing under minimum five’s penalty’s to hit) short of 6, medium of 12 and a long of 18. A clan LRM 10 does, 1 damage per missile, 3 heat per pull, however has no minimum range, short of 8, medium 16 and long 22. And even more basic. A Inner Sphere double heat sink takes up 3 critical spaces inside your mech, a Clan Double Heat sink only takes up 2. Clan Ferro-Fibrous Armour and Endo Steel give more armour and structure to a mech than IS ones do and take up less critical space on a mech. Oh and while all IS mechs have to waste critical space installing CASE or risk turning into a fireball when their ammunition stores get struck, all Clan mechs start with it immediately with no space or tonnage needed for install. So yeah just some basic examples as to show the difference and there are much more. So Comstar throwing the stuff they hoarded from the Star League era out is essentially like in this modern age, everyone’s been reduced to fighting with WW2 stuff, and you pull out all the Cold War stuff to fight the guys using stuff we’re using today.

[@NamNguyen-sz4yq]

Both IS and Clan LRM 10 have the almost same stat (10 missles ,1 damage per missle, 4 heat per pull, Short range of 7, medium of 14 and long of 21 although as u say Clan LRM don't suffer from minimum range penalty) Clan LRM 10 however literally weigh as mush as half of IS LRM 10

[@reecedignan8365]

@@NamNguyen-sz4yq Cheers, I couldn’t remember if I was getting them mixed up or not (on phone so if I went and back out and checked… yeah I’d pretty much lose everything I was writing so was going off memory).

[@mkang8782]

Slight correction: the clan homeworlds were relatively resource *poor*, which is part of the reason they developed their ritualistic way of combat. It was to minimize the materiel losses.

[@landrum3893]

13:00. Yes. Before the Invasion of the Clans, the 5 great houses of the Inner Sphere went through 4 Succession Wars where they bombed, destroyed and murdered themselves back to the 1980s especially the Second Succession War which was the most lawless and devastating by far. All the amazing technology was lost for two hundred years ( called lostech) but was slowly starting to return as the houses turned to "kill the meat, save the metal" tactics and uncovered caches of technology and memory cores from the past. When the Clans invaded, they still out classed the Inner Sphere tech by far except for Comstar who had preserved Star League era tech.

[@WolfHreda]

It might not be great for reaction content, but you definitely need to get into their two-parters. The Star League/Amaris Civil War outlines inarguably the most important event in the setting's history. And then the follow-up, From Exodus to Elementals, explains the origin and history of The Clans. They're beautiful. Fun fact: Several milestones in the fiction were canonized after officially sanctioned tabletop tournaments determined their outcome. There was one last year or so to determine the outcome of a battle in the most recent era, the ilClan era. Just another reason Battletech is better than 40k. Our timeline grows and expands. Clan units are organized from bottom to top like this: 1 Point 1 Star (5 Points) Binary/Trinary (2/3 Stars, respectively) Cluster (3-5 Binaries/Trinaries) Galaxy (2-6 Clusters, though more often 3-5)

[@boxtank5288]

OK so here's the measurements: A Lance of Clanners is 5 Mechs (Or 10 Aerospace/Tanks or 125 Infantry), it is called a 'Star' There are 2 Stars to a Binary (A light company basically) and 3 in a Trinary (Add 5 more for the Reinforced Company) 3-5 Trinarys for a Cluster (A Battalion basically) And 3-5 Clusters for a Galaxy (A whole ass BRIGADE) the Touman is just the sum total of ALL of that clan's forces so it can be ignored for this.

[@NewTypeDilemma01]

Actually, resources were relatively scarce in Clan Space, so to resolve disputes, the Clans developed a whole "Trial of Possession" system to determine who had access to what worlds and resources - the idea was that Clans "bid" on a world, with whoever bid the least amount of forces having the first crack at taking a world from a rival Clan. While the Clans have more advanced tech than the Inner Sphere, they don't really have the number of factories to outlast a war of attrition. The Clans knew honorable duels, while the forces of the Inner Sphere knew 300 years of _war._ While taken off-guard at the sudden invasion of 3049, tricky wartime tactics and a robust industrial base kept the Inner Sphere from folding outright. While the Inner Sphere had regained access to LosTech (Lost Technology that hadn't been widely proliferated prior to the Succession Wars, most of it disappearing with the dismantling of the Star League Defense Force), those alone were not alone to turn the tide of the invasion. In total, prior to the Battle of Tukayyid, the Inner Sphere survived five waves of the Clan invasion. As it turned out, Comstar was hoarding more LosTech than any other power in the Inner Sphere. The Battle of Tukayyid was simply the nail in the coffin.

[@NinjaLayor]

Since you posed the question about galaxies of mechs: the clans organize their forces in teams of five called stars. They can then be organized as binaries or trinaries, consisting of 2 or 3 stars, respectively. The next unit size is a Cluster, which is 3-5 binaries or trinaries. A Galaxy is 3-5 clusters. So a Galaxy is somewhere between 90 to 750 mechs, and that doesn't include the supporting logistical forces.

[@dunkirklexington6802]

sarah weaver is the sakhan of ghost jaguar aka there second in command after the main khan but she was in command of beta galaxy at tukayyid

[@jgraaay18]

Garth Radick was saKhan, deputy/junior Khan, of Clan Wolf, and Sarah Weaver was saKhan of Clan Smoke Jaguar. Hence why Tex points out that the clans straight-up lost two Khans on the field of battle. Junior Khans, technically, rather than the Khans who are the absolute head of a Clan.

[@Brendan1259]

There is a campaign setting for Tukayyid, you play scenarios around the main events.

