Renegade Legion: Centurion Analysis/discussion thread

[Connor MacLeod]

So here we move onto Centurion. The tank game. Centurion tends to indicate tht the RL universe has some pretty impressive and well developed ground capabilities that far outstrip many other sci fi franchises of roughly similar technology/capability (IE they're still fucked by the Culture.) A great deal of this is due to their grav tanks which are, for all intents and purposes Interceptors fitted for ground attack roles. But like some of the earlier sources, its also plagued by some logical inconsistencies because this is, at essence, a game, and those will be addressed.

But with this covered, the baseline (save much of the soldier tech, which is only partly dealt with by Centurion) will be covered (Fighters, tanks, and capital ships). The gaps will be covered by the other two (more or less - Legionnaire will shed light on their troopers and Prefect will help a little bit with the logistical/strategic scale.)

Anyhow, on with the show...

Screaming down through the atmosphere, with fusion-created hell bursting all around, the assault boats release medium and light grav tanks 5 kilomeers above hte surface of the planet.

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Travelling at over 300 kilometers per hour, the TOG grav tanks give up the safety of hugging the ground for speed.

General statistical stuff like all Renegade Legion sourcs. 300kph is not "top" speed, but it is a bit faster than max ground hugging speed.

Also note the dropping from 5 km up drop-off point for the tanks, and the apparnet use of fusion (nuclear) weapons of some kind.

Each [infantry] squad contians up to eight trooper sarmed with weapons such as painting lasers, Gauss rifles, and a variety of anti-tank weapons. Squads are also equipped with bounce packs that give the the limited ability to move quickly while dismounted.

Basic composition of a trooper squad. Generally this applies to omst human forces, although there are variances on the commonwealth side (which will show up in the course of analysis, either here or in other sources like Prefect). This generally highlights the versatility of the squads in combat and the combined armed nature of RL warfare (ground troops carry stuff to handle infantry, vehicles, as well as acting as scouting/recon elements.) Bounce packs provide them with a measure of mobility to help keep up in the fluid nature of ground combat.

Hell missiles serve to protect ground targets from orbital bombardment. They use a gravitically induced fusion reaction to create an airburst that can vaporize unshielded tagets.

More gravwank. I'm not sure if they use some sort of gravity-induced fusion reaction, or are some exotic reaction that generates some thermal/blast effects as well as the gravwank, because they behave like the latter. Also note that shields in ground combat are needed to withstand their yield (unspecified for the moment.)

Each hex on the mapsheet represents an are of ground 200 meters (roughly 656 feet) across, and each turn represents one minute of real time.

The scale of combat as we know exists in every RL game. And like always, I include it for the sake of completeness and that it might serve some use in the future, but all calcs should be taken with a grain of salt

The vast majority of comat vehicles use grav drives, which warp and manipulate a planet's gravity field in order to move the vehicle. Because the field creates a 95 percent frictionless surface around the tank, these combat craft can achieve very high speeds despite their non-aerodynamic appearance.

Grav drives do have one drawback, however. Short of turning off the drive nad slamming into the ground, it is difficult to decelerate quickly or make a sudden turn in a fast moving grav vehicle. Additionally, ,because of engineerign constraints, grav vehicles must follow ground contours fairly closely. Thius means that vehicles travelling at high speeds over rapidly changing terrain (hills, trees, canyon) run the risk of sinking the ground and damaging the vehicle.

The function and purpose of grav drives in ground combat (IE technobabble speed and mobility.) though they don't have all that good of braking compared to their acceleration.

[grav] vehicles may move while under water, but the terrain speed limit is one. Vehciles under water may only be attacked by artillery or orbital fire support missions.

They even act as submarines! Versatile lil fuckers.

In order to move, dismounted infantry use what is known as a bounce pack. This is a small anti-grav device that almost totally negates the weight of the individual soldier. This allows the trooper ot move in a series of long, low jumps, or bounces, vastly increasing his manueverability.

It sounds like mass lightening crap, but in practice they behave like 40K jump packs (they allow you to move faster) - just using technobabble to do it.

In Centurion, many vehicles carry digging cannons. This equipment fires a specially designed explosive charge into the ground and immediately under the vehicle. The charge explodes and creates a crater into which the vehicle can drive and assume a hull-down profile. At the same time, the vehicle fires other charges that create a pattern of ten to twleve man-size foxholes that allow any accompanying infantry to take up protected positions.

A device that allows tanks an other vehicles to go "hull down" if need be. Creating a crater that big needs a pretty damn big explosive charge, though (a gravtank has to likely be at least several meters deep and narly 10 meters wide. That could be high MJ/low GJ, but we dont know how big the charge or the exact mechanism.

Once the movement phase ends, all units may choose to designate targets for missiles, lasers, mass driver cannons, and offboard artillery by illuminating them with painting lasers. all vehicles are automatically equipped with painting lasers. Maximum range for vehicle painting lasers is 20 hexes.

Painting lasers offer two advantages. First, a painted target radiates laser energy that allows an indirect fire weapon to home in on it. Second, the painting laser is able to decipher the target's shield flicker pattern, which is downloaded into all friendly fire-control systems, thus negating the shield's effectiveness. This tactic is not viable in space, however. Even at clsoe range in space (15 kilometers) the transmission lag time back to the targeting ship is long enough that the target can change its shield flicker rate before an offensive weapons system can be fired.

The aforementioned painting lasers described. By game stats they have a max range of 4 km. The nature of the painting laser also confers an EW-like capability to shields - they can presumably block some sensor emissions/make them harder to detect, and that shields themselves can be bypassed by timing the flicker rate, therefore there is an EW-like funciton there in stopping your enemy from bypassing your shields (changing flicker rates, and such.)

The "excuse" why this isnt used in space is rather amusing though, since it seems to act as if ranges at 15 km or less would be "impossible" for capital ships (even though by game mechanics they're canonically limited to under 1500 km fighting ranges anyhow, nevermind fighters.) With the low accelerations impiled to be largely accurate for the game, there would be no problem having a "knife fight" range (or even strafing passes) fighting like this in fighters, and capital ships are HARDLY that agile to begin with. (It would also give som eutility to smaller ships in behaving as a "torpedo boat" type role, especially if they get into weak/vulnerable quarters.)

The other funny bit bout the excuse is that at 15 km, the "lag time" for a laser is 1/20,000th of a second through the shield one way, and even rididulously shorter going out (even assuming shields extend half a km out it would be close to the microsecond range) and you could do dozens of pulses and still stay with a duration of milliseconds, which is FAR faster still than the flicker rates given before. (hundreds or thousands per second here.) This may hint that larger ships (at least) can achieve better flicker rates than smaller ships (which makes sense.), although there's still that "10% of hits always getting through" nonsense from Interceptor.

Infantry squads may not paint any targets at ranges of greater than six hexes.

This suggests, by gameplay stats, a max painting range of around 1.2 KM

Note that 150mm and 200mm cannon cannot fire Hammer Head rounds.

Hammerheads, as we would explain later, are basically a shaped charge warhead composed of firing x-ray lasers at the target. Why the devices should be impossible to design for larger cannon (even IF you couldn't scale them up to 150mm or 200mm from 50 and 100mm, there's still saboting) isn't clear, aside form the obvous fact of game mechanics likely

Shield factors only apply to attacks by lasers, painting lasers, MDCs, HELL rounds, GLAD rounds, infantry weapons fire, and missiles. Attacks by Gauss cannon, other artillery rounds, or Thor javelins are not affected by shields. (Though a shield's field is proof against energy weapons, it is unable to turn large masses. The heavier rounds from Gauss cannon are able to penetrate a shield. The electronic circuitry of a missile is adversely affected by an active shield, causing it to detonate prematurely. IT is not possible to accelerate a ballistic shell in the speeds neccesary to be effective in spacecombat, and so Gauss cannons are only found on land-based vehicles, where the engagement ranges and speeds to not affect the accuracy of the slower projectiles.

supposed limits of flicker shielding. What they expect infantry fire to do. GLAD rounds evidently are some sort of "warhead" and not a low mass kinetic kill weapon (unless its like an Explosively formed penetrator or something lol)

The bit about mass is interesting, but not neccesarily inconsistent. One would posit a momentum-based effect, although then velocity would matter too. Technically it should probably be momentum, but large masses could play a factor as well (if there is a destructive element, for example, a bigger mass is arder to destroy regardles of momentum.) Even so, and eve despite game mechanics not specifying, momentum WOULD be a factor (you could simply build bigger missiles to bull past shielding too). Missiles of course also suffer the "circuitry" problem but ther would be ways around that as far as detonation goes (we haven't always had circuitry for explosives as far as I can remember. and there are HELL rounds...)

