Fun facts: You're not technically rooting for just a Liao. Kai Allard-Liao is the grandson of Quintus Allard, the head of the FedSuns and later FedCom intelligence and a seriously big deal in the books. While he was serving as an ambassador on Sian, Quintus, had a brief marriage to a Liao noblewoman and had Justin Allard. Justin's half-brother, Dan Allard was actually acting commander of the Kell Hounds at the point of the Battle of Twycross. Justin meanwhile, pretended to defect from the Federated Suns to the Capellan Confederation in order to spy on them. During this time, his MARRIED THE DAUGHTER OF MAXIMILLIAN LIAO, THE CHANCELLOR OF THE CONFEDERATION. She then later betrayed her father and extracted with Justin, later having four kids with him, of whom Kai was the eldest. His entire ancestry is filled with the most badass kind of greatness and by GOD did he live up to them on Twycross!
For those who don't know and therefore do not understand why the Hatchetman's head has that odd shape - with fins/wings coming off the back. The Hatchetman is almost unique among mechs in either the inner sphere OR Clan Space. It was - in fact - designed by the technicians/scientists of the Davion Banzai Institute. (Who also moonlight as rock musicians under the Band name - "The Hong Kong Cavaliers. And - as an aside - if you caught THAT reference and are holding up a hand and going ... "Hey... uh... isn't that...?" YES. YES. It IS. You're very clever. Now be quiet. VERY quiet. FASA did indeed have - as CANON - that bit of lore. And let us not draw the wrath of the copyright gods by saying more than that - OKAY? Lord knows Battletech has been ravaged ENOUGH by such nonsense. But THIS bit of obscure background lore is one we'd like to KEEP. Just because it's that damn cool, alright? AHEM... What was I talking about? Oh yes. The Hatchetman's ejection system. The reason why the head looks weird is that unlike 99.99% of other mechs in the setting, which just have escape capsules (and sometimes not even THAT - just ejection SEATS) the Hatchetman's ENTIRE HEAD detaches at the neck socket and the whole thing rockets way way WAY High on a ballistic arc. The pilot can even control to some degree where the head comes down because he has full control of the limited aerodynamics of the Hatchetman's head and fins to use. It does use a parachute at the end of the glide. But an ejecting Hatchetman pilot can typically get much further away from an exploding mech and closer to his own battle lines if he can fly the pod correctly.
@@logandarklighter another mech that comes to my mind with that kind of ejection system would be the Wolfhound if I remember correctly. Does make a lot of sense for ol' Choppy here thougj. After all the pilot likely needs to get further awayfrom whoever they were justin melee with - lest they risk having their now defenseless escape vehicle stomped into the pavement.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 The Wolfhound having a full head ejection system wound up being important. (Twice.) In the same series this particular event is from. I'll say no more here, so I don't spoil Airier from learning about it.
18:00 Not Liao, Airier. Allard-Liao. That's an important distinction to make. Because you see, Kai's dad once was sent on a deep-cover mission into the Capellan Confederation by pretending to be a traitor to the Federated Suns. In the establishment of that cover identity he even became Champion on Solaris VII under his mother's name in 3027. From there he was then taken in by the Capellans and quickly rose through the ranks of the Maskirovka until at last he established personal connections to the Liao family - including romance with one of the Chancellor's daughters who followed him when he exfiltrated, taking her personal fiefdom out of the Confederation and into the Federated Suns in the process. Kai Allard-Liao is the result of that romance. Moreover, he is the nephew of the Kell Hounds commander in this theater of war, who, as you may remember, is another member of the Allard family.
@@Brendan1259don't forget the Wolves were so impressed by this feat, they took his mech as a trophy. Fixed it up and when Phenlen was ordered to go Rogue with half the clan.... he gave it back to Kai...IS chassis with a clan reactor and weapons.
@@everyonethinksyoureadeathm5773 I remember the Clans restored Phelan's Wolfhound with Clan-tech and gave it back to him when Phelan single-handedly "conquered" a planet in the then-former Rasalhague territory. Forgot the name. Got them to surrender without a single shot.. But Yen-Lo-Wang? Don't remember that being clantech-ified. I do remember that the Clanners retrieved its Gauss rifle on Alyina and used it to knock on a fortress-door by way of an I-beam, but that is it.
It's the other way around, the Royal Blackwatch regiment was recruited from Northwind after the Highlanders were formed due to how successful they were.