[@WarhawkTalon]

To clarify some things about the Clans: They had better tech, and better trained pilots. But they didn't really have the numbers advantage. Even one of the Great Houses could have outnumbered them if all their forces were brought to bear. But they couldn't afford to gather their forces like that, or thier neighbors would jump on the opportunity. 6:10 good spot there. Funny thing, the Battle of Tukayyid's results were based on a series of actual Battetech game events. The battle between Comstar and the Clans happened on tabletop before it was translated and transcribed into lore.

[@Arcalargo]

Two truths in the BattleTech Universe: Pulse Lasers go Wub Wub Clanners will always be able to be lead into an ambush for honors sake

[@professorsponge1554]

Comstar owns/operates: The HPG network (so all interstellar communication. you type something into a computer: comstar knows it) the Mercenary Star (all mercenary companies essentially are reviewed, penalized, and legally assisted by this group.) C-bills (the standard currency for the setting) and at one point they had a body double of Thomas Marik controlling the Free Worlds League. He would later have a daughter who would rebuild the League after its dissolution.

[@jerrywalters8885]

Clan units. 1 unit is a point. 5 points is a star. 2 stars a binary 3 a trinary. A cluster 2 to 5 binary or trinary. 3 to 5 clusters a galaxy

[@MrPikaGammer]

6:20 "There you go, you have your objectives for a potential table top game already." Funny you say that, the Black Pants Legion actually ran a Tukayyid game through table top simulator!

[@EndlessInfinity1]

19:44 1 mech - point 5 mechs - star 2 or 3 stars - binary or trinary Several binaries/trinaries (usually 3-5) - galaxy

[@magni5648]

Cluster, actually. Several Clusters for a Galaxy.

[@EndlessInfinity1]

​@@magni5648 thanks! I knew that seemed small

[@jeremypintsize7606]

It's more Camarón than Alamo, there was survivors in both sides

[@e-train765]

As the saying goes "ComStar tends NOT to fuck around."

[@Rannos22]

You really need to do the amaris civil war, but its probably gonna need to be a multi video series

[@connornewell9895]

to answer the question on the using ancient weapons thing, its a bit of yes and no. there was a point of higher technological base, but it wasn't THAT much more advanced. it was stuff like heat sinks that could dissipate 2 times as much heat but took up 3 times the space for the same weight, or lasers that could shoot further, but generated more heat. stuff like that. improved tech, but with its own tradeoffs. also in 3036 a databank called the Helm Memory Core was found that had the blue prints to all this stuff so we had a solid 13 years of making the cool shit again. thing is, the clans never lost their cool shit and spent 2 centuries making the cool shit better instead of bombing their shit out of existence so their cool shit was still cooler than the golden age's cool shit. also the reason comstar had weapons and stuff that hadn't been used in 300 years was cause they were sitting on stockpiles of the golden age's cool shit that they hadn't had much need to use cause they held a massive telecoms shaped gun to the head of the rest of the inner sphere

[@42Mrgreenman]

25:00 ...and what's really crazy is that all Clanner history stems from Star League, and due to their decedents, developed their honorific style of battle...The Star League military left for the outer stars with Gen. Kerenski to avoid war, yet they become the clans...that's why they have all the good stuff... ...and as a comparison on the point of unit size you were confused on, in the clans (IIRC) it goes, Lance (3-5 mechs), Star (2-5 lances), Binary (2 or more stars), Galaxy (2 or more Binaries), and Nova Cat had 3 Galaxies IIRC, and that's not even getting into infantry...clan infantry was literally genetically created to be the best and have power armor called Elementals (Those little guys with the square shoulders), and they are basically tiny mechs, and even a 25 ton scout mech can tear through 100 "Regular" troops that the Inner Sphere usually used...as the pictures, guys with man portable weapons and flak armor...but may have trouble with half-a-dozen Elementals...

[@Archangel1862]

From what I understand the Inner Sphere dwarves Clan space in resource, people, and manufacturing. The only thing the Clan had as an advantage is technology and fighting ability.

[@Demolitiondude]

19:44 how units are tallied. Inner sphere is 4x. 4 mechs per squad. Clans are 5x. 5 mechs per squad aka a star. Comstar are 6x. Level 2 unit is 6 mechs.

[@Icanthas]

The Clans did eventually learn their lesson. Which is more than I can say for a lot of the Great Houses lol. Clan Wolf took Terra eventually with the help of Clan Ghost Bear (Ghost Bear for the win).

[@roguedexx938]

Space AT&T vs. Space Barbarians……PAY YOUR BILL😂🎉😂🎉

[@KingZolem]

The Clans do have superior tech, but they have crap all resources by comparison. The problem is that the Clans were not only centuries of development ahead of their Star League days, but the Inner Sphere had REGRESSED. To give you an idea of how bad it was: when the Clans decided to send infiltratir scouts to see how the IS was doing, they gave the unit outdated museum pieces fit with ojtdated weapon systems so that they could blend in as a down on their luck mercenary company and not stick out. When they got to the IS the unit had some of the most high tech and powerful weapons seen in centuries and became massively famous and the focus of seceral intelligence agencies. They quickly had to scramble a story that they stumbled on an old Star League vault. To giev you an idea of how bad this is in modern terms: imagine we had A1M1 Abrams and were going to investigate a place and wanted a unit that would look like cheap mercenaries so we gave them T-34s from WW2, but when they got there most of the guys were using WW1and Inter-War tanks and stripped down and jurry rigged WW2 tanks on occasion as super weapons. That's basically what the Clans ran into.

[@skyeranger]

23:50 The Clans not talking to each other was one of their biggest Problems. They partly hated each other to the extreme and their stupid code of honor made it even worse. Accepting intel from an other Clan would have been seen as weakness because you would admit that you are not strong and capable enough to deal with the problem on your own, which would have been a giant loss of face. Clan Wolf even used this to fuck with the other Clans. Their Khan's secret goal was to make the invasion fail. They collected intel and adapted to Inner Sphere tactics, even partly ignoring the honor system when necessary, making them very successfull. And they used this success to goat the other Clans by saying "Oh, you have problems, are you a bit behind of use. Here, you can have our intel, that may help you." Which made the other Clans flip the table, deny the intel out of spite and hurt feelings and bash their head against the wall even harder.

