Turn 103 - Sometimes It's Hard To Make Things Clear
Turn 103 - Sometimes It’s Hard To Make Things Clear
The early phases of the fighting on Nouvelle Picardie reveal several things about your current force organization. First, your infantry is supreme on the battlefield, easily dominating the non power armored troops of the enemy. In open terrain and in situations where mobility is important your armored vehicles and mechs are exceptionally lethal combatants, able to reach out and destroy any enemy that they can see.
But in built up terrain, in close quarters, and in situations where you simply cannot keep the range wide open to take maximum advantage of your long range missiles, gauss rifles, and enhanced PPCs the calculus shifts rapidly. In the very conditions where you’d expected your heaviest and most heavily armed units to be their most effective they are proving rather disappointing.
For example, the Hyper Assault Gauss rifles of the Merkava X and the latest model of Griffon are extremely lethal, especially at great range, combining heavy hitting power with superb accuracy. But it’s impossible to carry enough ammunition for them to keep them in action for extended combat, plus once the range closes to short and medium distances the balance quickly shifts to lighter, faster firing weapons that are able to sustain action past the point where the giant guns run out of ammunition.
The Enhanced PPC and LRM armed Soldatin had similar issues once the ranges closed in tight, with no dedicated close-in weapons the heavy mechs frequently had to retreat in order to prevent themselves from being swarmed in built up terrain, the ammunition supply for their LRM rack becoming a distinct liability even with the benefit of CASE. The PPC, while exceptionally deadly, was utterly useless against infantry and complete overkill against light vehicles. And where did infantry and light vehicles come into their own? Close terrain where they’d be able to get in range without you being able to do a damn thing about it.
Certainly, if you didn’t care about collateral damage and could just hammer things flat with artillery bombardments none of this would matter. But you aren’t the Dracs, you haven’t drunk the Atrocity-chan Kool Aid, and would much rather that your soldiers remained soldiers, not monsters.
Under these conditions many of the design choices made by the SLDF in the historical files make far more sense. While not as efficient on paper, mixed armaments and units give the commander far more flexibility in real world conditions. It is counterintuitive to mount weapons and systems that are not the absolute ‘best of the best’, but oftentimes it turns out that those weapons actually do have a good reason for existing, you just hadn’t yet faced those reasons.
A field refit of the Patton IV has shown a great deal of promise, where the LRM racks, extended range 5cm laser, and TAG gear, along with associated ammunition and electronics, are removed and replaced with a trio of 5cm pulse lasers and an additional ton of ammunition for the HAG/40. Hull ammunition detonations have been completely eliminated in this variant, and while the tank completely loses all indirect fire capability, it has already earned a reputation as a complete nightmare for enemy infantry and light vehicles in urban terrain, savaging them with the lasers even after the main cannon runs out of ammunition.
A similar field upgrade to the Merkava X has yielded similar results, although this time it features a quintet of the 5cm pulse lasers replacing both LRM launchers, their ammunition, and associated electronics including the TAG gear. While this reduces the overall punch of the vehicle, it does make it a lethal anti-infantry and urban combat tank.
The fighting continues on Nouvelle Picardie since, unlike the Dracs, the Duc’s forces are unwilling to just charge out in suicidal charges into the open to demonstrate their samurai spirit. Inconvenient that.
Closer to home, due to the synergy between the proposed advanced ER PPC and the existing Improved and Enhanced models the amount of time required for the R&D project has been drastically cut, although it will still cost almost a half trillion. Not small change by any measure.
The Department of Periphery Studies is up to their usual shenanigans again. The hard working assistants and staff have managed to keep things mostly contained, but they are disrupting traffic again as they’ve apparently decided that the little minifigures included in popular plastic brick construction sets are actually real people who are being enslaved by those playing with said sets, and are marching for Brick Lives Matter.
Since said marches seem to feature them showing up at the Palace parks with their sets, building them, then marching around chanting absurd phrases while pretending to be full sized brick people… yeah, welcome to the wonderfully weird existence of those in range of the Department of Periphery Studies, bring your sense of the absurd, because it’s about to get strange.
New Castor is experiencing a mild recession this year as several companies file for bankruptcy amid a slowing economy. There’s a generalized malaise about the planet this year that is negatively affecting growth. Analysts are divided as to the cause, but the general consensus is that having one of your biggest megascrapers fall down due to gross stupidity might just be considered bad business.
The Black Steel are continuing their harassment raids all along the northwestern frontier, disrupting commerce in that entire region. Your strategists believe that they are attempting to get you to spread out your forces in response to the attacks so that you will be weak wherever they intend to strike in earnest. The three most likely targets are Arvum, Pryyemnyy, and Bohren. In an attempt to mislead the Black Steel you have deployed the NRI Corvus-class vessels that are part of the treaty widely to those systems that are being raided, along with numbers of your own Lyr-class corvettes. Merchants are being organized into convoys, accompanied by England-class Frigates, while the Grand Fleet is concentrated in the New Phoenix system in order to respond as quickly as possible to any actual assault.
