Talk:List of Minor mercenary units

How to use this list

...and why I want this list deleted

As the one who originally set up this article years ago, I feel it is my duty to make sure it disappears again. :)

No, seriously: I have come to realize that this kind of batch articles serves no useful purpose and that Sarna BTW should actively try to avoid them. The mere fact that mercenary unit names redirect to this article should already prove that each and every named mercenary unit should have its own article, however short it may be; stub articles are nothing to be afraid of. We've seen that this works well with starship articles. I feel that lumping together "stub" articles within a much larger category violates the intuitive order of the wiki. This wouldn't be a problem if the article summarily covers the entire category (such as the List of BattleTech products), and has no overlap with an existing category.

Another problem I have with lists or categories of "minor whatevers" on principle is that there is no definition of what constitutes "minor", it is a very arbitrary distinction that only serves to muddy the waters. This goes for "minor mercenary units" as much as for "minor characters".

I'll therefore endeavour to kill such summary lists with fire fortwith, starting with this one. You're invited to help out, or to voice compelling reasons that would change my mind. :) Frabby (talk) 03:29, 6 January 2017 (PST)

I am fully for killing this. I have long created unit pages for minor units that may only ever be mentioned by name once. Some of the units have been fleshed out by the authors in time, most have not but that is not the point. As a GM why have your Mercs face off against the some what faceless Chupadero Militia when they can face off against the canon 1st Chupadero Armored Legion? No real difference but it adds that little touch of feel to the universe.--Dmon (talk) 05:35, 6 January 2017 (PST)
I'd like to state I like the list as is because it makes it easier to word search small units based on details and find what I'm looking for. I don't really agree with (or see) the point of how its a problem that some merc units redirect a user here. How we have the list now has proven much more useful to me than going through multiple pages with one line blurbs would be. My two 0.02 C-bills. 66.87.115.201 12:19, 22 January 2017 (EST)
Keep it. Having a list of Merc units is incredibly useful. I may not even know the name of a particular Merc Unit unless it's on a list like this. If anything, it needs to be grouped/ordered by era, so if I'm looking for units available in 3025, I can find them. -Dutch, 1:40pm, 23 January 2017 (CST)
Thanks to the latter two posters for voicing their opinion. However, it sort of confirms my resolve. Because if you're using this list as any sort of (minor) mercenaries listing then you're using it wrong. It's not a coherent or comprehensive list of "all" or even all "minor" (whatever that's supposed to mean) merc units. It never was that, never was meant to be that, and could never possibly be that. So I'd argue that the very existence of this article is misleading, chalking this up as another reason to remove it. Instead, check out Category:Mercenary Commands for a list of articles about named merc units in BT canon.
@Dutch - Sorting by era is impossible because we don't even have dates for the inception or disbanding of the vast majority of merc units in BT, sorry. Frabby (talk) 08:33, 24 January 2017 (EST)
If it works for us, how are we using it "wrong"? It has details easy to search and cites sources with each unit making it easy to look them up. With the lame category function I have to look through page after page to find what I want. I've yet to see a convincing argument for changing it to the less search-friendly category system. The battletech novels list page links to individual book pages, so if you're heck bent to make two sentence pages for every single-mentioned merc unit then we have a precedent for both systems. -Chet
Very well then, if there are indeed users who want to keep it then I'll not delete this list, even though I stand by what I wrote. I will not maintain it or add to it anymore though, and I'll still create articles on every named merc unit. Frabby (talk) 15:31, 25 January 2017 (EST)
Frabby - Suggestion: I always believed that this article was intended for mercenary units for whom we do not have the content to justify a full article. Simply put, there are merc units in the BTech universe for whom all we have for them is a name, and possibly a year they were active. I hate the idea of creating dozens of "stub articles" for such units. Thoughts? ClanWolverine101 (talk) 09:34, 13 May 2017 (EDT)

Original introduction

A word on what I've done here, and a request that other editors adhere to these guidelines:

  • I have included each unit as a separate section, with an appropriate section tag. This will allow other BTW articles to directly link to individual mercenary units using a [[List of minor mercenary units#unit name]] link. I feel this is an important aspect, because some digests do contain nuggets of canonical information on the sidelines and may need to be referenced in other articles.
  • This is also the reason why I decided against organizing the article content into a table. For this reason, there are (consciously) no superordinate headers in this article, most importantly no references section. Please put all references in a "Source" section with the appropriate merc unit. (Outdated, see above.)

Oh, and please leave this section at the very top of the discussion page. :) Frabby 22:18, 5 January 2011 (UTC)


Talk Page

This article is within the scope of the Military Commands WikiProject, a collaborative effort to improve BattleTechWiki's coverage of articles on military units. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

House Liao (The Capellan Confederation) page 80 - McCormack's Fusiliers - Lander's Landers brief devastating encounters on McCormack's Fusiliers and their payback on the Landers.</ref> Source: House Liao (Source book): pg. 80

Minor or not

You'll note that numerous not-so-minor merc units (such as the 15th Dracon, Dragon's Breath, Tooth of Ymir, Mobile Fire) are mentioned in the list. That is because I use it to collect snippets of information and references before creating a full-blown article on the units. Everybody is invited to create articles for individual merc units from this list (please remember to delete them from this list then, and make sure to include all that information in the article). Frabby 13:51, 14 February 2009 (PST)