[@barontakedownthisguy7794]

This was a fantastic vid. I'd recommend going through the Amaris Civil War two parter and then going into the two parter Clans Primer they lead into each other perfectly.

[@avsbes98]

Oh i so hope that you're gonna continue reacting to Tex talks Battletech (and to Exploring the SCP Foundation). I guess for the beginning just going through the playlist in order would be fine, unless you want to start with significant events and only later turn to the history of specific mechs - in that case i would recommend watching Tex's Videos on the Amaris Civil War next. (Tex talks Battletech went through a significant shift in tone over the years, with the first few videos being mostly short summaries paired with memes and stuff like that, while the latter ones are basically outright documentaries.

[@reecedignan8365]

19:43 yey let’s talk about Inner Sphere and Clan military structure. So the Inner Sphere to this day builds off the Star League standard for its units. 4 Mechs = a Lance 3 Lances = a Company 3 Company’s = a battalion 3 Battalions = a regiment. To note there are some slight variations on this depending on house and state. Examples: House Kurita prefer to build their company’s with 4 Lances and occasionally their Battalions with 4 Company’s. House Davion works there units into an RCT system. 1 Mech Regiment (where the units name comes from) 2-5 Conventional Vehicle Regiments (usually a mix of tracked, hover and VTOL depending on the unit’s requirements/skills - mobile use more hover and VTOL while stand and fight ones use more tracked tanks). 2-5 infantry Regiments (usually made of of a mix of motorised, mechanised, hover, jump and food depending on unit needs. Commonly for most units 2 Regiments are foot and are primarily used for base security). 1-2 Aerospace Wings The Lyran Commonwealth would later adopt these RCT tactics from the Federated Suns when their nations joined marriage and would retain them after their separations. House Marik is also one of the few houses known to utilise mixed lances, with instead off all 4 being of one type, you could see 2 mechs and 2 vehicles carrying 2 infantry platoons inside. While not super common, it was quite standard there. The Capellan Confederation was known for using alot of reinforced lances too both early and late into its time with usually a Lance being reinforced by 2 extra mechs, vehicles or aerospace fighters. This was primarily done as the nations military wasn’t always made up of the most prestigious equipment but more common and easy to manufacture and maintain stuff, so having the extra firepower and numbers helped in engagements. Also to note for the Houses the use of the term brigade is a bit different from our own. In the days of Star League Brigades and Divisions were essentially the same as ours made up by multiple regiments and independent regiments formed into brigades then divisions and then army’s. Since the houses are much much smaller military’s, instead the term brigade usually refers to units of a single name designation. I.e. the Avalon Hussars Brigade, Lyran Guards, Marik Militia, Sword of Light, Capellan Reserve Cavaley, etc. As such while these brigades could contain over a few dozen regiments, each regiment is essentially its own independent unit with supplies, command and resources. - to note house davion and lyrans also use brigade to refer to the grouped support elements in their RCTs so the infantry and armoured elements might both be classed as brigades but it’s mainly so they can have an overall commander for each section that can report to the overall CO vs having the CO having to deal with potentially 12 different regimental commanders alongside his own mech battalion commanders. It’s now reduced down to half.

[@reecedignan8365]