@@hakonsgaming535 Actually with some of the lore some members of the black watch did move on to form mercenary companies I think one was the Northern highlanders. And another. I can't quite remember I keep thinking horses for some reason but I'm not sure why. Apparently they were from members of the blackwatch that didn't want to leave the people of the SLDF who were left behind.
Battlemechs have a spare seat in the back. Though some like the Battlemaster have an actual double cockpit. Which makes them perfect command mechs as the commander sits in the back and his pilot does the shooting. Also Kai defeating the Elementals: for one the Hatchetman is a dedicated close in fighter. Second: in the novel he fought within a canyon and he actually scraped them of by crashing his mechs into walls squeezing them to death. Plus Clan warfare does not know melee combat so I would dare to say that the Elementals simply didn't know how a Mech can actually fight in melee. Funny side note: in one of the first FedCom civil war novels a commander yells at one of her pilots "Stop, drop, roll you idiot!" when he is swarmed by battle armor
uhuh even in game dealling with elementals is treated like bees it's a straight pilot roll if you do well there dead if you don't there going to kill you with stings
Kai by 3053 has a Clan Jade Falcon Cluster that will answer his call if he needs Back Up. By 3058 he has Two Cluster with One of them being a Frontline Cluster.
Alright, I Feel that I should probably put this out here on the "Fusion reactors can't detonate" Stackpole front. Atomic Weapons used in World War II were Fission bombs, when a core of fissile material is forced to supercritical compression where uncontrolled nuclear fission reactions occur. What the majority of the bombs currently on the planet which are commonly referred to as Thermonuclear weapons are also referred to as H-Bombs, work on a Fission/Fusion process. Yes FUSION. Wherein the Fission detonator heats up and compresses the fusion material (Isotopes of Hydrogen, the same stuff that runs a engine in Battletech). "When the fission bomb is detonated, gamma rays and X-rays emitted first compress the fusion fuel, then heat it to thermonuclear temperatures. The ensuing fusion reaction creates enormous numbers of high-speed neutrons, which can then induce fission in materials not normally prone to it, such as depleted uranium. Each of these components is known as a "stage", with the fission bomb as the "primary" and the fusion capsule as the "secondary"." (Ref: Hansen, Chuck. U.S. Nuclear Weapons: The Secret History) The initial Fission detonator is merely there to compress and heat up and trigger the fusion reaction in the hydrogen, which is what a fusion reactor is essentially already doing. Our Modern arsenal of thermonuclear weapons (Which, by comparison the first test of a fission ("atomic") bomb released an amount of energy approximately equal to 20,000 tons of TNT, The first hydrogen bomb test released energy approximately equal to 10 million tons of TN, with subsequent generations of "Nukes" exceeding this.) relies entirely upon the fusion reaction running out of control and triggering additional fission reactions in normally non fissile materials (Which I imagine a Battlemech internals qualify for). So can we please please please stop acting flabbergasted and rolling our eyes when a fusion reactor goes critical, especially when it's been set up specifically to remove the safeties and do that? Even outside the "Rule of Cool" our own thermonuclear arsenal is based around fusion being pushed to an out of control point and thus exploding with more force than mere fission atomic bombs ever did. Thank you for attending this "Ranty guy's guide to 'why you dun blowed up'" we now return you to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress.
Honestly the justification doesn't even need to go that far imho. To me the explosion here is just from the plasma loosing containment (BT reactors are tokamaks iirc) that energy needs to go somewhere so it vaporises it's surroundings, creating an explosion even if it's not a _nuclear_ explosion similar to how Chernobyl was technically just a very radioactive steam explosion.
I am reminded of Werner Van Braun's exasperated response to a pesky reporter who kept asking why a particular rocket had suffered an "Unplanned Rapid Disassembly" event. He'd been given the simple explanation. Wasn't satisfied and wanted to dig deeper. Von Braun at first humored him and gave him a somewhat more detailed explanation. Which the reporter could sense was correct but incomplete, and pestered Von Braun more. Cue a couple more rounds of question and answer until Von Braun gave the REALLY detailed answer which ALSO failed to satisfy the reporter because NOW they were getting into territory of "We're not sure why this turbopump failed, we'll have to take a look at that). Finally Werner Van Braun had had QUITE ENOUGH of this silliness and actually got a bit angry with the reporter and exclaimed - "The Rocket Exploded because the SONOVABITCH BLEW UP!!! OKAY???" And stormed off.
