Renegade Legion: Prefect analysis thread

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2011-06-18 06:48pm

Yep. I'm going back to Renegade Legion. hopefully to start finishing up the main books. Just Prefect and Legionnaire and then a bunch of supplement. First, I'll do prefect.

That said, I posted up a little update to catch up and revise some earlier things, as well as to reiterate some of the current mysteries I'm not clear on. So before I get into Prefect, and because some of my ideas have changed like they have in my 40K analysis, I'm just going to go over a few different things:

Fighter/tank firepower: we know they're gigawatt, although some interpretations allow terawatt. I'm guessing that it might depend on target (terawatt lasers are for anti ship, gigawatt for anti fighter/ground attack, for example.)

I'd guess tank lasers optimize more for gigawatt, they don't seem to rely on brute force penetration but rather timing to penetrate shields. Really I'm still stuck on the tank-vs fighter stuff yet.

acceleration Single to double digit gees seems to be it. There are some examples and evidence hinting at higher, but I doubt it reaches much more than that. That said I still don't think acceleration for starships works the way Leviathan does it, so you could have high acceleration battleships (it depends on how they design it, of course.)

Starship masses unchanged. Capital ships are too damn light. Doesn't help that Renegade's Honour has a 500 meter long battleship massing 1 million tons either!

Engine performance RL starships operate on the "fusion torch" principle, both in performance and in exhaust velocity. Like with 40K plasma drives, the temperature at which the drive "burns" dictates how fast it is (unlike ion drives in Star Wars, which seem to use some sort of abbreviated acceleration ladder.) Velocity-wise, I'd guess tens of thousands of km/s, based on the "near-relativistic" interpretation (See below)

"Near-relativistiic" I'm no longer sure it neccesarily means near-c, but it still could. The novel "Renegade's Honour" for example, mentions that the spinal guns travel at tens of thousands of km/s, which is closer to 14% of c. The thing is, however, I've seen other sources that go anywhere from 10% of c up to .3 or .5c, so its still pretty variable. Even taking "tens of thousands" of c literally it can be well close to .3-.4c

Simon_Jester (and back when Ford Prefect was around and commenting) were nice enough to point out that the boundary between "relativistic" and "non-relativistic"is likely blurred, since it depends largely on how significant of relativistic effects one expects. They start at much lower velociities (10% of c or so) but they aren't significant until higher velocities. So a more literal interpretation might go for 10-15% of c, whilst a less literal might be several times that.

firepower Whilst there were cases that argue for multi-PT firepower on the battleship/squadron scale, it's really not possible to justify that interpretation. Acceleration and recoil simply prove to be too probelmatical to justify it. High teraton might still work, but it's stretching the boundaries of what the evidence allows even with some flexibility in interpretations. Its probably better just to pull back to the gigaton/lower teraton scale for battleships, and megaton/gigaton for smaller ships (like destroyers and frigates.)

On the plus side, the implication of fusion weaponry isn't quite so far fetched now, since while gigaton level fusion weapons are still pretty hefty, its not so implausible as justifying TT-PT levels. It also makes things easier on the "near-relativistic" velocity side of things.
It is possible that if we need to, the "higher end" examples represent some unusual/specialized or highly limited capacity of firepower (specialized bombardment warheads, or specialized planetary attack weapons, or something like that.) so whilst they have it, it isn't "typical."

It could also be that it reprensets some sort of "pushed to the limits" maximum capacity (like, zero safety margin, not intended for extended use) level of performance, he way some ships can "push the plant". However, a more liberal interpretation of some of the bombardment examples (like the Legionnaire one, where billions of people are killed in moments) could also fix this, and probably more simply.
shielding - I'm still at a loss there, honestly. It's hard to reconcile alot of the variables (like with flicker rates and why fighters and starships don't have "painting" issues. Still up in the air about fighters (it may be some combination of speed/angle and ranges) but I suspect that capital ships, which seem to have ZERO flicker rates, may use multiple "layers" of shields (more than six generators) - basically you have one shield's flicker rate covering the gaps in the other, making penetration harder. Its implied in some of the evidence, and would certainly be possible given the power generation.

Note that in theory there's nothing stopping fighters and starships from engaging at 15 km ranges, considering that "hundreds of km" is typical engagement ranges for RL verse ships, with little velocity/acceleration it can be done, so close range battles could allow for brutal "painting laser" based duels

Still trying to explain tank vs fighter battles (like how a fighter with tens or hundreds of km range can fight against tanks which have single digit km range, nevermind differences in shields and armor.)

ship speed/FTL speeds: Rather than treating them as contradictions, I've just decided it ultimately comes down to tradeoffs in designs. For example, 100,000 LY a month (or anything faster than 10,000 LY/month may still be possible, as well as the run up velocities implied, but they require certain sacrifices or tradeoffs in design (decreased weaponry, for example)

Engine performance is similar - they might have ships that can reach fractions of lightspeed, but they need bigger fuel tanks to allow that (we dont know what sort of tradeoffs are encompassed with fuel.) as a rule, they never really need to do it, since T-sdrives are precise enough to allow for rapid in-system jumps.

In general, given how Renegade Legion has emphasized customability and "building from scratch" as part of the rules, I'm assuming that for whatever reasons, they incorporate certan design or doctrine comrpomises and their performance can be alot more variable (with certain tradeoffs.) This helps to account for the inconsistent FTL speeds, inconsistent accelerations and velocities, even inconsistent firepower.

Comms and FTL: still a sticky point in several ways: For example, the 20,000 ly/month "limit" for p-comms, yet VLCAs are instantanous. Possibly there are other "wavelengths" between VLCA and normal p-comms (unless they ARE the two wavelengths) but we haven't heard of them. If we were including the old "inteceptor" 100,000 LY/month, we might infer there is some "point" where 200,000 LY/month existed or something, (similar to the 10,000 LY/month being 1/2 the speed of P-comm.) Sort of a cheaper alternative to VLCA (still requiring some sort of dedicated platform, but oyu might apply it in a better protected hull.)
Another sub-point is that p-comms are amazingly compact. One wonders why they don't use them in drones/satellites or missiles more (it would be possible to create long ranged, ftl controlled missiles, for example.)
Sensors: FTL sensors only exist for tracking or detecting entry/emergence into T-space. However, there are some caveats that arne't addressed that may exist.

tau-shimmer: is this sublight emissions or is it tachyonic/Ftl? If its tachyonic, then one arguably could detect any vessel that is giving off such shimmer (meaning that a starship ought to be detectable at FTL for some time.) Some interpretations of Leviathan would argue this.
But if that's the case, what happens if you shoot beams of tachyons at a target (or tachyon-masked matter, like a NPB?) That quite possibly could mimic FTL (active) sensors of some kind.

beacons: attaching a beacon to a target that uses a p-comm transmission can allow for FTL tracking or detection.
Neutron particle beams: I'm still not sure *how* this tachyon "mask" is meant to accelerate a particle. It implies that a tachyon imparts energy/momentum to the target (or can bounce off/interact with matter.)... again like the FTL problem it introduces peculiar oddiities. It's especially odd considering we know they use gravitic impellers for artillery. (there's the quesiton why they dont use grav weapons more for mass drivers and such, either.)