Ok have to do this in two parts. Ok so what about the clans? Well when they went there own way, their new leader Nicholas Kerensky didn’t want his people remembering the days of old with the Star League wanting to crate something different and unique. So he created a new structure for his military. Point - a point is either 1 mech, 2 vehicles, 2 aerospace fighters, 5 elementals or 25 infantry soldiers (note not mixed can only be mech, vehicle, elementals, infantry or aerospace). 5 points = 1 Star (e.g. 5 mechs, 10 aerospace fighters, 25 elementals, etc). Nova = 1 Star of Mechs + 1 Star of Elementals (tho some clans may swap the Elementals for vehicle of aerospace fighters, the most common is elementals). Note this unit while made of 2 stars is considered a single entity by the clans. 2 Stars = a Binary 3 Stars = a Trinary 2 Nova = Supernova Binary 3 Nova = Supernova Trinary 2-6 Binary, Trinary and/or Supernova = 1 Cluster (note you can have a mix of B, T and S and doesn’t have to be equal). 2-6 Clusters = 1 Galaxy. To add into edition on this the Clan rank system is also extremely different from the Inner Sphere. Like today the IS mainly has a conventional rank system we do with just slight differences between nations (I.e. Davions have Subalterns, while Lyrans have Kommondants, etc) However the clan rank system is extremely different and is based on both your initial trial to become a warrior and your ability to earn your way up the ranks through trials of position. So the rank system of the clans goes as noted: Warrior - pretty much everyone who served in the clan warrior caste is this. However this is essentially the lowest rank one can be. Point Commander - commands a point (mostly there for Elementals, Infantry, vehicles and aerospace pilots. Mechwarrior always technically count as point commanders as such just go under warrior). Star Commander - commands a Star Nova Commander - variation on Star Commander but sometimes used to designated who’s the overall commander in a nova. Star Captain - commands a Binary or Trinary Nova Captain - variant on Star Captain and is essentially noted as to who the overall commander of a Supernova is. Star Colonel - commands a cluster tho ones of great skill may be given a Galaxy to command in absence of a Galaxy Commander. Galaxy Commander - commands a Galaxy. LoreMaster - essentially the clans spiritual leader who also keeps track of the Clans bloodnames, each warriors generic history’s and the Clans overall Remembrance (essentially their clan history and deeds). LoreMaster as known to be given command of Galaxy’s as they are warriors themselves too. SaKhan - the second in command of the entire clan. Will command a galaxy in standard operations however is essentially the 2IC of everything so can command multiple galaxy formations if operating in independence from the Khan (I.e. leading two separate armies). Khan - the overall leader of a clan and de facto leader of it who makes all its choices (tho many will have to be decided by the clans council which is essentially every bloodnamed warrior who gets a vote). Pretty much commands everything tho on the battlefield will generally command a galaxy sized formation letting his subordinates lead their own formations with overall command tho. To also cover a few smaller things too. You’ll note a lot about Bloodnames. Essentially when Nicholas created his society he got rid of all surnames. Instead his initial 40 warriors for each clans had their surnames turned into bloodnames. Each bloodname has at its inception 25 blood rights as such 25 warriors alone can bear that bloodname. As such each clan has 40 bloodnames with 25 blood rights each essentially meaning overall each clan has 1000 warriors who can be bloodnamed - tho each clan also has over 1000 warriors so many many don’t get bloodnames and can only earn them when they become available. However, 1000 blood rights don’t always exist in a clan. As bloodnames can be chosen to be completely removed under vote by the clan - usually only done in the most server of case in potentially the entire bloodline being considered Dezgra. However more commonly blood rights may be considered lost or removed - lost could be that the last bearer of the genetic legacy is killed and unrecoverable as such can never be passed on - or it’s again considered to dezgra that nobody would every willingly claim it or wish to claim it so it is removed. And yes each blood right essentially bears the legacy of each bloodnamed warrior who carried it before both positive and negative. In addition only bloodnamed warriors in clan society can pass on their genetic lines. In this case they’ll take the genetics of the egg and seed of male and female warriors and on the creation if a sibko create a new batch of warriors by splicing the dna of both these warriors together to create the next generation (sibkos can be anywhere from 50-300+ sibkin tho barely even a percent will remain in it long enough to become warriors.) - it is noted in universe that it’s not a requirement that the dna for creation of a sinko comes from both a female and male, they can genetically turn 1 of them into an egg and 1 the seed. As such if a clan only had female and male bloodnamed warriors for whatever reason the process could still continue normally. In addition on birth the Sibkin can only ever earn the bloodname of the “mother” so fall under that blood legacy (tho they don’t just need to earn hers but can earn any of the 25 other blood rights available). I.e. you may have been spawned from Alexis Prydes legacy but you could earn Duncan Prydes legacy should he be killed and you win your bloodname trial. Last thing. For a sinkin to become a warrior they lost survive their way through their sibko until they reach their warrior trial (usually around 16-18 depending on clan) - to note this doesn’t mean those who make it just die or get executed. No the clans hate waste. Some may die of exposure or to predators during exercises or outdoor events or whatever, but for the majority should your watchers essentially note your poor grades in tests or your unfitness to become a warrior, they’ll just send you to the caste that’s best in line with your traits and skills. So you could literally fail every shooting test possible but be a master technician, so they’ll just send you to the tech caste. Tho don’t get me wrong the other castes are looked down on by the warrior caste and are essentially subservient to them, but hey it’s better than just getting shot outright, atleast your skills are acknowledged. If a Sibkin survives their youth and the the warrior academy of their clan, then at the end they shall take a final test known as a trial of position alongside their remains fellow cadets. The final trial can vary slightly per clan (I.e. in Jade Falcon the warrior has to make their way to their mech while dodging defending enemies who guard it). However the standing tradition is always: The warrior cadet on entering their mech will face 3 opponents across from them. 1 of lighter weight, 1 of equal, 1 of heavier. Each mech will be piloted by a warrior of the rank the cadet shall achieve should they best them. Sticking to the rules of Zellbrigen (clan honour rules) the cadet shall announce their challenge to their first opponent who is the lighter warrior. Announcing their trial the two will duel until one is rendered combat ineffective. Should the cadet lose they will fail the test and be sent ti another caste. Should the cadet win their first duel they earn the rank warrior. They will then immediately make a second challenge to the next mech in order with any damage and expended ammunition still in play. If they beat the second warrior their earn the rank Star Commander and should they beat the third Star Captain. One notable. Should the cadet break zellbrigen for any reason - attacking a mech that’s not apart of the duel, refusing to engage an enemy by consistently staying hidden away, preforming melee attacks, etc - then they create what is called a melee and all 3 mechs will immediately become active. The cadet can choose to kill any mech from that point on but will still have to earn 2/3 kills for star Commander or Captain, can’t just skip the que. Another note is that a cadet can earn a kill by taking down any mech. That does include fellow cadet pilots and the other cadets enemies. Should a cadet create a melee when multiple are participating, this doesn’t just apply to them, it applies to everyone participating. As such you can screw a fellow cadet over by letting them get close, starting a melee and letting them get shot to hell by 6 mechs and stealing the kill from the back. It’s cheap but still considered a kill. This also does mean you can earn more than 3 kills, which only one known warrior has done, earning the rank Star Colonel. Oh and all this is done with live ammunition and lasers. Yeah no duds or fakes. Nope in clan society these duels are done with live weapons so yeah.. you could head cap your opponent by literally taking their head off killing them… same as this can happen for a cadet, earning their warrior kill only to unfortunately have it ended immediately by a round from their next opponent. A cadet can also choose to willingly end at anytime by turning their mech off and essentially asking their opponent to end. In some clan societies this is considered poor taste for a cadet to do should they not have earned a kill or should their mech be in good condition to keep going, but in some it’s considered smart should the cadet understand the ideals of survival when they know their mech ain’t up for the next challenge should they have earned whatever rank.