Gauss cannons are slower in velocity than fighter based weapons - basically they are lower-velocity and higher mass versions of mass drivers. THis also means that, given a roughly 3 second travel time, the projectiles might travel at about Mach 5 or 6 (about as fast or faster as modern tank rounds or the projected velocity for near-future tank guns and hypervelocity antitank missiles.) Although the actual velocity could be faster, since it is a electromagnetic launch weapon, 2-3 km sec may be more likely, and it coudl be even faster given that grav tanks ttravel many times faster than modern tanks (300-900 kph) making it more like dogfighting in a way and necessitating a higher velocity round (say, a travle time cloes to a second)

[Connor MacLeod]

Sorry for the delay... next update:

The vehicle's targeting computers, weapon control linkages, weapons stabilization controls, and other systems are damaged.

In other words, the ground combat vehicles are heavily computerized, much ilke the fighters and capital ship.

Ballistic protection represents the inherent survivability of the [front/stern/sides'] internal components, due to hardening, duplication of circuitry, and the ruggedness of hte system itself.

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Note however that there are two [front/sides/stern/bottom] shield locations, Both locations must be hit for the stern shields to cease functioning.

They believe in A LOT of redundancy to their vehicles, which no doubt in part explains why they are so damn tough and combat can last hours.

Onboard ammunition explodes or an energy weapons capacitor destructively discharges.

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If there is an explosion the vehicle is totally destroyed and cannot be salvaged.

Yet despite the redundancy, they are still volatile. either the ammunition is something like antimatter, or its some sort of chemical explosives (or both, perhaps.) Or some sort of capacitor-based munition perhaps.

Most weapons carried by tanks are energy based, utilizing the vehicles' fusion power plant to generate laser pulses or mass driver cannon to accelerate small slugs to unheard-of speeds.

Unlike space vessels, land combatants can also mount slower and more conventional weapons that use larger kinetic energy warheads.

tanks - or at least the grav tanks - run on fusion power.

Land vehicles also use slower but higher-mass projectiles, which hints at mass and/or momentum being important for ground weapons, and a corresponding drop in combat ranges (naturally.)

It also suggests that mass driver rounds are considerably faster than gauss rounds (double/triple digit km/s, at least) Renegade's Honor, the novel, suggests "thousnads" of km/s

Most tanks mount at least one type of direct-fire ballistic weapon, or cannon. These wepaons differ from energy weapons because they fire an explosive shell rather than a stream of energy. They are similar to the mass driver cannon (MDC) in using a magnetic field to accelerate a shell down the length of a barrel. THe muzzle veocity of the Gauss cannon projectile is drastically lower than that of an MDC, however, giving the Gauss cannon a greatly reduced range in comparison to the MDC. On the other hand, shields are unable to turn the heavier shell, and so the Gauss cannon is a more effective weapon at close range.

a Gauss cannon may fire various types of shells, including High-Explosive armour piercing (HEAP), armour-piercing discarding Sabot (APDS), Hammer Head (HH) or anti-personnel.

The main guns of tanks are "direct fire" which likely means they are line of sight. This means, in theory can hit whatever they can see, so effective range can depend on variation. In practice, othre factors (ammunition type, weapon type, target nature and speed, etc.) will further limit ranges, which perhaps explains why they seem so low for tanks (as opposed to insane ranges for artillery.)

For reference consider here

By comparison, naval railguns are projected to produce muzzle energies that range from 60 to 300 MJ and to have a maximum range of 200 to 250 nautical miles (1). Railguns even surpass explosive rocket- fueled shells, another long-range strike option, in terms of power and range. As an example, the Extended Range Guided Munition (ERGM) and the Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP), both rocket-fueled explosive shells in the latter stages of development, have ranges of 43 nautical miles and 63 nautical miles and deliver 2.2 MJ and 7.8 MJ of energy upon impact, respectively. A nonexplosive railgun projectile that weighs 44 lbs would have at least three times the range and deliver 16.9 MJ of pure kinetic energy upon impact
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Another significant advantage is the time-of-flight; a railgun projectile, due to its enormous speed, reaches the target much more quickly at any range, in addition to striking with greater force. The projectiles would be able to strike targets on the horizon in six seconds and would cover their maximum range, 200 – 250 miles, in six minutes (3).

and here

The GPS-guided projectile will exit the launcher at approximately 2500 meters/second. On the way to its target, the projectile would leave the Earth’s atmosphere, making it less susceptible to jamming or interception, and minimizing interference with friendly aircraft upon re-entry into airspace.
When operational, the EMRG will provide high-volume, precise, and time-critical fires in all-weather conditions. The goal of the Office of Naval Research rail gun project is to develop and smoothly transition prototype system that can deliver fires with high accuracy and lethality at distances greater than 200 nautical miles. The rounds will contain little or no high explosive material. Instead, they will inflict damage bway of high-velocity impact. With no explosives or propellants, the logistics of supporting the weapon will be simplified and crew and shsafety will be enhanced.

The Navy is talking about a 32 MJ railgun with a range of over 200 nautical miles (350-400 km). The RL forces use railguns that go to 6 and 8 inch (IE alot bigger shells) potentially as fast if not faster, and a whole hell of alot heavier (even for saboted rounds), so it seems pretty safe to assume RL guns in theory might have similar performance. The Airforce ABL program projects ranges in hundreds of kilometers for a megawatt range laser and RL lasers are at LEAST GW for tank/fighter weapons (I've seen as high as 600 km stated). The fact that fighters can achieve these ranges potentially would reinforce tis idea.

Likely, a big reason you don't see these long ranges typically (aside from out of universe gameplay considerations) is the necessity of haivng to penetrate defenses and inflict damage. Range has a huge impact on projectiles (accuracy and velocity are lost with range), and lasers will also diffuse with atmosphere. Lasers (and probably mass drivers) also have the problem of flicker rate to deal with which puts severe limits on range. Grav tank speeds (hundreds of km/hr even at low altitudes) also quite likely puts constraints on range for reasons of accuracy/precision.

Another factor noted is that the size/mass of the round plays a role in "penetrating" shields. Arguably this refers to momentum, but a bigger round may also be harder for the flicker shields to totally affect a bigger projectile. This is a peculiar trait to say the least, since fighters have NO problems with Mass drivers at all. It could be that this is due to Grav Tanks being tougher (by virtue of their different drive systems allowing more space devoted to shield generators and such), but it would be an imperfect answer to say the least (since by some interpretations it takes VERY LITTLE increase in mass to defeat flicker shields in this way. the tradeoff in mass/velocity wouldn't neccesarily be THAT severe, either.)

The two types of anti-vehicular missiles are SMLM's (Sub-munitions Laser Guided Missile) and TVLG (Tube or Vertically Launched Laser guided.)

Grav tanks carry missiles too. They're quite versatile in that respect.

(the [flicker] shield's field disrupts the circuitry of a missile and can cause it to explode prematurely.

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Vehicle mounted anti-vehicle missiles do not require a direct LOS (line of sight) in order to engage their target. As long as another friendly unit has successfully painted the target in that turn, the missile may be fired at the target as normal, ignoring the shield factor and line-of-sight restrictions.

Flicker shields do not seem to "destroy" matter so much as redirect it it would seem. Some sort of spatial distortion perhaps instead of a solid wall-like barrier. This would explain why Gauss weapons penetrate better than Mass Drivers, and why lasers are stopped. It would also explain differences between fighters and capital ships and tanks and flicker shields. (bigger/stronger flicker shields not only have a faster flicker rate but a stronger distortion effect.) Mind its's still not a perfect answer for things (like mass drivers that have a higher mass than fighter Mass drivers but lower than Guass, but also have a higher velocity than Gauss.)