Kinda like the oddities of T-doppler and how combining radar and p-comms lead to that.

Gauss cannon vs Mass drivers in Leviathan/Interceptor scale: Much like the painting lasers, this is an aspect of Centurion that seems to complicate the other two scales. We learn that 100 gram or higher masses have a chance of ignoring flicker shields. This leads to the obvious question, considering the ranges, why they don't use uprated mass driver and gauss cannons in broadside mounts? Hell, a sufficiently "massive" particle beam probably could bypass that (and at multi gigaton/TT range that should be quite possible)

One possibility is that capital ships are reisstant to kinetic impactors due to size and mass and armor thickness, and point defense makes effective saturation impossible. Hard to argue, but its not impossible to have depending on what you assume salvo density on missiles is. But this still wouldn't explain fighters. Hell it doesnt explain why mass drivers are ineffective against tanks but effective against fighters to begin with...

It is interesting that Renegade's Honor seems to use a more "mixed weapon" approach than the game systems itself do, so maybe this is simply abstraction on Leviathan's part for the sake of gameplay.

Weapons ranges: self explanatory. Nothing really prevents lasers and mass drivers and particle beams from being long range. I'd guess that, given hints WRT painting lasers and other factors, flicker shields may require engagement ranges to be far shorter to ensure penetration (an issue of timing, perhaps.) It's not the best answer, but...

Mass driver calc: originally I assumed 4-5 cm was the width of the round.. but what if its the length? assuming a 1 cm or so diameter, you get between 10 and 30 grams assuming iron. With a 2000 kps velocity you get 40 GJ worth of Ke and a momentum of 20,000 kg*m/s. We dont know rate of fire. It could be slower, velcoity wise. If it were a "mere" 200 km/s is "onl" 200 MJ and 2,000 kg*m/s momentum.

Well not big differences, but to me I think they matter. Anyhow, on to Prefect!

Simon_Jester · Post by **Simon_Jester** » 2011-06-18 07:05pm

Connor MacLeod wrote:Starship masses unchanged. Capital ships are too damn light. Doesn't help that Renegade's Honour has a 500 meter long battleship massing 1 million tons either!

Densitywise, that's not all that unreasonable. What's the problem?

Gauss cannon vs Mass drivers in Leviathan/Interceptor scale: Much like the painting lasers, this is an aspect of Centurion that seems to complicate the other two scales. We learn that 100 gram or higher masses have a chance of ignoring flicker shields. This leads to the obvious question, considering the ranges, why they don't use uprated mass driver and gauss cannons in broadside mounts? Hell, a sufficiently "massive" particle beam probably could bypass that (and at multi gigaton/TT range that should be quite possible)

Trickier to do, though. A lot depends on details; I'll come back to this when my head's a bit clearer.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2011-06-18 07:06pm

Prefect is not going to last long. Alot of it was rehashed from other sources, adding not much. In fact, the first part will cover one whole book on its own. After this, will be the operational briefing. Which isn't alot either. The operational briefing will be larger, but I should be able to cover it in 3 updates or so (small ones anyhow). One of the smaller updates I've ever done.

Each hex in the grid represents roughly 300 kilometers

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Each game turn lasts twelve hours.

Scale of the game - distances per "Hex" and turn time. It's interesting to note, although as always the value in analysis is dubious at best (taken with your usual grain of salt.)

Legions may operate a maximum of eighteen task forces. Auxilia may only operate a maximum of six Task Forces.

Operational scope of Legion operations as well as Auxilia.

[quoe]
The main combat elements are the Cohorts or Battalions, each comprising fifty-four to ninety combat Grav Vehicles. Century-or company-sized units represent specialized combat support units, such as headquarters, engineers, air defense, and signals units.[/quote]

Composition of Cohorts/Battaltions, including support.

Legion: A forcee that consists of ten combat cohorts or Battalions. This force is capable of operating independently. Units of t his size are usually equipped only with ground forcees.

Regiment or Auxilia: A force that consists of three to six combat Cohorts or Battalions. This force is capable of operating independently. Units of t his size are usually equipped only with ground forcees.

Cohort or Battalion: A force that consists of six to ten Centuries or Companies of combat vehciles, such as armor or infantry.

Century or Company: A force fo approximately nine specialized combat vehicles. Century-sized units are always support units.

The organizational breakdwon of a Legion and the numbers, as well as their commonwealth analogues. Renegade Legion follows TOG organization, and commonwealth ones can vary from race to rac.e

Grav legions operate in a dispersed deployment, and so efficient detection of enemy forces can enable a smaller force to defeat a much larger force. An entire science within warfare theory, intelligence, and counter-intelligence , has been devoted to effective detection.

Operational doctrine of grav legion warfare. Note the emphasis on detection.

Movement on the planetary map is regulated by a hex grid. Each hex represents an area approximately 300 kilometers. GRav-equipped units can achieve speeds of up to 900 kph, and so in twelve hours, a single grav tank can travel 10,800 kilometers, or about 36 hexes. Coordinating the movement of a large number of combat vehicles is difficult and time consuming, however, and so the distance that a Task Force can cover in twelve hours is more closely related to its command and control capabilities than the maximum speed of the individual vehciles.

Scale of the game again, top speed of tanks, and a lower limit on operatona duration and range (~11,000 km in ~12 hours). This is an "ideal" though, since they note that coordination is an effective limit on top speed/range - one presumes there is an inverse relationship (bigger the unit,harder it is to organize and the slower things go.)

In combat movement mode, the Task Force's vehicles fly at a distance of up to twenty meters above the plaent's surface, carefully changing speeds and flight altitudes as appropriate while searching for the enemy, stopping, changing formation, and so on. This is the usual mode in which combat units travel.

A task force in Combat move may move up to ten hexes per turn, less one hex for each combat unit in the Task Force.

A task force containing one or more headquaters units adds one to its rate of movement.

Game stats mainly, but the "combat movement mode" gives us a rough idea of how fast groups/units can move under "less than ideal" circumstances..

Note the "twenty metre" distance. I dont think they move at top speed (900kph) but they could move at 240-300 kph).