[@reecedignan8365]

Edit: Forgot to add. A warrior who has passed their trial and is now apart of the clan and wishes to raise in rank can still call for a trial of position, however more commonly they will call a trail of command against their superior who they may believe is inferior as a leader to them. As such in this case, a trial of command is made and both opponents will meet in a circle of equals either augmented (i.e. in their respective mech, fighter, battle armour, etc) or un-augmented (i.e. good old fist to fist). Should the challenger win they gain the opponents rank and their opponent is reduced to theirs. Should the challenger lose, they will usually offer a form or offer of apology which the challenged can accept or deny - tho it’s also common for clanners on making these trials to essentially bargain out the victory and loss conditions before the fight. Only three positions cannot be fought over technically. Khan, SaKhan and LoreMaster. Each of these are elected positions by the bloodnamed. If a position becomes available, a bloodnamed warrior will make a nomination for who they believe should be in command. An opposing person will then call a trial of refusal if they believe they should not (note even if everyone agrees they should, it’s considered respected to nominate a challenger or for a refusal to be made). At which point the LoreMaster will make the nomination known and ask for those who agree and those who refuse. If the agrees win they are selected as that new post. If they are refused then such does not happen. Should two people be nominated, then if the primary nominee is accepted, the second may choose to challenge the first by essentially letting the people do the same thing. Should he be refused his challenge fails. Should he be accepted by greater majority he takes the post, should it be equal then the LoreMaster decides.

[@antonymash9586]

The term I think you are looking for is "How he put emphasis on particular words".

[@creedrichards137]

There are 2 videos from Tex that specifically cover the clans. Their lore is just as rich as the Inner Spheres.

[@creedrichards137]

All, having more resources is not correct but it is a little more complicated than just that.

[@hakonsgaming535]

So to give some context on the Battletech universe, it's loosely based on/inspired by medieval Europe, with bits and pieces from different eras and regions blended in where it works. Not everything is a 1:1 comparison but generally it very much follows the pattern of history not so much repeating itself as rhyming. Where the houses sort of mirror medieval European kingdoms and the Clans are a mirror of the Mongol invasions of eastern Europe there is a mirror to the roman empire, and that's the Star League, the Star League was humanity's apex, at least economically and technologically. When it fell and house Cameron who had been the leaders were killed off the great houses fought over who would take control of the whole thing, but none could conquer the others and it devolved into centuries of total war. By 3025 (the original setting for the game) the whole inner sphere was fighting wars with mechs that were seriously downgraded from the ones available at the start of the Succession wars, with many planets glassed and the knowledge and industrial infrastructure they held lost the inner sphere was unable to produce a lot of star league era equipment for much the same reason we're having a hard time expanding microchip production today. People were fighting wars piloting mechs passed down through generations of noble families, the entire setting is a sort of grim techno-feudalism on an interstellar scale, the great houses are far from the only nobles, there's a whole aristocracy that goes all the way down with planetary nobles and mech warriors often acting like knight houses of antiquity, military leaders are often from generational lines, though it doesn't scale all the way back so a noble mechwarrior with a military command probably went to a military academy, it's just that he's from a noble house with lands and can bring his own mech because his family has had it for centuries and he only got the appointment to the academy through family connections. Comstar and the Clans are actually remnants of Star League institutions, Comstar grew out of SL Comnet the government institution that ran interstellar telecommunications for the star league and is largely responsible for the technological decline of the great houses (that's a whole story on it's own). Meanwhile the clans are the descendants of the SLDF the Star League Defense Force, when the Star League fell they mounted an exodus rather than stay and end up fighting in the massive wars they realized were coming. They took as much military gear, as many scientists and valuable personnel, and technological data and schematics as they could get their hands on (which amounted to copies of practically everything and a huge stockpile of weapons and WarShips). The reason the clans are so advanced is that they never lost the star league technology and in fact managed to improve on it a little (though not actually that much).

[@basketcase289]

Clans really didn't have more resources like towards the end of the invasion when the Great Houses were learning how to fight them and finally acknowledging that they could end their centuries long nuclear slap fight and redeploy most of their boarder guards the Great Houses had more people. Like they could just drowned the Clans in meat and metal if my lore memory is correct. That being said the Clans had better quality mechs and mechwarriors when judged on a fight by fight basis which is why they did so good at first until the Great Houses buckled up and began showing the Clanners what a serious war looks like.

[@BLACKFLAME4941]

a star is 5 mechs. a binary star is 10. a trinary star is 15. a cluster is 3-5 trinary or binary stars. a galaxy is 3-5 clusters. so thats(we go with the max amount) 15 x 5 for clusters: 75. that times 5 is 375. that times 2 is 750 mechs and tanks. and that is for clan smoke jaguar alone.

[@eoftar3192]

12:00 Totally agree. Tex has one of the best voices out there. If you really "like to know more", I'd really recommend you to watch at least this episode of his Space station 13 playlist - "Checkers the Xeno-hybrid monstrosity"(3 hours long, but totally worth every minute of it). All check "MECHWARRIOR ONLINE - THE KINGDOM OF MADNESS"(~8 minutes long) where he delivers some of the best and epic speeches in the history of humanity.

[@peytonburrell6303]

Clan war tactics revolved around short and intense wars meant to settle specific disputes, mostly because of their lack of resources for large-scale wars. Clanner pilots were leagues above inner sphere pilots on average, not to mention their technological superiority. They were excellent at battle, they sucked at war.

[@crackensvideo]

As a note; it is more honorable to the Clanner to defeat the enemy with LESS shit, not more. So the first clans that dropped probably didn't even have enough war material to fight the kind of engagement ComStar had planned. Which is stupid; plan for the absolute worst.

[@Mecha82]

Unlike you might get idea from Tex's videos Clans weren't bad at warfare. They were just used to certain kind of warfare that was created to make sure that they wouldn't destroy each other while fighting each other and waste resources (btw to Clans people are also resources). It's just that Inner Sphere had fought total war so long that they had become good at it while Clans preferred to pull punches and have duels between warriors.