This may also work with why if they don't "flicker" they destroy the target. The spatial distortion turns into something nasty if kept on too long. I am still convinced this is not "real" gravity though, and the technobabble forceifled effect is some other "fictional" field, cuz the thing doesnt really behave like gravity. It's probably more like an I-war LDS defense. (there would sitll be no aboslute "mass" thresholds though, else fighters could mount Gauss weapons and bypass capital ship shield easily.

Any vehicle may mount anti-personnel (AP) laser, ,which is designed specifically to kill infantry but does no damage to armor.

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Maximum Range for an AP laser is three hexes.

About 600 meters, I belive. IF we knew the yield on the AP laser we might be able to put lower limits on tank armour and upper limits on infantry armor.

The Vulcan is a weapon system with tis own radar to track and destroy incoming missiles from any direction. It utilizes rapid-fire, short range lasers to destroy enemy missiles just before they hit the vehicle.

CIWS on a tank, in other words.

[Connor MacLeod]

another Centurion update.. big one.. mainly cuz this is covering artillery and there are alot of calcs this time...

An infantry squad consists of eight men. They are armed with small arms, bounce packs, and portable anti-tank missiles or mortars.

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The squad can use targeting lasers to paint for missiles, lasers, mass driver cannons, and some artillery shells fired from other sources.

Renegade Legion infantry, our first view. They're rather large groups, but also well armed and quite versatile with their own organic artillery or anti-tank ability. They also serve a recon/fire contorl benefit (they can specify targets to be killed by others.) Small arms will generally be some kind of spike or slug weapon (discused in Renegade Legion, but think of it as a Starcraft Gauss rifle (but cooler) or Eldar shuriken weapon, or the guns from Mass effect.) they're kinda like those, but different in toher ways.

bounce packs are going to be like 40K jump packs assault marines use. Basically it gives the troops greater mobility on the battlefield.

A squad may carry up to 4 TVLG anti-vehicle missiles.

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Some special infantry squads are armed with two light mortars. These squads do not have any TVLG anti-vehicle weapons. When the mortar squad is firing directly, they use normla to-hit procedure, but are not mofidifed for shields, and their maximum range is 20 hexes.

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A mortar fires small, ,laser-guided rounds and can be fired indirectly. After the forward observer has painted the target, the mortar round homes in on it.

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Light mortar squads may also fire a small anti-personnel round.

Squad mortars in action. Range would be 4 km max, givne the hex distances. This suggests their targeting is probably line of sight also. They seem to have a variety of round s(antipersonel, etc.)
The anti-tank missiles behave as the ones mounted on tanks do with regard to range and such.

Each player has one Centurion who is in charge of all of the player's units (Normally three to five platoons of three vehicles each.) THese are known collectively as a Century.

The size/makeup of a century WRT number of platoons.

The preceding movement rules apply when a grav vehicle is operating in normal flight mode (NF), that is, about one meter above the ground. GRav vehicles may also choose to operate in Tree Top flight mode (TTF) or in Low Altitude Flight mode (LAF.) While operating in TTF, the grav vehicle is about 20 meters off the ground, ignoring trees and low buildings for LOS and movement purposes. while operating in LAF, the vehicle is flying high enough to ignore all terrain for movement and LOS. Though these two modes increase the maximum speed that a vehcile can safely travel (up to 900 kph in LAF), the vehicle becomes an easy target for any enemy unit that spots it.

Mention of various atltitudes and flight modes for grav tanks, note that line of sight on a tank (as defining an "easy target" to any enemy unit spotting it" could refer to anywhere from 8-10 km or so depending on exact height (something greater than 1 meter but less than 20 meters.. I figured 5-10 m was a resonable estimate.) which does suggest that weapons ranges could possibly exceed the 4-5 km ranges we basically see mentioned.

Loss of grav drive while operating close to the ground is serious enough. Its loss at 50 meters above the surface normally results in the vehicle's total destruction.

Grav tanks cannot survive a crash into the ground from 50 meters up (presumably while still retaining any momentum they had before the drive goes out.) at 50 m height, 900 kph should be a possible speed, so likely crashing into the ground is understandable as a danger (for a 300-500 ton tank you're talking a shitload of forward momentum, nevermind the fall itself)

The bounce packs worn by infantry have a governing device that prevents the soldier from exceeding a set velocity. The device temporarily boosts the strength of the grav field and applies a braking force that slows the soldier down whenever that safe velocity is exceeded. (Though the pack makes the soldier almost weightless, his mass stays the same. Striking the ground at 60 kilometers per hour - weightless or not - sitll means that soldier ends up splattered all ove rthe countryside.

Bounce packs have some sort of "counter grav" effect thta seems to serve as both negating a planet's gravitational effects on a person as well as providing some limited propulsive effort (braking force) Later sources suggest the top speed is around 36 kph, although its implied here that the bounce packs can go up to 60 kph here, which may be an upper limit (if a dangerous one for the bounce crewman.)

Artillery of the 69th Century is grav mounted, capable of delivering accurate and devastating fire from distances of up to 100km.

100km is rather impressive range compared to modern artillery (30-50 km seems to be the best I can find for US 155mm howitzers, either for current designs - 30 km - or future designs - up to 50 km) but its worth noting that later sources specify much longer effective ranges (hundreds of kilometers.) It may vary according to model/caliber or the kind of ammo used.

It is also rather curious that artillery displays many times greater effective ranges yet grav tanks (and othe rtnaks) have ranges not much different than modern vehicles. This would suggest that othre factors (as perviously discussed) limit maximum ranges more than weapons design limitations.

Artillery can fire a variety of munitions. When an artillery attack is plotted, the player should also determine the type of round to be used.

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The hypervelocity airburst flechette explosive-Improved (HAFE-1) round is designed to explode into thousands of small flechettes, ,saturating the surrounding area with high-speed fragments. Because the flechettes are too large to be stopped by shields, the shields do not reduce damage to vehicles.

Hypervelocity again suggests in excess of 3 km/s, and being "too large" suggests a mass in excess of 100 grams (if other sources WRT mass drivers are to be believed, anyhow..) Each flechette would have at least 450 kilojoules of KE and 300 kg*m/s worth of momentum. "Thousands" would put the momentum into 600,000 kg*m/s and KE into 900 GJ total. The round itself would mass hundreds of kilos, easily. It does give an interesting insight into what kind of damage must be done to harm vehicles, though.

Anti Mine Artillery (AMA) rounds may be fired into a target hex, as per the General Artillery Rules. They send out a strong gravitic pulse that detonates all the mines in one hex.

A range of a few hundred meters diameter obviously. Its interesting they can use gravity to detonate the mines though - likely a peculiariy of the targeting system (focused on RL grav drives, likely.)

The most deadly artillery round in use is the HELL round. When a HELL round goes off, it releases enough gravitic energy to cause an uncontrolled fusion reaction. This type of round is very clean, leaving little tactically significant radiation, but it does turn the topsoil to glass. It will also turn any type of terrain to clear terrain, and will literally melt the armor off vehciles.

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If a vehicle is in the hex where a HELL round explodes, ,several plagues will befaul it. First, the vehicle is automatically grounded at its current velocity, causing damage to the bottom. Second, all armour facings, except the bottom, take 100 points of damage, minus the shield rating. Thus, if the front of a tank has a shield rating of 70, and a HELL round goes off in its hex, the tank will take 30 points of damage on the Front (100-70=30) a similar calculation is made for the left, right turret (using the front shields) and stern facings.

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All dismounted infantry squads are destroyed in the target hex, as are all unshielded buildings and trees. There is no rubble, Unoccupied craters are removed from the target hex.

The gravitic aftershock of the HELL round affects all grav vehicles in the adjacent hexes.

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Tree hexes adjacent to the blast hex are reduced to rubble.

If multiple HELL rounds land in the same hex, their effects are resolved seperately

Hell round damage takes effect no matter what the vehicles' flight mode.