A Task Force moving at LAF (low altitude flight) mode is flying at a distance of up to 15,000 meters (15 kilometers) above the planet's surface, at speeds approaching 900 kph. A Task Force flying in LAF mode is at increased risk when entering a combat zone, because it is more easily detected, it is more eaisly engaged by fighters, and its tanks relatively weak bottom armor is exposed to ground fire.

A Task Force in LAF mode may move up to twenty hexes per turn, less one for each combat unit in the Task Force. A Task Force with one or more headquarters units adds one to its rate of movement.

15 kilometers is, IIRC, roughly the maximum altitude for Grav tank operation, and required for top speed. It carries the tradeoff of increased detectability and greater exposure to fighters. As well as the exposure of the weak underside.

The high mobility of modern combat and the large areas over which grav units operate make finding the exact location of enemy units difficult. Electronic countermeasures and other sensor-jamming equipment only add to the confusion.

Ground units apparently make use of extensive ECM.

Signal Centuries in Task Forces can be used to enhance or degrade detection attempts.

GRound version of ELINT.

Artillery cohorts provide important supportt for attacking or defending forces. These units can fire shells at distances of hundreds of kilometers with surprising precision. If used to support an attack, artillery missions can be called in by frontline Cohorts to strike with pinpoint accuracy. Even without exact firing coordinates, modern artillery vehicles can lady down impressive long-range strikes.

Interesting that this is implied to be "hundreds of kilometres here rather than a mere 100 in Centurion.

We can, like before, estimate velocity from the range given information we know or can guess at. Assuming 200 km range an ideal 45 degree arc, the velocity of the round would come in at some 1.4 km/s, but would take 143 seconds to cover that range (nearly two and a half minutes)

If we use the "less than a minute" from Centurion, it would result in a lower limit of about 3.4 km/s velocity. At this velocity, the trajectory would be much much flatter (less than a 10 degree arc) and line of sight would play a much greater role in effective range (more consistent with artillery and fighters, both of which are of a similar scale to grav tanks yet have hundreds of km ranges)

Its worth noting that this range is VASTLY greatr than modern equivalents. This is interesting considering the performance of grav tank weaponry (range, etc) isnt vastly better than real life tanks, although there is enough evidence to suggest otherwise. It could be that various factors like tank speed and ECM limit effective range against other grav tanks.

It's also likely safe to say tank weapons have a velocity at least comparable to the Artillery platforms.

Militia regiments, Garrison Legions, and Marine Cohorts have no grav capability. Therefore, these units have limited combat abilities. Non-grav units can be attached to a Task Force, or they can operate independently.

Non-grav forces can move no more than one hex per turn, whether attacking, d efending or disrupted.

It may seem odd that TOG or the Commonwealth do not use exclusively grav vehicles, but that is rather shallow thinking as it fails to take in a larger logistical or strategic function. Grav vehicles are likely more maintenance and resource intensive to operate, replace, and maintain for all purposes - cost and maintenance are not trivial issues. Using cheaper and less sophisticated (and thus likely easier to maintain) vehicles allows you to field greater numbers without vastly increasing cost. And for defnesively minded forces (Militia or Garrison forces are likely to be both) mobility is less important.

Legions are equipped with two types of Engineer Centuries: Combat Engineer centuries have grav engineering vehicles, able to engage in combat.

...

The second type of Engineer Century is the Construction Engineer Century. These units construct bases using s upplies and prefabricated building modules.

Combat engineering

The system map represents the world's solar system and is used to regualte the movement of starships within the system. The map is divided into eleven orbital zones. The sun occupies zone 0. Zones 1-7 are divided into numbered sectors, this breakdwon allows each of the sector to be located quickly if the orbital zone and sector are known. For example, if an orbital base is located in the tenth sector of the second orbital zone, it would be written as (2,10)

The size of the zones and sectors is abstraced, because their actual size in normal space has little tactical imapct on military operations. Each zone is twice the width of the previous one, with Zone 1 being about .25 AUs wide. It would take time beyond the scope of this game just to travel from one sector to another in normal space, and so starships make small T-space "mini-hops" to travel between sectors.

Most of the sectors are empty, but some contain planets, asteroids, or space installations that give the sector economic ormilitary significance. THese natural bodies and man-made installations are targets for opposing players to capture or destrtoy.

Frankly it's hard to mess with this, since the zones are both varied in number and size (nevermind whether you move in one dimension or another), it leads to some wildly different numbers. That said, I'm calling it game mechanics largely, and simplified for the purpose of streamlining. and I won't do any numbers.

Note as well the "orbital economic installations" as well.

In the space game, naval forces accomplish inter- and -intrastellar movement using T-space jumps, rather than travelling those distances in normal (rational) space. Players move their Task Forces during the appropriate T-space and Insystem Movement Phases. During the T-space movement PHase, all incoming Task Forces are moved, one at a time, to a sector of the system map.

...

The Insystem Movement Phase takes place after the T-space movement Phase is finished. The player whose Movement PHase it is (the phasing player) moves any Task Force that began the turn insystem to any other system sectorm or to the outsystem area if the Task Force is assigned a withdrawal mission.

Basically, T-space drives serve a significant in-system tactical benefit rather than just moving ships and fleets between systems. It also means acceleration and realspace velocity, while they matter, are not as critical as in other universes (EG 40K) for crossing in-system distances, and helps in some way to explain close engagement ranges (They have no reason to engage at millions of kilometers when they can jump so close.)

All starships are capable of using T-space movement, and so can move freely between system sectors and between the system map and the outsystem area. Fighters that belong to an Independent Fighter Wing have organic Patrol class carriers, whcih allows them to move freely between system sectors and between the system map and outsystem area.

Non-independent Fighter Flights are not capable of operating in T-space. They must be carried on a starship in order to move out of their current system sector or beyond the outsystem area.

Interceptors naturally are too small for FTL travel, but they always have their own corvette carrier platforms. Interesting to not ethat gunboats (the smallest FTL capable objects) aren't a whole lot larger than fighters IIRC, but one imagines they suffer some drawback to fit that capability in.

T-space movement causes a light-year's sized wave-front distortion in T-space which can be detected by special T-Doppler sensors. The size of this wave front bears a direct relationship to the speed of travel. Most vessels travel slowly toward their destination until their wave front falls just short of the system. Then they enter the system in a high-speed T-space jump, giving T-Doppler stations in the arrival system only seconds of warning. Incoming enemy Task Forces ar emost often detected by picket ships stationed numerous light years distant from the target system, which may detect the incoming fleet as it makes it sslower approach to the edge of the system.

...

These "picket" deteciton stations are controlled by the theater commander rather htan the system commander...

Tracking fleets via T-doppler. Light years sized distortions give only "seconds" of warning. - the "ripples" transmit at many millions, even tens of millions times the speed of light.