[@KMCA779]

The ancient tech or Lostech isn't rare because it's mythically powerful or hard to use but because the methods and factories to produce them are gone. Sure Lostech is great but no single item is particularly game changing, even if some things like Gauss Rifles are very powerful. A Galaxy is around 150 mechs, although it's possible to be larger or smaller and have power armor and tanks/aerospace/infantry mixed in. The city fighting wasn't even designed to hold the cities, it was laid out to lure them in and then keep them from leaving. By the time they realized they couldn't take the city they were too weak to escape. The entire battle was designed not to win but to cause as much damage as possible.

[@Geeko170]

This is the only good thing Comstar ever did. They did far more, horrible, horrible shit. Operation Scorpion was their attempt to take over all of the Great Houses, and basically become the sole power in the Inner Sphere.

[@jasonrichter5161]

There's a lot of background that Tex doesn't really go over here, mostly for good reasons. The preamble would be longer than the body of the video if he assumed you knew nothing about the Battletech universe and he is presenting it as an in-universe historian assuming basic knowledge of how things are 'right now' and about the broad strokes of history... So, you're right about the loss of technology at some time in the past (during the succession wars), where after the "Golden Age" of the Star League, the 1st and 2nd Succession war saw untold destruction, including widespread use of nuclear weapons... and ComStar even helped along the loss of technology by assassinating scientists and engineers that they couldn't recruit and hide away from the Successor States. As others have said, a "Galaxy" in this specific context is a unit of organization in the Clan militaries. Similar* in size to a modern Army Division. Each Clan brought ~ 800 'mechs along with battle-armored infantry and Aerospace Fighter support, which across 7 Clans is over 4,000 'mechs. The ComGuards defended with ~ 8,000 'mechs supported by aerospace fighters, conventional vehicles, and infantry (~120,000 front-line combat troops, if you were wondering). Tex could have gone a little more in-depth about the history of Anastasias Focht or the ComStar Guards and Militia (ComGuards for short) since that wouldn't really be common knowledge in-universe... But describing the ComGuards as "well trained and equipped with Star League 'mechs, but having virtually no actual combat experience" pretty well sums up what you need to know for this specific topic. Anastasia Focht, on the other hand, before being "reborn" in ComStar had been probably the Lyran Commonwealth's best general and had extensive combat experience. Additionally, in the initial Clan Invasion, Anastasia Focht had gone as an ambassador for ComStar to the Clans and met their leadership. He had observed many of the battles from the earlier waves of the Clan Invasion and... having met the Clan leaders, seen how they fight, and having extensive detailed Intelligence reports of all the earlier battles of the Clan Invasion, he had come to know the Clan method of warfare through and through... and he saw a weakness that he could exploit. Not just their arrogance and lack of unity (though those played their part) but their entire system of bidding and fighting combat trials, and how that affected their planning and logistics. Focht knew that the ComGuards wouldn't be able to match the Clans in a short decisive battle, but he believed they could wear down and exhaust the Clans in a prolonged campaign and that was his central plan for how the battle of Tukayyid would be fought. It's also widely underappreciated (in my opinion) how close the Clans came to actually being able to win on Tukayyid... Despite it being a trap. Out of 7 clans, only 4 were determined to have been defeated... and if certain things had happened differently in the earlier battles so as to delay ComGuard reinforcements in the later battles, a couple of those potentially could have gone the other way. But the Clans seeming to come close to victory was also within the scope of Focht's plan... he needed the terms of the battle to look to the Clans like they could win (so they would agree to the terms), and he needed to beat them on their own terms so their honor would require them to abide by the outcome. * Depending on how you count... military units in Battletech are relatively light on manpower compared to real-world formations, making up for it with extensive reliance on heavy equipment (combat vehicles/'mechs).

[@johngardner4096]

Part of the deal was that the Clans didn't communicate well with each other. The pasting that Smoke Jaguar took just meant that they were inferior... and Nova Cat's losses just weren't noised about - just to keep their rivals from taking advantage of their weakness. In short, Clan unity was just about nonexistent.

[@sanguiniusonvacation1803]

There is so much I would need to explain in order to tell you why this battle was always gonna happen.

[@jmartin4396]

Tex is a national treasure.

[@Rogue_kat]

clans use a weird system for their formations instead of lanes, companies etc. a point is one warrior or one mech. a star is 5 points or 5 mechs. a binary is 2 stars so about 10 mechs. a trinary is 3 stars or about 15 mechs. a cluster is 5 binarys or trinarys so anywhere from 50-75 mechs a galaxy is 5 clusters so about 250-350 mechs. thats just purely mechs too it could be more if you were to include their elemental warriors which are essentially people in suits of power armor. so when tex said smoke jaguar attacked with 2 galaxies of units thats about 700ish mechs and maybe up to another 700 power armor warriors.

[@lionheart1013]

A Galaxy consists of three to five Clusters (90 to 375 OmniMechs) under the command of a Galaxy Commander. Normally you can only Field about 3 Lances of Mechs (8-12 Mechs) in game USUALLY

[@jerrywalters8885]

If get the chance read or listen to the BLOOD OF KERENSKY trilogy goes from beginning of invasion to the end of this battle in 3 nooks. Makes easy to understand

[@KageRyuu6]

Yeah no, the Clans don't have more resources than the Inner Sphere, in fact they have considerably less, they do however have superior technology, for the most part, but especially during the time frame of the video.

[@terrinils3165]

The Clans would not be a position to threaten Terra until nearly a centrury after Tukayyid. Clan Wolf would conquer Terra in 3151, which is the current timeline for the BattleTech universe. It's a contentious subject for the community. Some players see as a step backwards for the Clans and the setting.