Basically your pocket nuke artillry. Given the grav-wank component attached, its probably not just conventional fusion (something moer exotic like matter/energy conversion, perhaps? A small black hole?)

The effects are somewhat hard to calculate, and all tend to rely somewhat on game mechanics. That they remove craters in the hex suggests they blow a large crater into the hex itself (100-200 m across) which could be achieved with subkiloton nukes (200 kilotons) to a single digit kt nuke (1-2 kilotons). The implied thermal effects for stuff in the blast zone (glassing the topsoil, melting tank armor, lack of rubble..) By fireball, (100-200 m diameter) you might get between 2-8 kilotons.

The bit about effects occuring regardless of lfight mode is telling, implying a possible effect range of several km (although the exact effect aren't specified) - blast and thermal for even a single digit KT nuke could possibly reach several km, though.

An artillery attack can be used to lay a column of smoke three hexes long and one hex wide, centered on the target hex in any orientattion the attacke rchooses.

Smoke cloud hundreds of km wide/long.

Artillery may also be used to create blast craters on teh ground to give vehicles and infantry some form of protection. A crater round landing in a hex digs a crater in the same manner as a digging charge, providing hull-down protection for vehicles and infantry.

Assuming a 10 m diameter crater (which seems reasonable for a grav tank).. 200 kilograms of TNT to crater.

The Guided by Laser, Artillery Delivered round (GLAD) requires a painted target during the turn of attack. All the other general Artillery rules apply, except that a missed round does not scatter. On teh turn the GLAD round arrives, the paintr must have successfully painted a vehicle in the target hex or in any of the adjacent hexes.

If there is no painted target, the GLAD round will attack any unpainted vehicle in the target hex, at the attackers choice.

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When a GLAD hits a vehicle, it will most often hit the stern or the turret since it is making a top-down ttack.

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The damage from GLAD is the same as from a 150mm HEAP round. GLAD rounds cannot be used against infantry.

Laser guided round. Damage mechnism isnt specified.

Artillery weapons are normally variations on the gravitic cannon (GPA or GPE). The Gravitic cannon uses phased gravity pulses to accelerate its projectiles along the length of its barrel. Thus, the cannon launches its munitions at very precise speeds and trajectories, making its indirect fire accurate and fast. The system is incapable of launching indirect fire at a range of less than four kilometers however.

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The GPA/E cannot be fired indirectly at any target at a Range of 20 hexes or less. These targets must be fired on directly from a valid LOS. All GPA/E attacks hit in the turn that they are fired.

The GPA/E may fuse any aritllery round for its direct fire attacks except HELL rounds, ,which have a safety interlock that prevents their being armed within one kilometer of the firing unit. Hell rounds may only be used against targets at a range of 6 or more.

[/quote]

Artillery capable of direct (4 km or less) and indirect (4+ km) fire.

Hell rounds cannot be used within 1 km of the firing unit, suggesting that it has an absolute lethal range of that - setting an upper limit of ~2 kt for a Artillery launched HELL round.

Note that indirect fire range of 100 km needs a velocity of at least 990 m/s to achieve range (minus air resistance and such)

[Connor MacLeod]

More Centurion.. next to last update, I think...

These [engineering] vehicles serve to clear obstacles that hamper the movement of firendly troops, open pathways through minefields, and create fortified positions. Even with the introduction of grav vehicles, specialized combat engineering vehicles still play an important role in a Legion's success.

Engineering vehicles are standard grav vehicles with some of their offensive weaponry replaced by specialized engineering equipment.

Engineering vechiles are basically a variation on grav tanks used for support roles

An engineering attachment normally includes a planar laser. The planar laser consists of two projectors that create a continuous sheet of coherent light in a gap between them. The sheet is capable of cutting through most trees.

One would imagine this has implications for the lumber industry (if such exists) and possibly other industries in Renegade legion. If the parameters of the beam were known we could likely calc it.

The engineering atatchment sends out a combination of gravitic and magnetic pulses that detonate the mines harmlessly to create a safe pathway through the minefield.

The methods by which RL mines are detonated ad a hint about detection methods.

Ground based defensive installations are static turrets mounting ground weapons to protect some planetary facility. They are normally one part of a massive space defense system used to provide strategic targets such as cities and industrial centers with a defense against orbital bombardment. Such defense systems consist of multiple HELL missile launchers, bays of laser arrays for use against orbital ships, shield generators that cover the target area, static defense installations. These systems normally make the city or industrial center proof against attack from sapce, and attacks by ground troops difficult. To destroy such a complex usually takes a combined effort by space and ground forces.

Renegade Legion equivalent of large scale theatre shielding similar to waht we observe in other universes (40k, SW, etc.). Its likely that part of the "defensive properties" of the structures are the fact that the bombardment requirements are such that one would have to virtually annihilate the planet in order to actually breach the defenses (or at least lay waste to it so it isn't viable - loss of industry and such). It is interesting to note that these defenses apparently have little to no "bleed through" due to flicker rates, and to my knowledge "painting" such shields isn't possible (else you could knock them down with precision attacks from beyond the shield.

Size of the shield must encompass a radius of many kilometres, as the shields are noted as being capable of making a "city or industrial center proof against attacks from space." It is also quite evident from the rules that planetary shielding like in SW does not exist.

It is also interesting to note that the defenses include lasers for anti-ship purposes but Hell missiles are not included explicitly as anti ship (They may be multi-role, which is indeed implied later.)

Four typical defensive installations are described below. For Centurion/Interceptor purposes only the point/ground defense weapons systems are described. A typical ground-based space defense system would have multiple numbers of these installations and would also control massive arrays of lasers for use against orbiting capital ships. These laser arrays, or bays, are incapable of engaging ground forces and so are disregarded.

A complete planetary defense requires multiple ground based defense installations (networks). Point defense weaponry is described explicitly as being centurion/interceptor scale so they presumably are fighter/tank grade weaponry and may thus be used for ground defense purposes. the big lasers are not for ground attack use, which suggests they have much more limited line of sight (or some other similar limitation, such as tracking or recoil) which prevents them from ground defense use.

An installation takes up one hex, and is treated as a building for movement and line-of-sight purposes. Its shield generator creates a shield over its own hex and the adjacent hexes. The installation's poitn defense weapons are mounted in a turret elevated on a pylon sufficiently high to be twenty meters taller than teh terrain in the surrounding hex.

At least three infantry squads are assigned to any installation

This would seem to suggest either that some installations (at least) are very small (hundreds of meters in diameter tops) orthat cities in Renegade Legion are much smaller and more densely constructed than they are in modern times. Its likely these reference the "industrial center" defensive installations used to protect vital warmaking capability.

Installation table

Type
1 - 2 7.5/6 lasers, 200mm Gauss cannon, 1 missile launcher

2 - two 200mm gauss cannons, 7.5/6 laser 2 missile launchers

3 - Two 200 mm Gauss cannons, Vulcan 3, 3 missile launchers

4 - Vulcan 4, two 200mm Gauss cannons, 4 missile launchers.

* Interceptor players may use variable shields instead [of fixed] The typical installation has 1,600 power points available to it.Installation shields require seven times the normal power.

Stats and capabilities of various installations. Note the usage of Gauss cannon and recall that these defenses are supposedly "Renegade/Interceptor" scale, which suggests that Interceptor grade projectile weapons have similar performance (recoil/momentum perhaps) to Gauss weaponry. It also suggests that missiles (Hell missiles?) are for centurion/Interceptor scale too (rather than Capital)

An installations's turreted Gauss cannons may not fire into the Interceptor map. Laser weapons may only fire at targets in the atmsohpere or the atmsophere/space interface. HELL missiles may be used atgainst taget in the atmosphere, in the interface, or in space, ,as long as the target is in the installation's firing arc.

Gauss cannon upper limit (but not lasers) is interceptor map. Lasers seem to be atmosphere only.. HELL missiles are indeed the missile launchers. These might be game conventions howerve, its never quite easy to tell.

The shields of a defensive installation protect the buildings both in the installations hex and in the adjacent hexes. Rather than projecting a hemispherical bubble (A technological impossiblity because of the scale) , the installation generators are connected to individual shield projectors on each building. Thus, the streets and alleyways are normally unprotected.