Fighters swarm around the giant capital ships as broadsides, missiles, and hyper-velocity slugs from spinal-mount mass drivers tear through space.

Spinal mount guns are described as "hyper-velocity. As I discussed earlier, there's a real blurry area between "merely" hypervelocity and relativistic.

Any Task Force resolving its mission in a sector occupied by an enemy Task Force with a system defense mission may be detected in normal space (N-space). If the Task Force is detected in normal space, the opposing player may attempt to intercept the Task Force before it reaches its target.

....

If the phasing player's forces are detected in N-space, the opposing player can send forces with a sector defense mission from the Task Force in the sector to engage the oncoming (phasing player's) force before it reaches its target. The incoming force must be detected in N-space in order for the opposing forces to make a deep space interception.

Only naval units with a thrust equal to or greater than the lowest thrust of the incoming unit may be sent to interceept incoming forces. Forces sent to intercept an incoming force may not make N-space detection attempts or engage in any other comba for the rest of the turn.

Describing, I believe, FTL interception. Not quite sure how this all plays out, but it is interesting.

Supplies are just as important to the Navy as they are to the army. Starships need reaction mass for their drives, resupply of missiles and other expendables, food, oxygen, fighter maintenance and so forth, even if the vessel enver fires a shot. After battle, damage needs to be repaired, and repalcement fighters and crewmen need to be assembled and prepared for the next mission. Naval operations require massive and continuous efforts to rearm and reorganize fatigued and disrupted Task Forces.

Logistics concerns for Navy ships. This does imply they have some fairly limited endurances, as far as ships go (closer to SW scale endurnaces than 40K, evn though their combat durations tend to represent 40K durations)

Rebuilding destroyed units:

A system battle is simply one part of a larger-scale conflict taking place in the theater of operations. The theater commande has limited resources, and will usually replace destroyed units only as required. Destroyed naval units and bases can be rebuilt in the outsystem area, but a limited number of units can be rebuilt per turn, usually defined by the scenario. As a general rule, no more than three units can be rebuilt in a turn.

To rebuild any naval unit, starship, Fighter Flight, or base, simply move the unit's counter from the Destroyed Navla Unit Box of the Outsystem Area Chart to the Functional Naval Unit Box. A player who does not or cannot rebuild the maximum number of units in a turn may not carry unexpended rebuild opportunities forward to another turn.

I'm not sure if this means rebuilding damaged hulks in a short period of time (more like repair/refurbishment) or if it means building whole new replacements from the ground up. Depending on hwo destroyed a hulk is, there might not be any difference, but I'm betting on the former and the hulk being mostly intact (which may actually speak to their durability in combat.)

Most bases have a small detachment of Marines assigned to them against such atatcks, but in times of major emergency, a Cohort might be deployed to a small base without the facilities to house it. In this case the Marines make use of modular barracks, which provide both living facilities and defensive positions. Modular barracks can be dug in around a ground base or placed around a free-floating naval base.

Self explanatory, and a bit interesting. Marines (as a rule) likely fall into the "auxilia" category.

However, they can load component parts of orbital bases into transports in the outsystem area, transport them to the system map, and assemble the base in the sector and oribtal segment of their choice, excluding any orbital segment containing an enemy base.

..

A player can transport insystem any orbital base that is in the Functionla Naval Unit Box of his Outsystem Area Chartt.

..

A player may choose to have a Transport Squadron serve as a base.

I'm not sure how big a base we're talkinga bout, but its an interesting and impressive ability nonetheless.

When facing an attack launched only from space, bases can easily give as good as they get. But if a space or air attack is combined with a ground attack, the effectiveness of a base's space-directed weaponry is severely hampered. The base must keep its missile silos and laser bays closed to prevent enemy artillery from slipping in a well-placed HELL round. Ground base's sensors and targeting arrays can also be blinded by a ground battle swirling around them. The end result is that a base under combined attack shuts down all but its smaller point-defense systems.

HEll rounds against bases (probably from space, but possibly from fighters)

GL1: Cohort support base:

Weapons: 1 50 gun 37.5/10 laser bay, 1 50 gun 37.5/5 laser bay, type G missile

GL2: Manus Support base:

WEapons: 1 100 gun 37.5/10 bay, 1 100-gun 37.5/5 bay, Type D missile

GL3Legion supporrt base

1 100-gun 37.5/25 laser bay, 1 100-gun 37.5/10 laser bay, type E missile system.

Various base armamments

GL4 Planetary support base

WEapons:
4 100-gun 37.5/30 lasers

Type E missile system.

ON1/GN1: Fort Oasis class port:

Carries 6 fighters

ON2/GN2Small ship post: Carries 6 fighters

More base armament

ON3/GN3:Medium fighter base:

Class: D estroyer (size?)

Weapons: 3 25-gun 22.5/5 laser bays

Type C missile

Fighters: 72 Crew: 717 Passengers 30 Marines: 1 Century

yet more base stats

ON4/GN4; Medium Ship Base
Class: cruiser
WEapons: 4 50-gun 37.5/5 laser bays

FighterS: 24 Crew: 2,500 MArines: 1 Century

You guessed it. Base stats.

ON5/GN5 Fighter Wing Command

Class: Frigate

WEapons: 4 50-gun 37.5/5 laser bays

Fighters: 360 Crew: 2500 Marines: 1 cohort

Even bigger base stats.

ON6 Largge ship base

Class Battleship:

Weapns 8 100-gun 37.5/30 laser bays

Type D missile system

Fighters: 72 Crew: 2717 Marines: 1 cohort

You'll note that many bases often are comparable in size to large starships (at least in terms of classification), which does give some interetsing implications about construction, at least of stationary facilities.

Light Transport squadron: - 10 Corvette class ships.

Medium Transport squadron: - 5 Destroyer class ships.

not base stats, but it gives us an idea of the aformentioned transport groups.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2011-06-18 07:10pm

Simon_Jester wrote:
Connor MacLeod wrote:Starship masses unchanged. Capital ships are too damn light. Doesn't help that Renegade's Honour has a 500 meter long battleship massing 1 million tons either!
Densitywise, that's not all that unreasonable. What's the problem?

Put it this way. Multi km battleships and cruisers only mass a few million tons. Frigates and destoryers mass half a million tons for that same rough size.

Renegade's Honour was odd because it did alot of things that were different than indicated in Leviathan (ships were smaller, and there were other curious oddities.) It doesnt help that the novel also uses gigawatt, megatwatt, kiloton and megatonne interchangably for ship to ship weapons (the last bit is interesting because its for the spinal mount and for broadsides respectively)

this is a renegade Legion Shiva class battleship. its 2.75 km long. And it masses 4.2 million tons. Basically its on the same par as the problems Weber had with the honorverse ships.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2011-07-09 07:43pm

After hundreds of years of war, almost all armies have adopted the same structure for their basic combat unit, which is the Century. A Century is made up of three line Platoons, and one Headquarters Platoon. THe line Platoons are made up of vehicles and/or personnel needed to carry out the Century's mission. If the Century is a signal unit, the line Platoons will be Signal units. Armor Platoons use armored vehicles. The Headquarters Platoon provides supply, maintenance and battlefield recovery assets.