A fusion reactor is nothing AT ALL like a thermonuclear weapon, even more so than a fission bomb is nothing like a nuclear power plant. Yes, they both rely on the same reaction, but that is where the similarity ends. Maintaining a fusion reaction in a reactor requires very precisely controlled temperature, pressure and magnetic field conditions. If those are even slightly disturbed - like, say, the reactor takes a hit from an AC/20 - the reaction just stops. No runaway reactions, no meltdown, no nothing. Furthermore, the plasma in a reactor may be extremely hot, but it's also very rarefied (the opposite of dense). The amount of energy in the reactor at any one time is simply not that high. So losing containment is no excuse either; once the reaction stops - which, again, can be caused by almost anything - that energy is all that's left, and it wouldn't even be enough to lightly scorch the inside of a reactor housing made of anything sturdier than tin foil. In short: no, fusion reactors won't explode, and stackpoling is still dumb.
@@deamon002I disagree. I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure fusion reactions require an insane amount of heat and pressure to occur. Yes the reaction stops as soon as containment is broken, but containment breaking is going to result in that heat and pressure escaping, and it’s not like it just “disappears”. It has to go SOMEWHERE, soooo… boom. It’s not as if reactor explosions in BT are depicted as giant nukes going off or anything, they’re more like a decently large conventional bomb in scale, and considering the pressures and temperatures involved in a fusion reactor, I think that’s fitting.
@@deamon002 There are ways of building a fusion reactor such that it can become explosive under the right conditions. For instance, one of the best fissile materials (U238) make for excellent radiation shielding. The big question is if the designer wants their fusion reactor to double as a self destruct device; a desirable trait in a war machine.
Also not mentioned is the fact that Dr. Lier (who barely gets a footnote here) is the daughter of the previous champion Kai's father killed in the arena to claim the title belt. Leading to her and Kai having a weird Love/Hate relationship.
38:40 Yes. Yes he did. A proper batchall contains the objective, the forces available to you and their operational status, and the terms of the engagement. Kai's challenge contained all of that, in a roundabout way. So he did, indeed, accidentally a batchall.
The Issuer: "I am Kai-Allard Liao" The Objective: "This pass is mine to ward" The Forces Available: "I have only this club to defend myself" The Terms of Engagement: "I will kill you all, alone or in groups" The terms of the batchall have been laid out in full. It actually checks out.
Also, you will note he never lied. His autocannon was out of ammo, one of his lasers was destroyed, he had a club to defend himself, and he killed every last one of them. (At five mechs per star, three Stars per Trinary, and three Trinaries per Galaxy, Kai killed an entire Galaxy of Clan Falcon's best. Full Stop.)
Keep an eye out for another Humble Bundle of Battletech books and then swoop on it. As a fan of this setting, you owe it to yourself to experience the highs and lows of the canon timeline. From the birth of the Gray Death Legion, to the hammer blow of the Fourth Succession Wat, the many tribulations of Wolf's Dragoons, to the beginning of the Clan Invasion, through to the obliteration of Clan Smoke Jaguar on their home world. It's glorious. 23:35 "Foreshadowing is a literary device..."
This battle had that Endor from star wars feel about it. The primitive inexperienced force found a way to take the day. Can't wait to see you join the smoke jaguars in mechwarrior 5 clans. It's so good!
Bleeding the Clans and tying them down WAS a legitimate gain. It meant they had to allocate more forces to hold what they had, or even to reinforce/replace depleted garrisons, meaning that there were fewer garrison troops for the worlds they were about to invade, as well as preventing actively engaged garrison from redeploying to another conquered world resisting occupation. This is not to downplay the value of the intelligence gathering, but even before that intel was gathered at high cost, the time, manpower, and materiel the Clans had to spend on occupation absolutely hampered their offensive capabilities. Every mech, elemental, vehicle, VTOL, and ASF occupying was an asset that couldn't be allocated to attack, meaning their limited quantity of combat resources was stretched even thinner.