Geometrey of RL shields... they aren't "ubbleS" but seem to be screen-like stuff, so there are "gaps" (streets and alleys are unprotected".) Here it is implied that the shields protect adjacent hexes too.

A defensive installation's primary means of defending itself against bombardment by orbital kinetic energy weapons (Thors and large rocks) is to fire massive HELL missiles at the incoming object. Each missile launcher can launch one HELL missile at a target on the Interceeptor map each turn. Use all the Interceptor missile rules except where noted.

The player may attempt to lock a HELL missile onto any spacecraft, Thor round, or Thor satellite that is in the launcher's firing rarc.

...

Because of the massive destructive power of these missiles, compared to the artillery deliveverd variety, they cannot be used against ground targets.

defensive installation HELL missiles. Seem to be anti-bombardment weapons (anti asteorid, and anti Thor). It might als be an anti-interceptor missile, though it could only hit a target on an inbound vector (not outbound.. its slower than most missiles.)

This massive weapon [HELL missile] is essentially an arttillery HELL round except hat its effective blast radius is 7.5 kilometers rather than 100 meters. The missile has an intelligencec of 8 and a thrust of 4.

HELL missiles are moved after other missiles, asteroids, and Thor javelins.

"Blast Radius" of 7.5 km for the missiles as opposed to 100 meters for the arty shells. If we assume "blast radius" is air blast in an atmosphere it could be a single digit megaton missile. The arty shell would considerably sub-kiloton (single or double digit tons). It would NOT have a blast radius in space though. IF we assumed fireball it might be mid megaton to low gigaton range (depending on value) for the missile and somewhere in the double digit kt range for the shell. Ther eowuld be no fireball in a vaccum tho. Either way the missile could conceivably be powerful enough to shatter/disrupt multi-km asteroids or greater.

Thrust of 4 if we go by interceptor rules, MIGHT mean 4 gee accel, which makes it a slow missile.

Any Thor javelins, missiles, or asteroids present in a hex with an exploding HELL missile are destroyed.

A patrol craft hit by a HELL missile takes damage only to the hex that was struck. The patrol craft's other hex is not affected. HELL missiles are not affected by any form of ECM. Safeguard and MDC-G systems may be used against the missile, however, and it may be targeted by normal weapon systems, per the Missile rules. A successful hit destrtoys the missiel withotu detonating it.

HELL missiles can be carried and used like normal missiles by fighters, installations, and two hex ships.

Two hex ships are destroyers and some larger escorts I believe, and fighters can cary them. Its interesting to note that fighter/patrol craft are implied to be the ones affected by these muitions rather than big ships.

The "unaffected by ECM" is interesting, too. Some sort of optical guidance or remote guidance, perhaps.

Given sufficient time, a vehicle or infantry squad can be dug in and camouflaged so that battlefield sensors cannot detect it. This is normally accomplished through the use of special energy absorbing camouflage nets and by keeping the vehicle operating at low power.

"hull down" and stealth/camouflage measures.

Smoke can be delivered by ballistic weapons, offboard artillery, mortars, and vheicle smoke grenades. Smoke is opaque in the visual, thermal, and electromagnetic spectra. As a result, smoke significantly reduces visibility on the battlefield as well as increasing the probability of a crash when a vehicle travels through it too quickly.

Must be a special kind of smoke to block thermla inad EM sensors, much like 40K Blind Grenades really.

A Thor satellite can be deployed by specialized patrol craft or ground launchers. Once in orbit the satellite can receive fire missions from ground commanders and repsond by dropping depleted uranium javelins that accelerate via the planet's gravity. As the javelins fall toward the battlefield, they pick up enormous kinetic energy. When close to the ground, they start to seek radiation sourcees, aiming themselves toward them. When a javelin hits a vehicle, it punches a hole deep enough to kill most vehicles.

Ah ye,s the thor bombardment platform. We can't really calc them based on values here, but we can determine that velocity is dependent largely on gravity, so the max speed of the imapctor would probably be orbital reentry velocity and/or terminal velocity (likely the former.. say around 8-12 km/s) If we assumed a single kg impactor would be around 30-70 MJ... higher for multiple kg (a 1 ton impactor would be 30-70 GJ) These calcs howver are arbitrary, save that its reasonable to assume a 1 m long 10 cm diameter rod could easily weigh tens or hundreds of kg or roughly thereabouts) I believe later sources give pictures which may offer scaling opportunities.

[Ford Prefect]

Grav tanks cannot survive a crash into the ground from 50 meters up (presumably while still retaining any momentum they had before the drive goes out.) at 50 m height, 900 kph should be a possible speed, so likely crashing into the ground is understandable as a danger (for a 300-500 ton tank you're talking a shitload of forward momentum, nevermind the fall itself)

Is this really safe to presume? The actual quote just makes it sound like a fifty metre drop. While it's ambiguous enough that it could mean while at velocity, a crash at 900 km/h seems like a pretty high end interpretation.

[Andras]

The tank might survive relatively intact, but the crew is gonna be fubar'd since grav tanks don't mount inertial compensators like the fighters do. It might just be a simplification of the rules.

[Connor MacLeod]

Last centurion update for the core book. The next one will be an associated descriptive guide of the tech, shells, etc. I'll put it in this same thread.

Capital ships' main weapons are based filled with arrays of high powered lasers.

..

A naval fire control officer might be assigned to the Centurion unit, in which case an additional medium or light grav APC is assigned to the Century. This APC has its infantry compartment full of hte necessary commuincatons equipment to call down naval fire support.

..

Most fire supportt from naval units comes from bays filled with scores of lasers. Their attack bathes the target area with coherent light, superheating the surrounding air into a column of fire. The net effect is similar to that of a HELL munition, with the target hex and adjacent hexes affected equally, but there is no gravitic effect.

Bay weapons automatically destroy dismounted infantry and vehicle crews, unshielded buildings, and any people inside, minefields, trees, and unoccupied craters.

Capital ship bombardment here from "scores" of lasers has an effect similar to a Hell muition (not sure whether it is a arty shell or a missile) and all creating massive thermal effect (fireball basically). Bearing in mind that a laser is not a bomb (less efificnet so would take more energy) the output could be anywhere between kilotons of energy for the bombardment to gigatons, although for the most part (bombarding vehicles) and a desire not to mess with the planet dramatically would argue more towards sub-gigaton yields. This is fine, since this is by no means to be taken as an upper limit (They aren't trying to do an extinction event for one thing, this is standard support bombardment whcih willb e more controlled) and it doesnt specify the kind of ship (it could be a destroyer, cruiser, or whatever.) A laser simulating a nuke is also less effective and thus requiring more energy.

Ships may also fire missiles in support of ground troops or against the location of a known target. Because of the devastating effect on the countryside, the authority to launch a missile barrage is normally not delegated to officers below flag or field rank.

...

Note that fighters HELL missiles cannot be used in this manner.

Centurion units that are in the imapct hex and those within the destroyed radius are immediately eliminated. Units within the 100-point Raidus sustain damage as though a HELL round has detonated. Units in the GRavitic-Effect Radius are treated as though they were one hex away from the explosion of a tandard artillery HELL round.

The effects on tree,s buildings and craters are the same as described in the artillery hell round rules.

Missile bombardments similar to Hell round also, and the specification here implies a hell arty round (which probbly also applies to beam weapons above), which indicates capships carry hell munitions (later confirmed in the Capital ship briefing.) Likely they carry a variety of munitions to cover different purposes (or the rounds deliberately have a dial a yield setting.)

Missile type Destroyed radius 100 point radius gravitic effect radius
A,B, G 3 4-6 7-8
C,D,F 6 7-8 9-10
E 12 13-18 19-24

With impact hex, the radius in km will be roughly 7, 9.8, and 21.8 km in diameter. Could imply mid to high Megaton to low gigaton yields, although number of missiles isn't known and it may be generous.

Centurion vehicles may be carried by specially modified patrol craft. Each figher bayt may carry one vehicle whose mass is equal or less than the tonnage rating of the bay.