Three vehicles make up a Platoon. IF the Platoon has infantry, ,they are arranged into squads of eight men each, with a vehicle assigned to transport each squad.

Combat Centuries contain both infantry and tanks, and some type of indirect-fire weapon such as a mortar. The typical Armored Cenutry has two Platoons of taks and one Platoon of armored infantry. An ARmored Infantry Century reverses that ratio, containing two Platoons of infantry and one Platoon of tanks.

A Headquarters Platoon has three vehicles: one supply., one maintenance, and one recovery. A Headquarters vechile has three Platoons: one supply, with recovery vehciles, one Command Platoon, made up of converted combat vehicles that exchange their weapons for communications equipment: and one Medical Evac Platoon. A HEadquarters Cohort is assigned a variety of Centuries. In TOG and Renegade organizations, these include an Administrateive Century, a Command Century, an Intelligence Century, and a Liasison Century, for coordinating activities with the Navy and any attached Ground Support Wings.

Makeup of the "Century" as far as various subunits go. I have to say they did put some thought into this, although whether or not its an effective design, I have no clue.

A TOG Legion consists of ten Combat Cohorts, a Supporting Artillery Manus, a Supply Manus, a military Police Cohort, a Signal Cohort, an Engineer Cohort, and headquarters units. The Legion is commanded by a prefect of the Legion, who has a legatus maximus as his executive officer.

The striking arm of the Legion is its ten Combat Cohorts. The First Cohort is always manned by the best combat troops in the Legion, and is issued heavier equipment than the other Cohorts. The First Cohort consists of a Headquarters Century of nine support vehicles, and ten Combat Centuries. The other nine Cohorts control only six Combat Centuries each, along with a Headquarters Century. Cohorts are commanded by a centurion maximus, while a Century is commanded by a centurion.

Cohorts and Legions, the next higher organizational units from the Century. all very Romanesque. Note the variation in equipment quality amongst different units. Probably saves money and gives flexibility, but I imagine it creates some distrust/competition/dislike amongst various groups (Inter-unit rivalries and jealousies) which is pretty typical of TOG thought.

The Combat Cohorts are grouped for specific msissions into temporary detachments of two to five Cohorts, each called a Manus. Depending on the Manus' mission, the Legion's prefect can assign it s upport units from the artillery, signal, supply, military police (MP), or engineer elements. A Legion has sufficient Hedquarters Centuries to form five additional Manus. A Manus is commanded by a legatus.

The Artillery Manus of the Legion consists of three Cohorts of artillery, one Air Defense Cohort, and a Rocket Century. The Rocket Century is capable of launching satellites (primiarily Thors or observation satellites) into planetary orbit. Artillery Cohorts are assigned to a Manus as intact units adnd are never broken up. The air defense Cohor's Centuries are assigned piecemeal to indivdual Manus or to rear-area defense. The Rocket Century is always controlled directly by the Legion's Headquaters Cohort.

A bit of information of how units can be combined, broken down, or reorganized as situations require. The artillery and rocket groups are really the interesting bits, although the air defense units can be interesting as well, since they likely represent the major concentrations of heavy, long range firepower in the Legion.

The Supply Manus controls the activities of the Legion's maintenance, supply, medical, and other administrative units. These elements are normally assigned as needed ot support the operations of the different Manus.

The Signal Cohort is responsible for all aspects of communications. They ensure the Legion HEadquarters are able to communicate with their far-flung Manus, support units, and higher Headquarters. Their mission includes the use and maintenance of communicatiosn satellites, though luanching is the responsibility of the Rocket Century. The Signal Cohort is also responsible for signal intelligence, signal security and electornic countermeasures. Signal units are assigned by individual Platoons to various Headquarrters as needed.

The Engineer Cohort is responsible for the construction and maintenance of any permanant Legion facilities,c learing or reducing obstacles, erecting barricades, and constructing fortifications. The Cohort has three Combat Engineer Centuries and three Construction Engineer Centuries. The Combat Engineer Centuries are assigned to Manus as needed, while the Construction Engineer Cneturies normally are used to construct and fortify supply or maintenance depots in the rear areas.

The Military Police Cohort consists of six line Centuries and fucntions as a rear-area security force. It is also used to maintain military discipline within the Legion. The MP Cohort is under the direct control of the Legion commander, and only rarely is divided up to support Manus operations.

I like how they give some "screen time" to the non-combat elements who, whilst they don't participate in direct combat, are still vital to the overall way combat is done.

Depending on its mission, a Legion can be assigned a Wing of supporting spacecraft and/or an auxilliary unit known as an Auxilia. An Auxilia has four to six Cohorts of special troops, such as penal infantry, military police, marine assault troops, or population control troops (riot police.) An Auxilia is about the size of a Manus. Unlike a Manus, an Auxilia is assigned organic support troops. This allows the Auxilia to operate without additional support troops for a limited time. In contrast, a Manus depends completely on Legion support units for maintenance in th efield.

It is interesting that Legions can have their own organic/semi-organic air support capability, depending on the kind of Legion. The Auxilia bit is interesting as well, as it suggests an additional "pool" of military resources (troops, etc.) separate from but in addition to the millions of Legions that exist. It also offers an interesting way to reconcile the apparently low "numbers" of standing troops with the size of the population (quadrillions at least.) see below.

Eight Million TOG Legions currently exist, along with innumerable specialized Auxilia. The majority of TOG legions are designated as Strike, Infantry, or Garrison Legions.

I've commented before on how I've thought that 8 million Legions (about half a trillion troops) seems rather small for a pan-galactic empire. But there are reasons to justify it. For one thing TOG is big on propoganda and politics, but it doesn't really have any serious threats (as of yet) to its security (there were hints towards the end before materials stopped publishing, but that's it.) So you only need as many troops as you need, and that need not be anywhere close to the limits of what you could support.

It's also possible that each planet has its own organic "defense" force armies which garrison defense stations/facilities as well as orbital facilities, man starfighters, and so on, which provides a steady pool either for expanding the Legions or to supplement them as Auxilia. We know plenty of defensive installations and such exist, and someone would have to man and guard them. This would also make the 8 million Legions out to be the "offensive" arm of TOG's ground forces, which is perfectly in line with how they are described to function.