The early phases of the fighting on Nouvelle Picardie reveal several things about your current force organization. First, your infantry is supreme on the battlefield, easily dominating the non power armored troops of the enemy. In open terrain and in situations where mobility is important your armored vehicles and mechs are exceptionally lethal combatants, able to reach out and destroy any enemy that they can see.
But in built up terrain, in close quarters, and in situations where you simply cannot keep the range wide open to take maximum advantage of your long range missiles, gauss rifles, and enhanced PPCs the calculus shifts rapidly. In the very conditions where you’d expected your heaviest and most heavily armed units to be their most effective they are proving rather disappointing.
For example, the Hyper Assault Gauss rifles of the Merkava X and the latest model of Griffon are extremely lethal, especially at great range, combining heavy hitting power with superb accuracy. But it’s impossible to carry enough ammunition for them to keep them in action for extended combat, plus once the range closes to short and medium distances the balance quickly shifts to lighter, faster firing weapons that are able to sustain action past the point where the giant guns run out of ammunition.
The Enhanced PPC and LRM armed Soldatin had similar issues once the ranges closed in tight, with no dedicated close-in weapons the heavy mechs frequently had to retreat in order to prevent themselves from being swarmed in built up terrain, the ammunition supply for their LRM rack becoming a distinct liability even with the benefit of CASE. The PPC, while exceptionally deadly, was utterly useless against infantry and complete overkill against light vehicles. And where did infantry and light vehicles come into their own? Close terrain where they’d be able to get in range without you being able to do a damn thing about it.
Certainly, if you didn’t care about collateral damage and could just hammer things flat with artillery bombardments none of this would matter. But you aren’t the Dracs, you haven’t drunk the Atrocity-chan Kool Aid, and would much rather that your soldiers remained soldiers, not monsters.
Under these conditions many of the design choices made by the SLDF in the historical files make far more sense. While not as efficient on paper, mixed armaments and units give the commander far more flexibility in real world conditions. It is counterintuitive to mount weapons and systems that are not the absolute ‘best of the best’, but oftentimes it turns out that those weapons actually do have a good reason for existing, you just hadn’t yet faced those reasons.
A field refit of the Patton IV has shown a great deal of promise, where the LRM racks, extended range 5cm laser, and TAG gear, along with associated ammunition and electronics, are removed and replaced with a trio of 5cm pulse lasers and an additional ton of ammunition for the HAG/40. Hull ammunition detonations have been completely eliminated in this variant, and while the tank completely loses all indirect fire capability, it has already earned a reputation as a complete nightmare for enemy infantry and light vehicles in urban terrain, savaging them with the lasers even after the main cannon runs out of ammunition.
A similar field upgrade to the Merkava X has yielded similar results, although this time it features a quintet of the 5cm pulse lasers replacing both LRM launchers, their ammunition, and associated electronics including the TAG gear. While this reduces the overall punch of the vehicle, it does make it a lethal anti-infantry and urban combat tank.
The fighting continues on Nouvelle Picardie since, unlike the Dracs, the Duc’s forces are unwilling to just charge out in suicidal charges into the open to demonstrate their samurai spirit. Inconvenient that.
Closer to home, due to the synergy between the proposed advanced ER PPC and the existing Improved and Enhanced models the amount of time required for the R&D project has been drastically cut, although it will still cost almost a half trillion. Not small change by any measure.
The Department of Periphery Studies is up to their usual shenanigans again. The hard working assistants and staff have managed to keep things mostly contained, but they are disrupting traffic again as they’ve apparently decided that the little minifigures included in popular plastic brick construction sets are actually real people who are being enslaved by those playing with said sets, and are marching for Brick Lives Matter.
Since said marches seem to feature them showing up at the Palace parks with their sets, building them, then marching around chanting absurd phrases while pretending to be full sized brick people… yeah, welcome to the wonderfully weird existence of those in range of the Department of Periphery Studies, bring your sense of the absurd, because it’s about to get strange.
New Castor is experiencing a mild recession this year as several companies file for bankruptcy amid a slowing economy. There’s a generalized malaise about the planet this year that is negatively affecting growth. Analysts are divided as to the cause, but the general consensus is that having one of your biggest megascrapers fall down due to gross stupidity might just be considered bad business.
The Black Steel are continuing their harassment raids all along the northwestern frontier, disrupting commerce in that entire region. Your strategists believe that they are attempting to get you to spread out your forces in response to the attacks so that you will be weak wherever they intend to strike in earnest. The three most likely targets are Arvum, Pryyemnyy, and Bohren. In an attempt to mislead the Black Steel you have deployed the NRI Corvus-class vessels that are part of the treaty widely to those systems that are being raided, along with numbers of your own Lyr-class corvettes. Merchants are being organized into convoys, accompanied by England-class Frigates, while the Grand Fleet is concentrated in the New Phoenix system in order to respond as quickly as possible to any actual assault.