[@LuoSon312_G8]

before the Clan Invasion the Inner Sphere had just survived 5 galactic wars; 1st war(lasted 100 years); est. 75% of all space fleets were destroyed and unsalvageable. 2nd war (lasted est. 80 years); Naval and Mech building industries were reduced to absolute minimal output, quotas went from dozens of ships and hundreds of mechs/tanks weekly/monthly to "no" ships, and barely a dozen mechs/tanks yearly. 3rd war (lasted est. 10 years); no more naval battles, ground battles only tanks and helicopters are pulled from ancient stockpiles into active battles. 4th war (lasted ~2 years); Draconis Combine attacks Steiner and Davion territories. loses border states to Steiner splinter, creates the state of Rasalhouge 5th war (est 1-2 years) Davion's prince marries Steiner's princess, their combined armies take half of Cappellan space.

[@magni5648]

You're way off. 1st Succession War (35 years): Nukes everywhere, enormous damage to infrastructure and fleets. 9 years armistice 2nd Succession War (34 years): Everyone finishes what tehy started in the first one; no more Warships at all and straight up post-apocalyptic overall state of the Inner Sphere. 2 years armistice 3rd Succession War (159 years): Less of a high-intensity war and more just incessant raiding and border conflicts with whatever the Great Houses could scrape together. 3 years armistice 4th Succession War (2 years): Steiner and Davion ally through marriage, Hanse Davion reinvents massed strategic offensives, proceedes to hilariously curbstomp the Capellan Confederation. 9 years armistice War of 3039 (~9 months): Steiner&Davion try a repeat performance on the Draconis Combine, ends in a stalemate because of an insane bluff by Theodore Kurita on top of massive ComStar fuckery; Kurita releases Rasalhague as a buffer state on account of further ComStar fuckery. Ten years after that, the Clans came knocking.

[@Jonnyg325]

REMEMBER TUKAYYID THIS DAY, aka, if somebody is smiling at you during a deal, you made a horrible mistake Edit: while there was a tech decline during the succession wars, by the point of Tukayyid that had mostly turned around. ComStar just raided every remaining SLDF depot and storehouse back in the day to keep all the best toys for themselves, the mythical (b) and even better (rb) models.

[@robgraham5697]

Clanners aren't barbarians. They just have a very, very different culture from the Inner Sphere, which still carries a lot of culture from Terra. They don't have more resources either, but they are a society focused on warfare. They're still just as human as the rest of us. Personally, the Clans are one of my favourite pieces of world building ever. Very different than any other posited human society. I enjoyed the Michael Stackpole books that introduced them very much. Adding: regarding humans, to quote Antonio Dimasio, "We are not thinking machines that feel but rather feeling machines that think."

[@jamesbeard5513]

The Clans didn't have more resources, just better tech per person. I think some equivalents are like the F-4 vs the P-80 (Third Gen Jet Fighter vs First Gen Jet Fighter) for a good majority of the fights. This fight on Tukayyid was near parity tech wise, with slight edge in tech and far greater experience in fighting going to the Clans and numbers and tactics going to the ComGuard. As for the Clans being a 'barbarian horde', that is a yes/no kind of thing. They were ruthless combatants and would fight anywhere and everywhere, but they weren't all that much worse than the Houses that ruled the Inner Sphere to the civilians, mileage of this statement varies from Clan to Clan.

[@Chetverikov]

TL;DR: The Clans had, on average, genetically superior Mechwarriors trained to a higher level of individual skill, piloting technologically superior platforms, who were in general EXTREMELY motivated. BUT their leadership were not used to defensive and attritional warfare. Because of the way Clan warrior caste culture places an emphasis on almost pre-modern concepts of personal honor and bravery, and because of the ritualized and formalized nature of warfare between the clans, their mindset had been shaped by a model of war that is almost duel-like. Even when it's large units facing off against each other, it comes down to individual Mechwarriors chomping at the bit to win personal glory by demonstrating their skill as aggressively as possible. And if you KNOW your opponent is going to come in attacking hard with a general refusal to be flexible and consider other approaches, that makes them very easy to predict and exploit...

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

The Clans have better tech. They most definitely do not have more resources. In fact a lack of resources is why they fight in the manner they do.

[@TheLegitWeebs]

That makes a lot more sense than my assumption. Having a lack of resources would be a good reason to be more aggressive.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

@TheLegitWeebs Technically they are both more and less aggressive. They will more readily seek a military solution for disputes, but that is because the form of that military combat is extremely ritualized and structured combats where they bid a certain amount of force against another. The fighting has very strict rules that are followed, and almost never involves fighting at the objective of the dispute itself. They do this because they do not have the resources to rebuild constantly after wars. Traditional clan battles are extremely limited in size and scope, for very specific objectives. It causes less collateral damage, but also makes the military solution the first solution for most things.

[@magni5648]

@@TheLegitWeebs To put it another way: There's single planets in the Inner Sphere that have a higher population than the Clans put together in the 3050's. Basically, the Clanners' whole invasion was built on having actual warships, a big tech advantage and a quality advantage on the personal level. In hindsight, the whole invasion was an absolutely insane plan and essentially wasn't going to work because the numbers disparity is just way too much. Tukkayid effectively fucked the Clans over before the first shot was even fired, because setting up the whole thing also killed what momentum the invasion had left by that point. Even if the Clanners won on Tukkayid, the Great Houses would have simply refused to stop fighting anyway and with the momentum gone it would have turned into a pure war of attrition. Which the Clans were just always going to lose.

[@БогуславПозняк]

2:24 Actually Clans did not have more resources than Spheroids. In fact they had very little and thus they whole culture was build around idea of resource conservation, and achieving goals spending as less resources as possible. The whole idea of bidding forces isn't just about honor, it is first an foremost about efficiency. And this is why while the Sphere bombed itself into stone age during the Succession Wars, Clans where able to actually advance their technology. Unfortunately for Clans they way of fighting wars only works when all sides agreed on that, and Spheroids obviously didn't.