This also, of course doesn't include the Navy's marine counterparts, which can also serve as a sort of ground force.

i would expect that in a true wartime scenario, they would seek to expand the Legions as much as possible (although whether they can do so, and how much, depends entirely on logistics.)

Strike Legions are the TOG's frontline combat troops. Their mission is to destroy all enemy forces they encounter. THey are not expected to garrison a planet, just sieze it.

A Strike Legion consists of one Heavy Grav Armor Cohort and nine Medium Grav Armor Cohorts (this mixture may vary) The HEavy Grav Armor Cohort is the First Cohort, and contains four Heavy Centuries, three Medium Centuries and three Light Centuries of grav armor.

The Medium Cohorts each contain three Medium and Three light Armor Centuries.

All vehicles in the STrike Legion are equipped with grav drives. This allows the Legion to use their strategic and tactical advantages of grav drives to their fullest extent, because the Legion's logistical tail is as manuverable as the combat elements.

A Strike Legion is almost always permanantly assigned a Space Fighter Wing, whcih provides organic ground support and local air/space superiority. The Strike Legion or its Fighter Wing does not have any organic interstellar capabilities. All interstellar transports are under the direct control of the Imperial Navy.

The Strike Legion has tremendous offensive firepower available, but relatively few combat infantry. This situation is commonly remedied by assigning the Strike Legion an Auxilia of some type of infantry. The STrike Legion has only 1,536 combat infantryman, while an Infantry Auxilia typically has more than 2,000 legionnaires. Depending on the type of combat expected and the likelihood of opposition by the population at large, an entire Infantry or Garrison Legion may be attached to s upport a STrike Legion.

STrike Legions: The most powerful, sophisticated, mobile and generaly coolest force they have, IMHO. Also, as a consequence, the least numerous. They serve as the mobile attack forces that destroy the enemy, which is followed up on by the Infantry Legions.

The TOG high command views Infantry Legions as defensive troops whose mission is to hold the ground won by Strike Legions.

A typical Infantry Legion has one HEavy Grav Armor Cohort, two Medium Grav Armor Cohorts, and seven Grav Armored Infantry Cohorts.

All vehicles in a frontline Infantry Legion are grav drives. The Supply and Artillery Manus of Infantry Legions assigned to rear areas use ground vehicles for transportation. This ties these second-line units to a relatively fixed logistical train, but the cost of raising and maintaining the second-line units is less. If a second-line Infantry Legion is assgined to the front, ts supportt and arillery vehicles are usually replaced with grav vehicles.

An Infantry Legion may be assigned a Space Fighter Wing, but ground support and space superioirty are normallyleft to naval units.

Auxilia are assigned to the Infantry Legion as needed. Typical Auxilia assignments include grav armor, air/space defense, or construction units.

Infantry Legions, one may notice, seem to be the opposite of Strike Legions. Less mobile, more infantry heavy (whereas Strike Legions are mobile and very vehicle heavy) and designed for defensive 'territory holding' operations. They're a bit of a balance ultimately between Strike and Garrison Legions. They aren't as rare as Strike Legions, but still less common than the Garrison forces. They are also the most balanced.

All of TOG's 286 PRaetorian Guard units are Infantry Legions. All Praetorian units are composed of one Heavy Grav Armor Cohort, two Medium Grav Armor Cohorts, and seven Grav ARmored Infnatry Cohorts. All infantry are carried in medium grav APCs. Each Praetorian Guard Cohort contains ten Centuries rather than the standard six. Praetorian Guard units have permanant attachments of heavy Grav Armor Auxilia and a Reinforced Fighter Wing.

Despite being described as "second line" unit not all of them are the same.

Garrison Legions are the most numerous Legions in the TOG military. A Garrison Legion's primary mission is population control, over and above normal civilian police duties. TOG doctrine calls for one Garrison Legion to be stationed on a planet per million inhabitants. While it is capable of fighting tenaciously against an invading Strike or Infantry Legion, a Garrison Legion's lack of mobility and generally lower quality of its legionnaires gurantees that it will eventually be defeated by grav-mounted troops.

A typical Garrison Legion has one Heavy Armor Cohort (the First Cohort), one Medium Armor Cohort, and eight Armored or Air Mobile Infantry Cohorts. The military Police Cohort is upgraded ot Manus size and contains one Military Police Cohort and three Riot Control Troop Cohorts. The Engineer Cohort has only three Centuries of construction troops, and the Artillery Manus exchanges two Cohorts of armored artillery for two Air Defense Cohorts.

The Garrison Legion is not equipped with any organic grav vehicles. All the Legion's vehicles are either hover, wheeled, or tracked. Garriso Legions are practically immobile in comparison to conventional military units, but this equipage keeps costs low. However TOG High Command recongnizes this vulnerability of the Garrison Legion's logistical bases and usually assigns two additional Air Defense Cohorts to redress this balance somewhat. This support comes at the cost of two-thirds of their ground artillery support.

A Garriosn Legion is usually not assigned any ground support spacecraft. If ground support is needed, the local navy commander is expected to provide it.

If guerilla activity is especially heavy, the Garriosn Legion might be assigned a GRav or Heavy VTOL Transport Auxilia, capable of simultaneously lifting three Infantry Cohorts along with their organic vehicles.

Garrison Legions.. the most numerous, least mobile, and lesast powerful (but also most cost effective) Legions possible. Do note that while they lack alot of the neat stuff the other two kinds of Legions possess, it only says they lack organic units of those types - it is possible that they can have them added in if the situation demands it (some sort of Auxilia or similar detachment, I imagine)

Note the existence of "hover" vehicles that are independent of grav vehicles.. I imagine they have some sort of VTOL type gunships and such. It is also fair to note that 'least mobile' and 'least powerful' is entirely relative. Garrison Legion tracked vehicles and such, for example, would still be as fast (or faster) than many hover or grav units of other sci fi (like 40K) and be just as tough/powerful. it does say something that such units are considered third-line units designed largely for mop up and post-combat duties, I think.

Also, the implications suggest there could be quite a large number of these units, potentially. 1 Legion per 1 million population. That could easily exceed the 8 million Legion mark depending on whose population you were talking about.

Renegade Legion ground forces are organized in the same manner as TOG Legions, with ten Combat Cohorts, an Arillery Manus and support troops.

..

Organizationally, the Combat Cohorts are permanantly assigned to one of four Manus. The First Manus (or Manus Primus) contains the First Cohort and three other Cohorts. The other three Manus are assigned two Cohorts each. The vehicles fo the Fifth Manus are used to supplement the headquarters elements of the Manus Primus. Support troops are assigned as needed form the support elements.

This organization allows the Combat Cohorts to develop the teamwork neccessary to become a well-integrated fighting force, while at the same time giving the prefect of the Legion the tacticall flexibility to tailor a Manus for a specific combat mission by assigning it support elements.