Frabby - This sounds like a good idea. I'm thinking of adding Barber's Marauder IIs to the list. What do you think? ClanWolverine101 15:28, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
Barber's Marauder IIs is the same unit that used to be Miller's Marauders in the 3025 era, and it's another excellent example for a not-so-minor merc unit that doesn't have much fluff but keeps popping up. They certainly deserve their own article but if you want to collect bits and pieces about them, feel free to use this list. That's why I created it in the first place! Frabby 15:52, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

References

Frabby, I'm unaware why references should not use the established method with this type of article. Is there a precedent set on WP that influences your course? Secondly, if the references are kept as you've developed them, is there any reason why they can't be linked to their respective source material articles? Thanks for the explanation. --Revanche (talk|contribs) 09:04, 20 December 2011 (PST)

This has to do with both the nature and the purpose of this list. Every subsection essentially constitutes its own "minor" article, therefore a common references page makes no sense. It may even turn out to be detrimental to have: Imagine you try to take out an entry and expand it into its own article. Not only do you not have the references at hand; in the case of references that are used repeatedly (c.f. Liao Housebook), you need to look up the reference in another section where it was used first.
Or is there an established method for list-type articles that I have missed? Frabby 09:54, 20 December 2011 (PST)
'No' to the latter part (list-type articles). I meant the general references section presented at the bottom of each page.
As for the lack of references in the section, won't the intra-linked footnote (to the specific reference) solve that problem? To be clear, I mean where the footnote takes you to the reference 'House Liao (The Capellan Confederation), p. 78, "Blandford's Grenadiers".'--Revanche (talk|contribs) 11:15, 20 December 2011 (PST)
I would offer this : Redoing this article in the standard format would require a lot of work while adding little if anything to the overall quality of the wiki. I would agree, however, that some of these units are deserving of full articles. Some, meanwhile, were mentioned once in passing, and should be confined to this article for the forseeable future. So in terms of concept, I am all for it. ClanWolverine101 12:17, 20 December 2011 (PST)
To be clear, I'm not talking at all about the format of the article. This is a list, which by definition is different. I'm asking solely about referencing methods.--Revanche (talk|contribs) 12:26, 20 December 2011 (PST)


Team Venom

I was just wondering if we should delete Team Venom from this list due to the source that is cited for them is from the Apocryphal Product MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat. Thoughts on this? DerangedShadow (talk) 06:46, 5 July 2013 (PDT)

Apocryphal content such as this is explicitly welcome here (see Policy:Notability). The entry does indeed belong here, but it needs to be clearly marked as apocryphal (see Policy:Canon). Frabby (talk) 13:42, 5 July 2013 (PDT)

Illician Rangers & Cunnigham's Commandos

Wondering if the Illician Rangers & Cunningham's Commandos (1st and 2nd) should be deleted from this list. Based on the information on the page, the "Illician Rangers" engaged the Black Widow Company during the Galtor campaign. This most likely was the 21st Illician Rangers (21st Illician Rangers), which have their own page. On top of that, the overarching organization (the Illician Lancers) also have a page. So, having this other unit listed here could be confusing.

Similarly, Cunningham's Commandos have their own page Cunningham's Commandos - so maybe we should just condense this info there and delete them from the minors ;)

Justin Kase (talk) 11:42, 21 December 2016 (EST)

Same can be said of Ever-Free Ever-Free, Lone Wolves Lone Wolves and Vandelay's Valyries Vandelay's Valkyries Justin Kase (talk) 13:02, 21 December 2016 (EST)

You're correct, those double mentions should be deleted here. Just make sure that all information found here is present (or edited into) the proper article about the unit before deleting.
Truth be told, I'm hating myself for ever setting up this summary article in the first place. Each and every unit here should get their own article. Like every Christmas, I'm badly overworked right now and will not do much until mid-January, but creating individual merc unit articles and finally deleting this article here is on my to-do list. Frabby (talk) 03:52, 22 December 2016 (PST)
PS Justin, good to see you active here! :) Suggest you get yourself a proper user registration.
I thought I had an ID, but when I asked to have it send me a PW reset to my email, I never received it. Once I get that, I will try to create individual articles for each unit. Along with adding in the bellow, and adding all of them to the main Merc list.
Chaos Irregulars Mercenaries Supplemental Update, p. 42, "Chaos Irregulars Unit Profile"
Critchley's Cavaliers Mercenaries Supplemental, p. 61, "Stealthy Tigers Unit Profile"
Dante's Detectives Mercenaries Supplemental Update, p. 48, "Dante's Detectives Unit Profile"
Grandin's Crusaders Total Chaos, p. 25, "Grandin's Crusaders"
Heart of Blake Mercenaries Supplemental Update, p. 69, "Heart of Blake Unit Profile"
Jie Fang Legion http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Jie_Fang_Legion
Khasparov's Knights Mercenaries Supplemental Update, p. 76, "Khasparov's Knights Unit Profile"
Larsen's Loaners Field Manual : Periphery, p. 118, "Militaries of the Lesser States"
Nelson's Longbows Field Manual : Periphery, p. 119, "Militaries of the Lesser States"
O'Gordon's Rifles Mercenaries Supplemental Update, p. 92, "O'Gordon's Rifles Unit Profile"
Raymond's Redcoats Mercenaries Supplemental Update, p. 98 "Raymond's Redcoats"
Star Seeds Mercenaries Supplemental Update, p. 109, "Star Seeds Unit Profile"
The 48th Mercenaries Supplemental Update, p.24, "The 48th Unit Profile"
Zeus' Thunderbolts Technical Readout: 3085, p.98
Also, under the main merc list, I'd like to move the sub-units of the Lexington CG (and others) under their parent formation - much like the Dragoons and ELH. Justin Kase (talk) 08:42, 22 December 2016 (EST)