Apollo was the capital world of the Rim World Republic and all the surviving TECH of one. The Yen Lo wan is one of the mech's you get in the essential box set
You got what happens when fission and fusion lose cooling, control and containment backwards. In a fission reactor, if cooling, control and containment fails, the nuclear fuel heats up, which then starts melting and in turn, it causes everything around it to also start melting. That process is called meltdown, which if it breaches both the inner and outer reactor containment, becomes catastrophically bad, as you now have superheated radioactive lava oozing out. Any explosion that happens is because of the steam and other gasses that have built up in the reactor rapidly escaping, which now sends a radioactive cloud drifting with the wind. There has mercifully been only 3 reactor meltdowns to happen in the entire history of nuclear power: 3 Mile Island(which fortunately didn't breach outer containment), Chernobyl(which did breach outer containment, and was the most extensively documented and studied reactor meltdown), and Fukashima Daichi(which breached outer containment because of a powerful earthquake, and is the second-most heavily studied and documented nuclear meltdown). To create a controlled fission reaction, you need 3 things: 1) Enough unstable atomic nuclei close enough together so when they split, their neutrons can more easily collide with other stable nuclei(all radioactive materials are unstable). 2) A medium to slow down and redirect the neutrons so that they're more likely to collide with an unstable nucleus(in the U.S., liquid water is the medium used). 3) A material to absorb excess neutrons, thus limiting the number of fission reactions(in the U.S. graphite is used). When a fusion reactor breaches containment, the area affected is fortunately much more limited, because as soon as all pressure drops, all fusion stops. It still isn't good as you'll have a lot of intense heat and radiation hit the immediate area, and you may have a powerful shockwave that expands out for the point of breach, ripping everything apart. For a fusion reaction to happen you need 3 things: 1) Simple atomic nuclei(hydrogen, helium or lithium are the simplest forms of matter) 2) A lot of pressure to squeeze atoms close together. 3) A lot of heat to give the nuclei enough energy to overcome the positive charge of protons and the strong atomic force. Do that in a controlled setting and voila, you have a fusion reactor. A lot of people get the two crossed because of nuclear weapons. The overwhelming number of nuclear weapons are fissile weapons. Fissile weapons operate on a couple of known atomic principles: 1) There is only a limited number of atoms that can occupy a point of space on the Planck length. 2) When a neutron collides with an atomic nucleus, it causes the nucleus to split, which works especially well if said atom is unstable. Nuclear weapons create such a devastating explosion by using a series of times explosions to heat and compress a sub-critical nuclear massin some older models, they would use the explosives to propel two sub-critical masses at each other at a high rate of speed). This process causes lots of the nuclei of the atomic material to come into contact, and because atoms can only exist in a single area of space at a time, they violently rebound away from each other, ripping their nuclei apart, and releasing a lot of energy and neutrons in the process, which triggers a short-lived, out-of-control fission reaction. Hypothetically you could use non-nuclear materials for a nuclear weapon, but the amount of heat and pressure needed to create an out-of-control fissile reaction is so astronomically high that it would make more sense to drop the device without anything at its core over a city. Now there are other nuclear weapons that use slightly different principles. The neutron bomb bathes an area in such intense radiation that it kills all life in the area in hours, days or weeks.A hydrogen bomb(also called a thermo-nuclear weapon) is essentially a large container of hydrogen with an atomic bomb attached to one end, when you set off the atomic bomb, it triggers an out-of-control but short-lived fusion reaction, which uses extreme heat in combination with the massive blast wave to cause immense destruction...just look up the Castle Bravo test to see what that can do.
The big ball off to the side of head of the hatchetman isn’t a design feature… it’s a dent that was created when Kai with his massive balls sat in the cockpit. 😂 41:23 it’s called stackpolling. The fusion plant CAN explode it’s just hard to do. If there’s a catastrophic failure in the engine’s armored casing air will get in. When the air gets into the containment chamber it’s instantly superheated into a steam/oxygen explosion. In tabletop it’s an optional rule. To make it happen you have to suffer I think 4-5 engine crits in a single turn. Or do what Kai had the doctor do here.
The 10th Lyran guard WAS a fighting post. The personal mace and shield of the future archon. They had just gotten dusty by the time Victor brought them to bare at Twycross. As for Kai, out of universe, he was the first token good Liao in the chronology of writing the setting... to my knowledge. Edit: 20:13 I believe that is an Ebon Jaguar. Inner Sphere Reporting Name: Cauldron Born. It's the Smoke Jaguar heavy omnimech. Lots of pod space, but it is under armored compared to the mad cat and the limited number of fixed heat sinks might well lead to warriors putting in too much firepower while forgetting to also add enough cooling to survive their loadout. Edit2: There are actually good days for the Cappellan Confederation after Twycross. Also 27:38 is just stock art filling out time. Not depicting the fedcom assault on Twycross. How do I know this, because those are Roc protomechs, which debuted in 3059. 7 tonner, 86 kph, 150m jump distance, and can survive a PPC blast. Edit3: The Hatchetman used to be much more dangerous, with the hit table for hatchets being more generous, and the earliest iteration of hatchet rules not requiring the player to spend tonnage or critical slots on it, only to realize this would result in the vast majority of custom mechs sporting twin hatchets without any drawbacks. So they fixed the rules, leaving the Hachetman messed up. In universe, it was the first go at a hatchet mech, so its failings are much more understandable, especially as it was replaced by later mechs sporting hatchets that came after the panicked hot fix nerf that really did need to happen. Maybe not the hit table nerf and being limited to 1 hatchet, but they really did need to fix the lack of drawbacks and opportunity cost for installing a hatchet.