More on Manuses and organizational stuff. This is the heart of prefect, get used to it!

Another major difference is that the military police unit of a Renegade Legion is at Cenutry rather than Cohort strength. Renegade and Commonwealth units seem to have fewer rear-area security and discipline problems than do the TOGs.

Like I said before, the organziation and mentality of the TOG seems to encourage this kind of behaviour, which is in line with their "Evil Empire - Bad Guys" mentality

The Renegade Ground forces number three hundred thousand Legions, along with a significant number of Auxilia. Auxilia and Fighter Wings are assigned to Renegade Legions inthe same manner as TOG Legions. Of all the Renegade Legions, three are classified as Praetorian.

...

The Commonwealth ARmed Forces (CAF) contain two hundred thousand Legions. Half these Legions are organized and operated on the Renegade Model. The other half represent a wide variety of planetary and racial military organizations and nomenclature. For example, Manus are called Brigades, Auxilia are known as REgiments, Cohorts become Battalions, and Centuries are comapnies.

Again note Auxilia seem to be considered a not-insignificant addition to ground forces, even if less internally organized.

If you're good at math you'll note that the combined RL/CAF forces are some half a milion Legions, to TOG's 8 million. This disparity will be commented on once I get into Legionnaire.

Also, if we play with the numbers, more than 4/5 the Legions in the Commonwealth/RL military are human. What this says about alien numbers, or their representation in the military relative to humans is unknown. There could be a significant logistical and organizational component to it, though. Having to raise/supply/maintain forces from lots of different nonhuman groups could be difficult, even under ideal circumstances. And that's on top of the dual RL/Commonwealth command structure.

Really, this seems to be the biggest disadvantage (aside form size) that the Commonwealth has. They're less corrupt and inefficient compared to TOG, but they are also far more of a logistical pain.

Baurfrin units are organized at Regimental size only. They are self-sufficient at the Battalion level, ,and have a very decentralized command structure. A typical Baufrin Armored Regiment consists of four Medium Armor Battalisons of five line Companies each. The Battalion has an organic Artillery Company, and has organic maintenance, medical, signal, MP and supply Platoons.

Baufrin organization in brief.

A B'ekkal unit is patterened after the typical Naram military organization. These units are highly mobile, lightly armored and equal in size to a Legion. A B'ekkal Legion contains three permanant Brigades, each with four Battalions of the same size and type. B'ekkal Legions are never assigned heavy tanks, though they might have a Kessrith Armor Regiment attached. The Majority
of B'ekkal Battalion's mobile units are ligth armored vehicles, and the remainder are mediums. Supporting units are the same as for a Renegade Legion.

Of all the "aliens" it's likely that the Naram present the least logistical problems to the Commonwealth alongside humans. Of course they also seem to be mostly special forces/light infantry groups.

A KessRith unit follows the organizational structure of the KessRith Empire. These units are heavily armored, powerful, and relatively slow. KessRiths organize in groups of four: Four line Companies to a Battalion, four line Battalions to a Brigade, and four line Brigaes to a Legion. This organization is deivated from rarely. A KessRith Battalion has an organic Artillery Platoon.

Since the Kessrith are technically an "allied" military, for the most part, I imagine they have their own logistical capabilities independent of the Commonwelath and don't impose on the Commonwealth's too much. And its likely they don't count in the Commonwealth "Legion" count either. How many of those there are, no idea, but I'd imagine they'rer roughly on par with the Commonwealth.

Naval orgganization is based on the Battleship Squadron. This force is powerful enough to handle most missions and serves as the basic building block for larger formations. In the navies of the Renegade Legion universe, hundreds of thousands of these Squadrons exist. As with their counterpats on the ground, the vast majority of these are reserve fleets.

A Battleship squadron is usually stationed at a major naval base, and spends most of its time at a docking facility or in a stable orbit. Active duty consists of patrols lasting a month or two. Only rarely are ships reassigned to another Squadron. Smaller ships cary out extensive independent courier duty by order of the Squadron commander.

A month or so of deployment suggests an operational range no more than a few thousand LY in diameter.

Note the mention of "vast majority" of reserves, both for fleet and ground forces. It's open to interpretation, but I would guess that the "billions" of ships is in total numbers, with most in reserves, and "hundreds of thousands of squadrons" represents active forces. Given that a billion warships means something like 100 million squadrons.
I'm not sure how this applies to the ground forces. Given my views on the ground force numbers I would be inclined to say that the 8 million represents only the active forces and the rest are reserves, but that's is quite admittedly wishful thinking. It could just as easily be said that 8 million Legions in total exist, with the majority of those reserves. In fact that is quite probably the more likely interpretation, whatever I may think. But I'll still argue for the other interpretation!

Naval organization is based on the Battleship Squadron, though other Squadron organizations exist. A typical Battleship Squadron is composed of a single battleship acting as the flagship, a single cruiser, two frigates, four destroyers and two patrol class ships, normally escort ships. A Battleship Squadron can operate a wing of fighters and carry from a Cohort to an Auxilia of Marines. Squadrons operate independently or in groups of Two to Five Squadrons.

We know of Carrier groups, so there are prboably Carrier Squadrons. We also know of Cruiser squadrons. Other compositions have been hinted at, and probably do exist (one billion warships allows for alot of configurations)

"Typical" squadron composition has varied quite a bit in earlier sources, but even now still can vary somewhat One variation is that the patrol craft aren't escorts, but corvettes. Earlier, cruiser and frigate/destroyer numbers could vary a bit, as well as having a dedicted communications vessel and a carrier as an attached unit.

Typically a Battleship Group is represented as 2-5 battleship squadrons, but other represetnations (like in Leviathan) are mentioned, but 200,000-500,000 squadrons is a good lower limit.

The basic building block of any Fighter Wing is the Squadron, which consists of six fighters, a small headquarters staff of crew chiefs for the individual fighters, and some adminsitrative presonnel. Four Squadrons make up a flight, which is also assigned administrative and maintenance personnel. Three flights are a Group, and Five Groups make up a Wing, for a total of 360 fighters in a typical Fighter Wing. In addition to normal maintenance and supply personnel, the Wing is assigned other assets. All Groups are assigned a Century of Marines or other security personnel to provide security for the unit's installations. Wing Headquarters is also staffed by a detachment of intelligencec analysts responsible for providing the unit with timely tactical intelligence. If the Wing operates out of a system, rather than a large carrier or Battleship Group, it is normally assigned a Squadron or Group of light patrol class carriers. The Wing commander allocates these ships to specific Squadrons requiring T-space capabilities to accomplish their missions.

Fighter stuff, unlike starship stuff, has remained relatively unchanged from the Interceptor era, save perhaps some of the Carrier related stuff and the ground force/security additions.