[@M0rtunodos]

It's not a foregone conclusion that the Sphere would win, not with the base set up. The clans are literally built for this type of war, short, brutal, and gamified. The clans understood what Comstar would do, they've been fighting the Inner Sphere for 2 years at this point. Comstars resources were just higher than the individual houses the clan had fought before. The clan honor system and bidding is what really set them up for failure.

[@asaerickson4762]

The clans had better tech but actually less resources. Their tech was so good they wiped inner sphere mechs like 10 to one.

[@sempermilites87]

It's a long video, but may I suggest taking a look at the Mackie video at some time? It not only gives you the history of the Inner Sphere, but how and why battle mechs were invented.

[@delsinhays6421]

Ahhhh yes....one of Tex's vids. No, not the greatest, for they're all wonderful

[@dagonofthedepths]

Honestly imo the clans tend to have issues beyond just arrogance and pride. A lot of how they do war is seated in deep tradition which works fine when you're choosing your battles, which is how their society works and it's something they had the luxury of doing during the Clan Invasion. But those traditions are very easy to exploit. The drop order thing is a good example. It's basically all the leaders bid how many forces they want to bring but if you bid low, and bring very little, you get to go first and you earn much more honor. Clan Smoke Jaguar where cocky so they brought a comparatively small force, so they get to go first and earn glory and all that. Clan Wolf went last both because they know this is a trap and they respect the Inner Sphere enough to know what is about to happen. They also wanted the other clans to beat their collective heads against the wall. Wolf kind of did that thing where a guy you don't like is about to challenge a 7x MMA champ to a fight and you just go, "you go buddy I'll just be here taking notes." But political machinations aside, surprise surprise, the 1 Clan that brought everything was the only one to win. But why even have that system? It's war, not a game (well I know it's an actual game but in universe....nvm). Drop everything and crush your enemy. Also yeah military formations in IS and Clan are different. For Clans when talking just mechs: Point = 1 mech Star = 5 mechs Binary = 2 Stars Trinary = 3 Stars Cluster = 3-5 Binaries and/or Trinaries Galaxy = 3-5 Clusters Just for completion's sake the IS version is Unit = 1 mech Lance =4 mechs Company = 3 lances Battalion = 3 companies Regiment = 3-5 battalions Guess final thing. Only Battletech animations I know of are the cinematics in the Mechwarrior series which are pretty non-descripted events for the most part and the cartoon which is....special. I mean I like cheese and you get a lot with that one but still. Only really big events that are covered where in Mechcommander which had the invasion of Port Aruther at the start of Operation BULLDOG which was the op that ended Smoke Jaguar as a Clan. Other on is Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries covers the creation of FedCom and the Free Rasalhague Republic. I guess also Battleech the pc game which he does use a lot of art from but to be honest if you don't know about the Amaris Civil War I don't think you'll follow what's happening.

[@tenchraven]

Tex could read the phone book and it would be epic. But here you can see why BT doesn't need aliens or magic or the other crap 40K needs. It has stories. It is has characters you think you can know as real people. Even filthy Clanners. And while not everything in the Battle of Tuk was, a lot of it was played out in tourney- the Clans got Focht because the community is made up of mad men who know tactics and love the universe. We took the Clan Invasion personally, and FASA not only listened but craved it. There wasn't a Great Publisher that said "And thus it is wrote", it was a team effort between players, novelists and game designers. That was 30 years ago, and things have changed, but those of us who've been here a long time... Our crapsack other world is one that changes, that lives, that breaths.

[@fredmoreau5059]

Logistics matters!

[@johanneskaramossov5103]

well thing is most of the clans were fighting mere hours after another considering the fights went on for weeks they were not done by the time the next one jumped in.. and the wolves tried to warn the other clans but people wouldnt listen. But wolves are poster boys so they cant do to bad.. ever

[@megasxlr2X]

There is a big thing about the clans, 2 hours long and such, but think space Marines but shorter and more akin to mongolian horde level of org.

[@masterlink2319]

This was the video that changed my opinion of Comstar.

[@WABillsFan]

Think of the clans as fail son versions of Ghengis Khan

[@BedlamsSon]

Woooooot! BPLletsgoooooo!

[@KenshiImmortalWolf]

So Let me give you a run down of the tech. During the star league, everything was at it's peak. However when the league fell, the successor states (The 5 great houses) targeted advanced scientific centers and production sights, denying eachother a lot of star leagues best technologies. Anyone able to find it refereed to it as Lostech (Lost-Technology) Comstar had been gathering up as much lostech as they could over the centuries as they being the successor form of SL Comnet and becoming a bit of a religous organization believed themselves the future saviors of humanity by denying the great houses lostech recovery. The clans are the sucessors of the SLDF (Star league defense force) and because of the war that destroyed the star league their culture had ritualized war in order to prevent the very thing happening in the sphere. This is why the clans despite few worlds and limited resources had considerably better mechs and weapons then even comstar. The innersphere had begun to actually recover som lostech abilities despite comstars efforts but even the earliest of those recovered techs was only 15 years ago to the clan invasion, so lots of it had not really spread out across the sphere's massive militaries. Hense why even with some lostech the sphere's militaries where still mostly lower grade succession war models that could not hold a candle to the clans. As for galaxies. Clans are made up of units called stars, they are made of 5 'points' (points having differing value based on the unit for example 1 point is 1 mech, but 2 tanks, or two aerospace fighters, or 5 elemental battel armors) 2 stars make a binary, 3 make a trinary, 3-5 binaries-trinaries make a cluster (so you're already ranging from 30 on the low end to 75 on the high end) and a galaxy is 3-5 clusters (throwing us from a low 90 points to 375 at the high end and given these are elite front like galaxies probably closer to that high end)