Well, I'm flat on my back.
Lets face it, for pilots it's an occupational hazard getting your mount shot out from under you and ending up being rebuilt from the ground up.
You that is, not your mech.
In my case it's back spasms caused by an overenthusiastic ejection rather than anything potentially more deadly or inclusive of a degradation in the amount of attached limbs.
Problem is, because there is no actual tissue loss the medics are loath to do anything other than administer drugs and keep me bed ridden.
I do admit however that the arrival of a certain Miss Jessica who managed to wiggle her way into our lower level clans and who has been doing a tour of duty as medical officer among the rest of us has made my enforced bed rest somewhat more palatable.
The down side is that the powers that be have a captive receptacle to dump the paperwork on.
My favorite at the moment is readiness planning (small unit tactics).
In other words, sort out what the hell we are going to be doing next Clan War.
So, there is the rub of it... clan sizes have been approximately halved. Good job we have been given the heads up on that sooner, because its going to be a logistical nightmare for some of the bigger families like the AFF or the Dragons.
And how the devil they are going to avoid each other division wise is going to be a bigger miracle than Pat paying for a round of drinks.
There's going to be other ramifications as well... some good, some bad.
There may well be a lot of free agents, especially from the single clan/small clan family category. I hope they get a berth for the war if they want one, but by the same token they may find that their 'new' home is better and they may leave their old mates behind.
It could well be that for some of the stragglers, old alliances from past Faction Wars will be called upon to throw together a scratch formation. With recent moves to limit the average and criteria of a Clan, here's hoping that the restrictions in place will not prove to be prohibitive in finding people a position within a mini-clan.
A number of new leaders will be stepping up. No bad thing for anyone... leadership experience can only add depth and redundancy to everyone's roster.
As for the war itself... I can almost see this one being very cagey with lots of overtime. Things like giving away a defensive win is going to have far more ramifications... if the clan sizes are halved, a def win essentially will have double the impact. A good specialist is going to be a game changing formation.
Now, I've seen other competitive formats where suddenly a major force has dropped down to a small squad or fire-team. The big difference between the two is that because battles are quicker, you can get more in given a certain time frame. It makes you start to wonder if we will be seeing more match ups than a 'regular' Clan War. Does that remind anyone of the grind that was Mechal.... that which shall not be named?
Just on rough calculations, and assuming participation from folk is the same as a regular Clan War, I estimate that we would have around twice as many fire-teams. That's either larger divisions, or more. Couple that with an enforced roster shakeup so that the face of the enemy is no longer familiar, betting is going to be an absolute swine.
OUCH!!!
Alright, I am suitably admonished that hard laughter is not going to be conducive to a timely recovery.
But I can't help it... I'm imagining the looks on the faces of all of those so called clan analysts who rely on spreadsheets to track theirs and everyone else strengths. I wonder how many will burn the midnight oil to try and redo them on the fly, how many will just go and get drunk and how many are even now just rocking in the corner, sobbing gently.
Submitted by David McCallum : #701548