OBT Forum

But what is their real/more likely opponent? Pirates or an AFFS invasion?

Again, it depends on the era. We have three separate eras to consider.

1. In canon-3025, Thomas Calderon is not about to let the focus drift away from the FS...which would indicate that the TDF is using the wrong model. However, I noted from his bio that Thomas doesn't have any real military experience, and I think it likely that he decided not to tinker with something that seems to work well - 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'

2. #1 would indicate that the TDF has been configured as an anti-piracy force -- which makes perfect sense, given their location and position. In the aftermath of SW1 & SW2, I'm sure that there was a massive upswing in piracy, and it wouldn't take a K-F scientist to figure out that the IS Houses are too busy trying to kill each other to pay attention to the Periphery...which makes the TDF's priority killing pirate forces that are likely built on the remains of defeated/smashed House or merc mech units, all of whom are likely to be no more than company-strength, rather than organized invasion forces. That's going to hold true up to 3025, easily.

3. Which brings us to 2800 and SC. If the Houses aren't smashing each other flat, were I sitting on the TDF General Staff my main focus would be on the Suns and the CC. I'd want to organize and build my forces as rapidly as I could to make "adventures" against me extraordinarily bad ideas, and I would want those forces configured for combat against a military (vs pirate) force...which indicates that they would need a more conventional organization, to maximize their forces deployment.....


...However.

This now brings us into the realm of mech and Jumpship/Dropship production for the TC, and the question of "Do the Taurians have one or more of Amaris' secret mech plants under their control, and if so, what is its output per annum?"

As well, did the TC have its own shipyards PRE-Coup? And, in the absence of SW 1 & 2, would those facilities survive?

In the absence of C* killing off scientists during SW2 -  - I simply cannot see the Taurians not utilizing their education system to start building remote yards and mech plants, whether they have Amaris' sites or not......

One of the reasons I like the TC as much as I do, is the fact that they really don't seem to go out of their way to inflict themselves on other states, unlike pretty much everyone else besides the OA. They always struck me as far too rational to want to try to conquer the FC or CC...hence, the reason I pretty much ignore the entire Jihad+ arc...

That's real "conventional military wisdom" which says 3:1 attacker to defender ratio.  It's never found in BattleTech.  And, honestly, you don't find it very much in recent decades of military action.  In 1990, Saddam Hussein had the 4th largest army in the world, and one which had been involved in a decade-long war (in which it outclassed its opponent) just a couple of years before it was thrown into Kuwait.  The US & coalition forces didn't assemble a military 3x the size to fight it off. 

Look at it another way, how often do you have one lance of 'mechs fight off a full company of equal-weight 'mechs in a game of BattleTech?  Not very often, I'm sure, because BT-the-game doesn't take all the things into account which caused that 3:1 attacker-to-defender ratio to come into existence. 

And yet in sourcebooks such as the Historical series it's very rare for the attacking force to have even at 2:1 advantage in numbers over the defenders of a world -- and even then, those assessments include only 'mechs.  Sometimes there's a 3:2 ratio of attackers to defenders, but generally one regiment of 'mechs is thrown at another regiment of 'mechs.  This is why, until H:RW, I assumed the lack of military strategy was a result of the Succession Wars depriving the Inner Sphere of higher learning.  But H:RW displays the same lack of military acumen that characterized the Succession Wars, so I'm left to conclude that higher military learning got "lost" when humanity hit the stars, likely under the presumption that space was big enough for everyone and that there wouldn't be any more wars.  Joke's on them...