yeah something I’ve always wondered is how is the fuck does serving in the Colonial Marines even work. I don’t mean the standard shit, of course they go to a recruitment office then hit basic and carry on to their specialty training. What i mean is how do their contracts work?
In our military its simple, 4 years (or whatever length you signed up for) then boom you get discharged and placed in reserve having to attend training every couple months.
Most Colonial Marines however spend their time in cryosleep though right? I mean the whole point is to be patrolling these sectors so the ship needs to be constantly out and about and there’s no need to keep marines awake for that. So are all Marines just people with no family ties? No one to go back home to? and do their contracts include time spent in cryo?
It’s not really explained but i guarantee you that it’s not as long as you think.
The distance from earth to Hadley’s is massive, but they get there in two weeks because FTL does exist after all in the Aliens universe, My guess for their contract is Cyro is counted towards Active duty as it’s just travel time between locations.
I imagine it works like how it does on submarines or oil rigs who can be out at sea for mounths at a time. Since the ship must stop at station for fuel they can switch out the crew. Plus it’s likely similer to pre internet deployment where your wife paces back and forth on widow walk.
Really interested in exploring concepts like BattleTech’s periphery nations here because I feel like it oughta be pretty similar. Halo and even Downbelow Station all carry the same weighty ideas that as the distance from Earth increases, so does the feeling of throwing off those shackles.
The CLF is a very cool idea in our homebrew but I feel like it’s not given a whole lot of thematic weight because we’re afraid of straying from canon— but why not? Same as the Innies in Halo, I feel like it could be expanded on as more of a movement if we want to keep decentralized cells as a concept, and if not, hell, I’d love to have more HvH events vs something like Downbelow Station’s Union that isn’t afraid to turn a lot of the canon’s tech against itself.
Imagine an APLU/Caterpillar with armor welded to it and machine guns riveted to the arms a-la a Technical in the hands of the Innies— and a focus on the Mk1/phased out armaments at large, and more general conflict in the vein of “our shit but aftermarket and tooled for farmers with a bone to pick.”
Definitely could be completely wrong here and some admins have tread this territory, but I haven’t seen it a whole lot and especially don’t see much evidence of it in roleplay as anything other than unga bunga HOPE WE GET TO SHOOT SOME INNIES which I gladly take part in. It’s fun! But I’d like to see it go deeper and be explored more. Someday I might clone the repo and see about getting StrongDMM or our equivalent moving to fluff up Fiorina anew or something for a CLF-hunt with less xeno remains and more dead security officers or something.
Even the marines get more relaxed the further you get from earth, officially battalion patches are frowned upon but out here no one cares.
as for the CLF i feel their biggest problem is they’re too gamey and lack anything really interesting, they’re basically just “Vietcong/IJA in space but less guerilla then the Vietcong” like you’d think they’d tie in with the recently ended Australian rebellion on earth but they don’t, and all of them have similiar kit and none have really anything to separate the different cells, someone is planning on reworking the CLF and i did suggest an idea for the different types of cells you could have but until any real work is put into it don’t expect much.
also funny you should mention combat loaders because even the offical ones used by the USCM look welded together.
So do the CLF have some kind of underlying ideological cause or do they just hate the UA. The wiki does not give the best reasons why the two sides started to hate each other. It says the colonist formed the CLF cause the marines could not keep them safe. Then the marines return and the two sides seemingly start going to war including a suacide bomeing from the CLF. It said the CLF had becoem radicalized but in what way. Do they hate taxes that much,
It does seem thematically weak to have the reason be “They can’t protect us, time to pop on the C4 vest!”
Far stronger indeed is embracing the idea of taxation and unfair laws stretched across space while dialling up the themes of the Freelancer ERT’s that have the flavor text of just being pirates.
If my government was in the pocket of God’s strongest mega corporation WY and that influence lead to heavy taxation on my work without protection from roving pirates, I think I’d certainly be more inclined to pick up my rifle and tell them city boys to fark off, mate.
I think to make the idea of CLF suicide beaters more believable there has to also be documented resistance in the lore from the USMC, something like a crowd of protesters being fired upon to protect a WY facility, maybe? That’d certainly add proper stakes to invest me more in the ideas at play here and make the CLF more than a cutesy little paper tiger that’s supposedly a threat:
Also love love love those janky ass mech suits, particular fan of the weird roll cagey bits.
To be honest the lore for them is rather flimsy and is basically just an excuse for terrorists enemies.
You could try handwaving it and saying “oh they’re different cells they have different goals” but lets be real they just exist as poorly equipped human enemies.
There’s plenty of good reasons to hate the UA, like this:
But the justification for the CLF is super flimsy.
oh and also my favourite part is we’re in THE NEROID SECTOR WHICH IS 3WE, BUT THEIR MAIN ADVERSARY IS DEPICTED AS THE USCM, like you’d think the fact that these guys speak japanese and live in the 3WE would tie into them being some sort of group that hates the fact their country has basically become so much of a puppet of W-Y that it’s literally got a seat in parliament would mean something but no.
Personally i say just wait until someone rewrites the CLF into being something other then generic weak terrorist military group.
Well I guess the person to re write them could always be you. Persoanly I could see them being anarchist who oppose the UA, TWE, and UPP on both a persoanl and ideological level. Maybe getting alone with the UPP enough to work together to defeat the UA and TWE. Guess you could also go a nationlistic or native angle saying they are distinct people ruled by imperal powers.
Good example might be nester makhno’s black army in ukraian.
Personally i see them as a united front, made up of multiple different rebel factions in the Neroid Sector, the main group being Socialist or Communist Guerillas from the 3WE, which is why the UPP supply them with weapons and why the CLF speak japanese, they’re Japanese communists/socialists.
Here are some ideas i had for different variations though, probably the most different is the ICSC guys, who’d probably be basically “we oppose Corporate ownership if it’s not OUR corporation” being that the ICSC is made up of a bunch of corporations that get into regular fights with W-Y over their planets.
Where IS the place to contribute towards writing/lore? Should I angle towards the GitHub and figure out a way to get the lore across in documents, or what’s generally a good way to get this stuff felt more?
Well it depends really on what you mean, you want to become a lore contributor? you’re best off asking kaga as they’re in charge of the lore team, i’m not even a lore contributor despite the fact everyone keeps pinging me to ask random questions about lore.
It’s also a good idea to know what you want to write about first before asking, i already know what i plan on writing about (3WE stuff)
I also recommend joining the discord so you can check lore discussion or tidbits or ask for Lore Contributor.
Thanks for the tip! True, though, off-topic. Back on-topic, is there anything in-lore/in the games that talks about the Scout Cloak, or is it entirely our homebrew? It’s a really neat idea and a gameplay idea that’s made Scout my favorite Specialist by far in my time playing, but I’ve off-and-on wondered about it’s canonicity at all.
So what is life like in a WY colony. What resource are they for exacly. Are they industrial nightmares or liveable places. Does WY set up local goverment or do they rule directly. Is it a soft rule or is it harsh and brutal.
who’s the colony administrator for the colony, he sends the colonists out on orders from burke, not knowing the dangers and only knowing it’s from someone at W-Y.
Many different things, farming, mining, as for why there’s so many it’s likely due to opportunity and to help ease crowding, it also helps with the fact it gives these countries more influence and power in these regions
These are great resources lou, but I would recommend hyperlinking a few of them with alternate titles so they are discernable at a glance what they are instead of a big ol link
Great resource otherwise
If you’re passionate about the lore a guide for some roleplay ideas with links to inspiration would be cool af too