Fun fact: Tex mispronounces Kai's name *so* many times in this video. His name does not rhyme with 'eye' - it rhymes with 'bay' The author of Blood of Kerensky Trilogy (Michael Stackpole) which many of the events from this video are referencing mentioned at the last Kerensky-Kon that Victor and Kai were intended to be an allusion to King Arthur and his half brother... Sir Kay. He just changed the name of Sir Kay to Kai after reading a novel where someone *else* decided to be sneaky and rename their version of Kay to 'Cai'. It's even a miniature plot point in Blood of Kerensky that his name is pronounced like someone was shortening the word 'Okay'
Also for the record, Kai Allard-Liao is canonically the best pilot to exist in all of Battletech Fiction and his tabletop rules reflect this - he is 0/0 pilot that gets -2 bonus on all piloting and gunnery rolls (effectively making him a -2/-2 pilot), a +2 bonus to all cluster rolls, imposes a +3 to-hit penalty to everybody else attacking him, and is personally immune to any equipment effects that improve accuracy (like Targeting computers, pulse lasers, or LBX cluster rolls) Morgan Kell's Phantom Mech ability is arguably more broken for just... tableflipping the rules of the game, but even Morgan Kell has an uphill battle to beat Kai because of the raw cheaty numbers Kai has at his disposal.
What do you mean, HCT-3F "can't fire a shoOoOOot"? It has pretty much the same loadout as baseline CN9-A. Unlike CN9-A, it doesn't have an LRM. But instead both of it's MLs are facing forward. It also has 30 points of armour less than CN9-A, but 4 more JJts (which is just 4 JJts - CN9-A doesn't get any). While it might sound like a bad deal, all of it's ammo is in it's CT, unlike CN9-A, which has 2 tons of "I'm going to go boom boom" in both Left and Right Side Torsos. So pretty much any crit or Floating TAC into RT just blows up the CN9-A. And with LT there's a chance you're gonna hit the LRM10, I guess. Mind you, both of the side torsos of CN9-A are slightly less armoured than any of the side torsos or CT of the more maneuverable HCT-3F. Video games might have given you the impression that CN9-A is some sturdy murder machine, but it's as susceptible to sudden Ammo Cookoffs as your average Thunderbolt. What are you even on about, man? :D
@@KMCA779 Yen Lo is a special thing. My man was going off about HCT smh being infinitely worse than CN9-A, when CN9-A has not an insignificant chance of eating a cERPPC and just straight up dying in one go. Had happened enough for me in Tukayyid games :D
It very much might not be your sort of thing, but if you have any interest in palaeontology I'd recommend you watch a video essay called The Mass Extinction Debates: A Science Communication Odyssey.
13:27 Does anybody actually know what the mech on the left is? I just searched the lineup of mechs The Kell Hounds could have used throughout The Clan Invasion and currently my best guess is its a Shadow Hawk, but it looks way too big next to that Awesome.
@@stoffhimel Innersphere Propaganda that triggered the 'Real' Nikolai Malthus so much that he tried to batchall the creators after the invasion. And when that didn't work, he sued them.
I don't like Kai Allard Liao as a character because his big arc is that it takes three books for him to realize how good he actually is. Perhaps the most competent MechWarrior in the Inner Sphere has crippling self-doubt issues despite megatons of evidence that he is the best of the best.
Kai's issue was that he felt heavily pressured to measure up to his badass family to the point where he confused good/great with perfection. He qualified as a Mechwarrior, he knew that taking out the Falcon Guard was something not any average joe could do, but that was outweighed by him ordering the infantry to their deaths and him bringing Dr. Lear needlessly into a hopeless firefight. And as someone who frequently second guesses themself in the name of some lofty arbitrary standard i can relate to how those screwups can easily overshadow the rest of a great job. And after a while that voice becomes your only honest friend in the world. Kai for all his self bashings knows he's at least semi-competent. He just needed to learn how to reduce the voice to constructive critism and treat good as perfect enough. I know characters with massive self esteem issues aren't everyone's cup of tea, but the world needs Kai Allard-Liaos: the badass who shows how to win the battles that mechs are useless for.
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