Patrol craft can be modified as dropships. Also note the similiarity in size between fighters and centurion craft.

All patrol craft weapons [when grounde]d have a maximum range of 20 hexes..

Presumably this is a line of sight limitation, which suggests other vehicles (fighters, grav tanks) also suffer similar limitations.

at the start of the scenario, players may mount various ground-attack munitions, rather than missiles or pods, on their fighters hard points. For game purposes, these munitions are the same as artillery rounds. A hard point can carry a painting laser (one per ship), GLAD, HELL, ADM, smoke, or HAFE-I round.

During the Interceptor Combat PHase of the sum, a defense installation or grav vehicle mountin an air defense system can launch HELL or SSS missiles at any fighter in its firing arc. (see Installations) per the Interceptor missile rules.

I only posted this to note that installation HELL rounds seem to be anti-fighter/anti missile weapons.

Lasers [tank ones] may also be used to attack fighters from the Centurion mapsheet, but can only engage targets in the atmosphere or the atmospheric interface.

Limits on range of tank lasers.

The Thor satellite has ten hard points. Nine of them mount a cluster of three Thor javelins (one fire mission's worth) and the tenth contains an ECM pod.

Thor satellite loadout.

Grav vehicles use engines that have a power rating of 2500 or less.

..

Ten points of armor weigh one ton and cost 50 talents A vehicle may carry a maximum of 100 armor points per section.

Game stats for power and armor stuff. The implication is that 10 tons of armor is carried per "side." May be useful in calcing in the future. May not be.

The total millimeter rating of the Gauss cannons mounted cannot exceed 300.

Hardpoints may be used only to mount Interceptor-class SSS or HELL missiles.

300MM ould work out to about 12" battleship guns, IIRC. According to wikipedia we might broadly infer a shell massing hundreds of kilos, far more thna a manual loader could handle. Must be an autoloader. REcoil is going to be insane on such a shell too, if we assume a 2-3 km/s "hypervelocity' figure (at 2 km/s with a 400 kg shell, 800,000 kg*m/s worth of momentum to handle, and 800 MJ of KE.)

Also note the bit on Hell missiles being mounted. On a grav tank.

Laser type Range Power
1.5/1 20 2
1.5/3 20 5
1.5/4 20 7
1.5/5 20 8
1.5/6 20 10
3/6 20 15
5/6 20 19
7.5/6 20 23

..

MDC Range Power

MDC 8 20 6
MDC 10 20 11
MDC 12 20 12

Gauss
200MM 9
HEAP 15
APDS 15

150mm 5
HEAP 15
APDS 15

100mm 4
HEAP 10
APDS 10
HH 10

50mm 3
HEAP 6
APDS 6
HH 6

25mm 1
HEAP 6
APDS 6
HH 6

OTher Range Power
SMLM 1 10
SMLM 2 10
TVLG 2 6
TVLG 4 6
TVLG 6 6
TVLG 12 6
Vulcan-1 0 5
Vulcan 2 0 8
Vulcan 3 0 12
Vulcan 4 0 15
AP laser 3 5
IFW 9 T 3
IWF 7 T 3
IWF 3 T 3
IWF 1 T 3
Engineer attachment 30
GPA/E
GPA 500 18

Weapons and gear breakdown. Mainly useful for range, if even that.

[Connor MacLeod]

Before I do my new update.. I figured I'd post a bit of a revised "spinal gun" calc. I would do it in the Leviathan thread here but that would be too much of a necro under the new rules. So I'll post it here since I dont want to create a whole new thread just to cover that.

It won't take long anyhow and doesn't change much insofar as my calcs go, but I like to reinforce things if I can.

Spinal mounts are massive weapon systems that hurl chunks of steel at near-relativistic speeds. Because the spinal mount fires a single projectile, it cannot be used against fighters. Nicknamed corwbars, these wepaons do tremendous amounts of damage, destroying smaller ships and causing internal damage to even the largest ship with a single hit.

the previous analysis
I'm largely doing that to save time on reiterating my rationale for projectile mass. Tanks have 150-200mm gauss weapons which can fling a 40-100 kg shell quite easily and mass as much as a fighter. Its not unreasonable by mass/volume to expect the Spinal mount shell (which is going to be related technology) to scale up by a factor of thousands if not tens of thousands. Perhaps millions (using volume or "realistic" mass comparisons between a fighter and a big ship) thousands of tons (if not tens of thousands of tons) is not unreasonable (a 20 m long, 4 m diameter "crowbar" of DU or tungsten would be 5 thousand tons, whereas one 8 m in diameter and 50 meters long could be in excess ot 50,000 tons)
Velocity was always the trickier part anyhow. Now, according to Renegade's honour and Atomic rockets "near relatavistic" would be 'tens of thousands" of kilometers per second (30-40,000 kps say) That is reasonable. It could be alot higher, though
according to here

During over ten years of operation, nearly an entire solar cycle, the ACE/EPAM instrument has measured well over 700 near-relativistic electron events.
..
This additional data set allows us to compare electrons and protons in the same velocity range (0.4c to 0.7c).

here
Towards the top of page 9 (last page)

Recent work has established the following properties of
near-relativistic electron beams:
1. Electrons with velocities between 0.4c and 0.8c are
injected onto interplanetary magnetic field lines about 10
minutes after the start of the electromagnetic signatures of
similar energy electrons in the chromosphere

another

study of impulsive, beam-like, 38-315 keV solar electron events measured by the EPAM instrument on ACE reveals that these near-relativistic (0.4c < v < 0.8c) particles are injected into the solar wind ~10 minutes after the associated solar electromagnetic emission from the chromosphere and low corona.

We can infer from the above that "near-relativsitic" can go between .4 and .7 or .8c, or 120,000 to 240,000 kps.
With a 2,000 ton shell we get the following values:
At ~.14c, KE is 1.6e21 joules, with 8e13 kg*m/s worth of momentum.
at .4c, KE is 1.6e22 joules, and 2.62e14 kg*m/s of momentum.

At .8c you get 1.2e23 joules of KE and 8e14 kg*m/s of momentum.

We can adjust the values for different masses rather easily.. ie a 10x more massive shell would yield 10x greater KE, but it confirms what I said before within an OoM or so, I think - that RL ships could be in the Teraton, perhaps low petaton range for firepower, putting them (roughly) in the same ballpark as SW and 40K ships.

[Connor MacLeod]

Next up... the second booklet from Centurion's boxed set. This one is more of a "fluff" piece and covers the technical tidbits of the universe - the rounds and stuff. Found it quite interesting, and it clarifies alot of things. On we go...

Anti-vehicular missiles are fairly large, bulky and have limited ranges. This is because the weapon must carry a warhead large enough to penetrate modern armor and also because its guidance and targeting systems are so complex.

All missiles can be guided to their targets by an active painting laser, which allows them to be fired both directly or indirectly. Of the target is not painted, the gunner locks on to the target, fires, and then the missile's internal guidance and control systems home in on the target. Having fired the missile, the gunner does not need to guide it.

Ingame missiles have a mere 1-2 km range, which seems rather silly given what their guided artillery rounds can do (100+ km) and what fighter missiles can do (being roughly the same size, since tanks are as tough/tougher than fighters. Like with the gun ranges (3-4 km despite being hypervelocity weapons) and lasers we'd probably conclude that the range limitations represent "effective" range against targets of RL tech level (durability, jamming/defensive systems, mobility, etc.) The existence of a CIWS like defense system may also influence effective ranges. The warheads can't be ALL that huge, since infantry can carry anti-tank missiles too (and tanks could arguably carry a heavier missile.)

The SMLM (sub Munitions laser guided missile) is a standard heavy anti-vehicular missile. When the missile approaches the target it explodes and showers its target with high-velocity sub-munitions. The sub-munitions weigh less than 100 grams and so can be turned by the shield if the missile detonates prematurely, but their number results in the armor of the vehicle being scoured off in large blocks. If the missile is able to penetrate to the interior of the vehicle, the explosion of the SMLM is directed laterally, causing extensive internal damage.

