Talk:Lyran Alliance Armed Forces

Needs more work--S.gage 13:09 EDT 23 June, 2009

5th Lyran Regulars were re-formed after the Jihad. They appeared in Operation Hammerfall. Should they still be listed as destroyed now, since the novel is only place they appear? -- Wrangler 12:36, 29 June 2009 (PDT)

This is kind of complicated. The Lyran Regulars are units which are thrown at suicidally difficult tasks. If the commands survive, great! If not, give it a couple of years, and someone will reform the unit with old cast-off BattleMechs and green recruits from somewhere else. In other words, it makes sense the 5th would be reformed by the end of the Jihad. The historical tags might not be the best way to convey information, especially for this kind of unit - I guess the whole problem with running a game in multiple time periods raises the question, 'what is historical?' I will remove the tag on this page, but this detail should also be added to the 5th Lyran Regulars page.--S.gage 17:33 (EDT) 29 June 2009

'what is historical?' This might be an appropriate time to introduce an idea I had, where we establish the 'character' of BattleTechWiki as an encyclopedia of the BattleTech universe from some unspecified point far in its future, where we're reporting everything we know about the CBT 'verse from a perspective of "this is what we know about the history of the Inner Sphere up through the Dark Ages (or whatever)." As canon time proceeds, the amount of information we historians uncover grows. I can write up a longer essay describing the roles of the Editors in this future time. The idea is to provide a non-allied, historical perspective. Thoughts? --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 20:02, 29 June 2009 (PDT)

Related to that, the 5th Lyran Regulars that took part in Hammerfall were a part of the (second?) LCAF, not the LAAF. Much like the Com Guards, the Lyran Alliance Armed Forces have a distinct timeframe for its existence (when it was created, when it ceased to be) so a help for historical perspective (write from perspective of post 3084) even if Jihad muddies things at the moment. Of course as a secondary issue it also raises questions of what should be done with the present copy/paste from House Steiner (The Lyran Commonwealth) LCAF article BTW has, as we do seem to slowly moving towards a shared format for the militaries and its of course primarily circa 3025-3030. Cyc 21:19, 29 June 2009 (PDT)

I like Revanche's ideas here, because it seems simple. I had considered this before, and thought about adapting the all of the articles to be temporally neutral. However, the changes would be labor-intensive and I really did not think the benefits would be worth the effort, considering all the other articles just waiting to be written. The task I had considered would entail:

1. Combining renamed states (for example, Lyran Commonwealth and Lyran Alliance point to same page, but what about the Federated Commonwealth...?)

2. Era-specific details are briefly examined in the main articles, but accessible in full by following a link from the main article - from LCAF to LCAF of 3025, AFFC of 3050, LAAF of 3067, etc..

The benefits of this kind of organization are that we don't give away too many plot spoilers, and we still provide an easy manner to navigate. Also, one need not modify the main article every time there is a new sourcebook released. The drawbacks are MANY - redundancy, effort, and writing in a manner that precludes 'spoilers'. Anyways, consider this as an alternative. I like Revanche's idea better, and I do NOT a recommend doing this.--S.gage 22:20, 29 June 2009 (PDT)