Konnichiwa, minna-san!

Being a long-time avid RPG nerd, I've recently started to work on a proper background for my Mechwarrior, including the purchase and study of various books from the BT 'verse focusing on its setting as a whole over any game rules or single conflicts. Maybe one day I'll actually be able to play this character in a P&P, but so far I shall be content with the fun that went into designing her.

One thing that still did not seem quite clear after reading through various books, however, would be the status of the samurai - specifically, if all Mechwarriors of the DCMS are samurai.

The "A Time of War" RPG core rulebook suggests that the IS Title of Knight Bachelor (the lowest rank of nobility) would be equivalent to a Samurai of the Draconis Combine, with the added note that you're not allowed to wear the paired swords without this title.

This alone would be perfect. However, in the old Kurita Handbook, which is an excellent in-depth resource on the Combine, it is also said that it has become required/expected for all DCMS Mechwarriors to carry the katana/wakizashi set. Furthermore, a number of prestiguous DCMS Military Academies hand them out to all their graduates.

Am I correctly interpreting these sources by assuming that this means that the Mechwarrior Academies are churning out hundreds of little knights every single year? It just sounds like a lot, although I suppose it is a large nation...

Historical research on feudal Japan also yielded the interesting fact that there was an era where samurai were extremely common, up to all soldiers being seen as such - not dissimilar to medieval Europe where the "knight" once referred to nothing more than a warrior with a horse - before it slowly developed into samurai becoming more and more removed from the ordinary citizenry, and at the same time less numerous.

Now, keeping this in mind, one could see the DCMS Mechwarriors as the Combine's version of mounted warriors (operating alongside the foot soldiers in form of the Regular Army's troopers and tanks) rather than influential nobility, yet still "having a foothold" in the noble hierarchy of the Dragon's realm, so to say.

Does this sound reasonable or would you come to a different conclusion? Have you read anything else concerning this topic?

The daisho set is also awarded to all Mechwarrior graduates from (IIRC) the Sun Zhang Academy. On the other hand, being anything less than from the nobility and becoming a Mechwarrior is not very common in the Draconis Combine until the years of Theodore Kurita.

I suppose that means my final conclusion was correct, then, and my scepticism misplaced. It is likely I have allowed myself to be misguided by the relative "rarity" of medieval European knights in comparison to common soldiery, as well as underestimating the size of the DCMS!

Also, after some more research on various sites I dug up on google, it seems that the ratio of samurai to ashigaru (foot soldiers) seems to have fluctuated between 1:4 to 1:2 depending on the era! This would easily fit in with the idea of Mechwarriors forming the DCMS's "warrior nobility" (although the title will of course also be carried by many officers of the regular forces ... according to the AToW rulebook it even seems to be a prerequisite for rising above company-level command).

Very good, I can work with this. Arigato!

No problem.

Remember, this is a multi-stellar domain, with every organized planet recognized by the Coordinator having it's own ruler/noble family. When you realize just how many planets that is, and with the potential that some of those planets have multiple noble families, that's actually a lot of potential Mechwarriors & other nobles in the military.

Also when you think about it the BT universe Mech warriors and Areospace pilots are the creme de la creme of society, only the select few obtain that status, other become techs, meds, admin, etc.

Personally I think that is over-generalizing it too much. There are plenty of areas where Mechwarriors do not fit that description, especially during the succession wars. In the Lyran Commonwealth, anyone with enough money can get into the military & be trained as a Mechwarrior. On Solaris, a little bit of training and a contract with a stable does it, just have to know the right people. Really, only in the Draconis Combine and maybe the Cappellan Confederation does that statement hold close to true.