A kinetic kill "shotgun/flechtette" round basically like a mass driver or claymore round or an "explosively formed penetrator" warhead. Note as well the "100 gram" mass limit for shields being mentioned, which also reinforces the "mass driver" like effects. This in turn suggests a high velocity (tens or hundreds of km/s, perhaps?) to offset low mass in ability to do damage to the target.

The TVLG (Tube or Vertically Launched Laser guided) is a lighter and shorter-range missile than the SMLM, but it has grater penetration. Its harhead is a modified 100mm Hammer Head round. Because of the TVLG's penetration ability and its light weight, infantry squads normally use it as their primary anti-vehicular missile. When used by infantry, the indirect fire capabilities are rmoved, due to their weight.

As I noted above, TVLGs are man portable, limiting how big they can be (and the tanks oddly seem to use the same kind, despite only carrying small numbers?). We get clarification here that TVLGs are "magic crystal laser warheads" which makes sense.

I'll note here that in context the Centurion missiles probably also tell us what fighter missiles pack as payloads - something similar I expect. Perhaps with plasma/electron particle warhead variants as well (why not? It would be within their tech capability if they do the SMLMs.) Their greater ranges/velocities and potentially greater firepower aruge they would be bigger, though.

Given fighters and tanks can withstand a proximity nuke detonation one could iner a comparison based on intensity for the TVLGs at least - they're more concentrated after all. For example, at 200 meters with a 5 kiloton nuke in space - energy intensity would be 40 MJ per square meter.and nearly 700 MJ/sq. M at 50 meters, while a 1 Megaton explison would be 833 MJ/sq. M and 1 TJ/sq.M at 200 and 50 meters respectively.

All field pieces are now mobile, armored and capable of firing on the move. The guns utilize electromagnetic accelerators and rocket-assisted projectiles to respond with unheard-of speed and accuracy to fire missiones from the forward combat elements. A well-placed ADM barrage has more than once broken a grav armor charge against an infantry position.

Artillery's ability to totally destroy any target that has stopped moving for more than one minute has ensured the grav tank's supremacy over cheaper and more easily constructed ground vehilces. Soldier's quickly learn the wisdom of the old adage "move it or lose it".

In the rules it was noted that Arty can hit out to 100 km. With a "minute" of time the round will cover 100 km at a mile a second, near-hypersonic speed. That assumes a relatively flat trajectory though, so it could be higher. It will definitely be higher if we substitute in "hundreds" of kilometers as indicated in other sources (EG Prefect) - upping to over 3-4 km/s.

It's interesting whether or not the rocket asisstance is purely for guidance/manuvering purposes or if it actually contributes to the in-flight velocity. In theory hypervelocity Anti tank missiles exist and can reach speeds of mach 5-6+, but in theory any magnetic/gravitic acceleration that RL would have should easily match or exceed that ("hypervelocity" suggests 2.5-3 km/s at least). Either way it could establish a lower limit of 2-3 km/s at least for Gauss cannon, which meshes with the "hypervelocity" statement.

The capability of "firing on the move" is a useful one also, although what that entails (IE firing while constnatly moving, or more "shoot and scoot" type firing) isn't clarified, so it may or may not be better than what modern can do in that regard.

The HAFE-I round (Hypervelocity airburst flechette exposive-Improved) is desgined to explode into a cloud of thousands of explosive flechettes, which are too large to be stopped by shields. Though HAFE-I rounds are moderately effective against vehicles, they are most useful against infantry targets and to clear wooded areas for easier passage by grav vehicles.

A super powerful frag/antipersonnel round basically, just using alot faster and pointier projectiles. Note that being "too large" implies they are more massive than 100 grams. Assuming 2000 flechettes at 100 grams each, the round itself would weigh at least 200 kg - as big (or bigger) than an 8" gun shell. Possibly alot bigger. at 2 km/s a 200 kg shell would have 400 MJ of KE total (200 kj per flechette), at 3 km/s the KE is up to 900 MJ (900 kj per flechette) Note however that they're supposed to be "too large" to be stopped by shields, so the mass may be bigger (several hundred grams, or more) so the figure could go higher.

The fact they are meant for antipersonnel work but are "moderately effective" against vehicles puts a lower limit on vehicle durability/firepower, and a VERY GENEROUS upper limit on infantry durability (even at 2000 km/s with a 100 gram shell you're talking over 200 kg*m/s worth of momentum, enough to knock people around like rag dolls - over 5 times the momentum of a .50 BMG round and matching that of 20-30mm aircraft shells.)

ADM rounds (Artillery dispensed mines) each contain hundreds of mine submunitions. Wen the round arrives over its target, it breaks apart to scatter these mines over an area 200 meters in diameter. Each mine is keyed to explode if a grav field passes over it or if it is touched. Friendly units will not detonate a mine field because the mine is equipped with a transponder receiver that identifies the passing vehicle or infantryman.

Enemy units can cear minfields either by using engineering vehicles or AMA rounds (anti Mine artillery) Both use gravitic pulses to detonate the mine. A single AMA round can clear a 200-metre area, while an engineering vehicle can clear a pathway through a minefield about the width of a vehicle. As a countermesure,s ome of the mines are set to detonate after a delay of a few seconds so that they will explode underneath a passing engineering vehicle.

Description of mine delivered artillery rounds and the operational mechanism of said mines.

The GLAD round (Guided by Laser Artillery-Delivered) is a laser-guided anti vehicle round. When this round arrives over the general location of its target, a parachute is deployed. Sensors in the round then search the immediate area for the target being designated by a friendly painting laser. If there is no laser designation, the round chooses its ownt arget and launches itslef at it.

GLAD rounds are best used gainst targets occupying fixed locations and that cnanot be destroyed by the use of HELL rounds.

One presumes that the effect is similar to an HAFE round in terms of momentum and KE, just not scattered amongst thousands of indiviudal projectiles. Then again they may not be kinetic warheads, they could use some other kind. Like with TLVG missiles, the presumably focused nature of the warhead (contrasted to HELLS, which are omindirectional) could lend clues to its firepower if one knew the yield of the HELL round in general (sub kiloton IIRC for Arty rounds, so maybe double or triple digit MJ per square meter at least?)

Smoke rounds set up a dense barrier of smoke that is opaque to the visual electromagnetic and infrared spectra. Smoke can be used defenisvely to cover the withdrawl or shifting of troops.

..

The smoke will blind the enemy's terrain-following radar and cause the vehicle to crash (during high speed manuvering through built up areas)

Basically like 40K Blind rounds.. they must do something fancy to the smoke to futz up sensors though.

Crater rounds are an artillery version of the digging charges that grav vehicles carry. They are used mainly to hastily create a defensive zone for a retreating force. They can also be used to quickly create dug-in positions for an attacking force. Most units are not assigned enough artillery pieces to allow the creation of platon-sized positions with each fire mission, and so the creater rounds tend to be primarily a defensive weapon.

Depending on the size of the crater (man sized or squad sized, or possibly up to estimated grav vehicle size) it could be tens or hundreds of MJ per crater charge, up to a couple GJ (say a 10-15 M diameter crater, which ought to be big enough for a grav tank.)

When a HELL round detonates, it releases enough gravitic energy to cause a small uncontrolled fusion reaction. This type of round is very clean, leaving little tactically significant radiation but it does totally destroy any buildings, vegetation, or unshielded units in the blast radius.

Shielding does reduce the blast effects of a HELL round, and so it is not as effective gainst stationary vehicles as a GLAD round. If the target is moving, however, the gravitic shock waves can cause the vehicle to ground. Slamming into the ground at high speed can result in secondary damage that is greater than the damage caused by the blast.

\

I doubt these are "real" nukes, just more like a "nuke like" weapon give the associated gravwank.

[Connor MacLeod]

I don't have much time now to do comprehensive analysis, but I wanted to finish off Centurion.. I'm going to give this a lil break and focus on the 40K stuff for awhile. I might come back to it from time to time.. I'm still deciding.

Anyways the last Centurion update, and a big one.

Renegade Legion ground forces are organizsed in the same manner as TOG Legions, with ten Combat Cohorts, an Artillery manus, and supply troops.

...

Many Renegade Legions have forgeone the Strike or Infantry designation for more romantic designations...

...

Organizationally, the Combat Cohorts are permanantly assigned to one of four Manuses. The First Manus (Or Manus Primus) contains the First Cohort and three other Cohorts. The other thre Manuses are assigned tow Cohorts each. The vehicles of the Fifth Manus are used to supplment the headquarters elements of the Manus Primus. When needed, support troops are assigned from the support elements.

This organization allows the Combat Cohorts to devleop the teamwork neccessary to beocme a well-integrated fighting force, while also giving the Prefect of Legion the tactical flexibility...

...

Another major difference is that the Military Police unit of a Renegade Legion is only at Century, rather than Cohort, strength. Renegade and Commonwealth units seem to have fewer rear-area security and military discipline problems than their TOG counterparts.

Organizational breakdown of a Renegade Legion or TOG Legion, with differences noted.

The Renegade Ground forces number 300,000 Legions, along with a significant number of auxilia. Auxilia and Fighter Wings are assigned to the Legion in the same manner as TOG assignments.

..

Many of the Infantry legions stationed on the Renegade planets far from the front are issued ground rathr than Grav vehicles.

Scope of the Renegade Forces. 300,000 Legions at 50,000 each is 15 billion troops. As opposed to the 400 billion TOG keeps active, but not including auxiliaries or naval elements (EG marines)

There are 200,000 Legions in th Commonwelath Armed Forces (CAF). Half of these Legions are organized and operated on the REnegade model. The other half represent a wide variety of planetary and racial military organizations and nonclemature. One nominal difference is that Manuses are called Brigades, Auxilia are known as regiments, Cohorts are battalions, and Centuries are companies.

\

Broadly we could say Commonwealth forces have 10 billion troops, but in reality the Commonwealth forces are less consistently organized - differences occur along racial lines for example (Kessrith forces differ in makeup from Naram or Baufrin).

Names are different too, but the differences in names do give an indication roughly of the strength that may be more useful to memory than the Romanesque titles.

A B'ekkal Legion contains three permamant brigades, each with four Battalions of the same size and type. No heavy tanks are assigned to a B'ekkal Legion, thougha Kessrith Armor Regiment might be attached. Most B'ekkal Battlaions consist of light armored vehicles, with the remainder being mediums..

example of a kind of Naram force.

It [Kessrith Units] is a heavily armored, powerful, and relatively slow unit. KessRith orgnaize in groups of four. There are four line Companies to a Battalion, four line Battalions to a Brigade, and four line Brigades to a Legion.

..

Unlike other military organizations, a KessRith battalion is assigned an organic artillery platoon.

Kessrith units outlined, along with differences. More of a traditional 40Kesque "Sledgehammer" force.

Baufrin units are only Regimental in size. They are self-sufficient at the Battalion level, with a decentralized command structure. A typical Baufrin Armored Regiment consists of four Medium Armored Battalions of five Line Companies each. The Battalion has an organic Artillery Company and organic maintenance, medical, signal, MP, and supply platoons.

Baufrin forces.

A Naram special forces regiment is trained in non-conventional warfare and employed in strategic sabotage and reconnaissance missions. They are also able to raise, train, and lead guerilla forces from among the populations of occupied planets.

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The regiment is made up of four Line Battalions of four Line Companies each. The Line Companies have four Line Platoons each. Supply and Signal companies are attached at the Regimental level.

The Regiment has no organic vehicles. Its men carry all the unit's equipment, although the use of bounce packs and anti-grav cargo skids make mobility fairly high. If neccessary, all the Regiment's equipment can be broken down into man-size loads and carried without the use of anti-grav devices.

In raid operations, the Regiment arrives via orbital drop cannister or is landed directly on the target by a ship. Raiding missions are conducted by Company-size units or larger. If the raiders land in a ship, they depart in the same manner. Pick-up by orbital vehicles is much more difficult ad so raiders ofrten break up into squad-size units and vanish into the countryside to wage a guerilla war. There are reports that the Naram have developed an individual suborbital rocket utilizing grav drives to transport raiders out of a combat area into low orbit, but none have been reported in operational use.

The regiment carires out its guerilla operations in a slightly different manner. THey land via orbital drop cannister or else the Regiment can be deployed as a stay beihnd force prior ot TOG occupation. The Regiment operates as individual squads, with each squad reporting to its higher headquarters. Squad members have no knoweldge of the locations or operational orders of other squads or headquarters. This cell type operation ensures that TOG security forces are unable to eliminate more than one unit at a time.

Beyond stnadard infantry and weapons training, each member of a Special Forces squad is trained in some military specialty such as medicine, communications, engineering, maintenance, and so on. They are also heavily cross-trained in the use of enemy weapons and construction of field-expedient equipment. A squad is expected to be able to train and lead a company sized unit of local guerillas.

another Naram force, optimized more for special forces and guerilla style combat. The technological abilities they are equipped with in this purpose are interesting (the bounce packs, the drop cannisters, etc.)

Like all Marine forces, Vauvusar marines are controlled directly by the Navy and have three missions: shipboard secruity, ship-to-ship boarding actions, and sizeure of planetary bridgeheads. A battalion is made up of eight Companies: three companies of Bounce Infantry, one Company of Assault boats, one Artillery company, one Engiener Company one supply Company, and a Headquarters company.

The Infantry Companies are organized as normal, with three Line Platoons and a Headquarters Company, but they have no organic vheicles. All heavy equipment is mounted on unarmored grav sleds, while the Infantry are equipped with obunce packs. In addition to traditional infantry tactics, Marines are also trained in Zero-G vaccuum combat, orbital drop pod operations, and ship board assaults.

The assault boat company is made up of twelve small, streamlined space shuttles capable of lifting one squad or piece of equipment each. Though equipped with very little offensive weaponry, Assault boats hav high shield ratings, thick armor, and good acceleration.

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They can provide limited air support, but it is almost always inferior to that of a fighter.
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The assault boats allow a Battalion to land a reinforced company in one lift. If the Infantry Companies utilize orbital drop pods to land, the BAttalion can land all of its combat elements (artillery and infantry) in one wave.

The Artillery company consists of a HEadquarters platoon, two platoons of conventional artillery, and one air defense platoon. Like the infantry, all artillery pieces are mounted on unarmored grav sleds. Each Assault Boat can carry one artillery piece and its crew.

The engineer company is made up of three platoons of construction engineer.s THe construction engineers are used to rapidly fortify a bridgehead captured by the infantry. The platoon includes three squads of consturction enginers and all their neccesary equipment. again, all equipment is Grav-sled mounted.

Vauvasar forces - not line but naval marines. Intresting they have alot of airlift capability as well as bounce infantry, and artillery.. but no vehicles.

Nah Tikal (Viper) classed Light APC

Mass: 90 Engine 850 Thrust 8 Infantry Squad Yes

Weapons: 25mm Gauss, SMLM (2) - both in turrets, 2 TVLG (2) hull mounted.

Vehicle stats

The viper sacrifices six tons of armor protection to carry these TVLGs, however.

6 tons of armor (minimum) is equal to the volume of the TVLGs

Bata REvo (Wolverine) class Lgith Grav Tank
Mass: 137 Engine: 1250 Thrust 8 Infantry Squad: no

Weapons: 100mm Gauss, AP laser, TVLG (4) - all turret. 2 TVLG (2) in hull mount.

more vehicle stats.

It is moderately well protected and its 100mm Gauss Cannon is capable of savaging the armor of any opposing vehicle with a few shots.

Durability of a (presumed) light tank against 100mm Gauss cannon.

Liberator class Medium Grav Tank:

Mass: 273 Engine: 2000 Thrust 6 Infantry Squad (no)

Weapons: 5/6 Laser, 150mm gauss, 50MM Gauss, Vulcan (3) - all in Turret, 2 TVLG (4) in hull mount.

Another grav tank.

Spartius-class medium Grav APC

Mass: 189 Engine 1500 Thrust 6 Infantry Squad 8

WEapons: 2 5/6 Lasers, vulcan (3), SMLM (2), TVLG (6) - all in turret. 2 TVLG (4) in hull mount.

A grav APC.