Naval Terminology:

BB - battleship

BBV - Battlehsip class carrier

CA- cruiser

CAV - Cruiser class carrier

DD - Destroyer
DDV- Destroyer Class Carrier

FG - Frigate

FGV - Frigate class Carrier

PC - corvette

PCV - Corvetteclass Carrier

PE - Escort

PEV - Escort class Carrier

PG - Gunboat.

Designations. Note the 'carrier' hull designations. I wonder if they would ever design "missile" type designations in the similar way (I believe in the Leviathan thread it was mentioned how broken missile ships can be in-game.)

Tactics are formulated from a careful assessment of grand strategy, available technology, current troop quality, and level of leadership. Of these factors, technology traditionally offers the widest arena for change. Technological advances have shaped the operational tactics used by all combatants in the Renegade Legion universe.

It at least sounds plausible, to me anyhow. It's generally how I've thought of things at least.

ships move into T-space using drives that create thrust by superheating hydrogen and helium atoms to near-relativistic energies in a gravity compression chamber, then releasing them from teh chamber in a powerful burst. This energy is required for ships to move both into and out of T-space.

Ships require a certain level of reaction mass to reach the speeds necceessary to make a T-space jump. While this reaciton mass is not tacitcally significant in the scope of Leviathan or Intercptor, it does affect grand tactics (for example, see Renegade's Honor) Most FTL ships carry enough rection mass to make three sets of accelerations/decelerations to maximum T-space entry speeds. Fighters carry enough reaction mass to travel 4 AUs (twice the distance from EArth's sun to Mars) at maximum thrust.

The interesting part here about the drive description isnt just that it operates as a high temperature drive, but they seem to be able to "pulse" the outputs.. containing them before releasing. That suggests some pretty effective shielding/containment tech (which has implications elsewhere) as well as implying that they might be able to achieve short/brief "high-g' burns by unleashing a short but vaslty more powerful burst built up over a shorter period of time. This could help explain acceleration anomalies.

The reaction mass carrying bit is another one of those peculiarities that has changed ove rtime. In LEgionnaire for example ships only carry enough for two such maximum T-space speed entries, or one "twice max" T-space entry speeds.) The onvels offer even more variation, nevermind the relativistic speeds implied in Interceptor.

The 4 AU travel time for fighters is another peculiar bit. I'll discuss that a bit later.

Distance traveled is a function of entry velocity and time spent in T-space. The minimum speed required to enter T-space is 2.5x10-5C This puts the vessel into T-space at a speed of 1 light year per month spent in T-space. The maximum speed required to enter T-space is 6.25x10-4C, giving a ship a T-space speed of 10,000 LY/month spent in T-space.

Once in T-space, a ship cannot change direction, or make any other maneuver. In fact, a ship must travel in a straight line for at least six minutes before entering T-space in order to avoid making an automatic mis-jump. The longer the ship travels in a straight line before jumping, the lower the possibility of a gross navigational exit error.

because of a variety of minor factors, a ship can never control precisely where it will exit T-space, even if the crew makes no gross navigational errors. Ships always exist somewhere ahead of or behind their intended exit point. The average distance by which a ship will miss its intended exit point, known as the exit error, can be calculatd using the distance traveled in ligth years. A ship exiting T-space after travelling five light years will exit, on average +/- .000002 LY from its intended exit point (~.127 AUs) A ship that travels a distance of 10,000 LY in T-space will miss its intended exit point by .004 LY.

Ships can exit T-space anywhere in a system, but cannot exit at a location occupied by another object.

By now this is pretty self-explanatory, although the inaccuracy bit is interesting.

This friction builds up over successive jumps, and people or objects exposed to T-space for more than 30 days will implode. They must spend an equal amount of time in N-space to disperse this friction, referred to as shimmer heat. (Shimmer heat build-up is also known as tau factor, and tau limit as the maximum amount of time a person can spend in T-space. See Renegade's Honor). The minimum amount of time a ship can spend in T-space is sixty seconds, making the minimum distance a ship will travel 2.3x10-05 LY (~1.465 AUs)

again, fairly self explanatory. Like I've wondered before, I wonder if the shimmer heat release is effectively FTL and detectable. This could be an interesting drawback to long-term travel, in that it makes invading fleets easier to detect at longer ranges.

The same molecular disharmony that causes shimmer heat also causes a ship to propogate a spherical disruption pattern around itself as it goes through T-space. This disruption pattern can be detected by special sensors in N-space, ,called T-Dopplers. If the disruption pattern passes over a T-doppler station, that station has a chance of detecting the ship. The size of the disruption shepre is in direct relation to the speed the ship is travelling in T-space, with faster ships generating larger distrubances (the intensity of the disruption pattern does vary, however. See the T-space Disruption PAttern TAble below) The radius in LY of such a disruption pattern is based on its T-space speed as shown in the table. A ship traveling at one LY/month creates a disruption pattern with a radius of five light years.

well this would seem to suggest yes, there is a strong possibility that shimmer heat would be FTL, if this is related to the phenomena that are detectable by T-doppler. It also suggests it should be possible (in theory) to deliberately trigger some sort of "shimmer heat' disharmony that makes the ship detectable at long ranges (via some sort of tachyonic beam - we know that they can mask/fire matter with tachyons via the Neutron gun.)

Note we've never really had any obvious or direct metnions of such a FTL detection system, but enough circumstantial evidence exists for it to be quite possible - they may not have ever thought about it, or it just may have certain limitations.

all that said I suspect the "disruptions" won't be as detectable or powerful in realspace as in normal space. its quite possible they're limited only to system-scale distances, or suchnot. Alot of it depends on exactly how the 'tau shimmer/friction/disharmony" is created. My theory is that tachyonic matter in T-space interacts with realspace matter in some manner that is disruptive (the 'friction/disharmony') as ships pass through the intervening medium, such as tachyonic particles getting embedded in matter. The 30 day limit is analogous to the way an object can 'burn up' in an atmosphere from friction if it travels too fast or too long.

Once out of T-space, the friction "bleeds off" as tachyons are radiated out into realspace. This may be accompanied by some visible byproduct (some sort of weird annihilation, or maybe some "energy" translated into some other from like visible light, or whatever.) which can then be detected. Once the ship is "cooled off' suffiicently, it can re-enter T-space.

I suspect the "disruptions" created in T-space are related to the ship's interacting with the tachyonic medium and creating "ripples" It could be as well that it is the hull bleeding off some tachyons in T-space which also adds to or creates ripples.

T-Space disruption patterns:

LY/Month Diameter (in LY) Radius (in LY)
1 10 5
10 11 5.5
100 20 10
1000 109 54.5
2000 208 104
3000 307 153.5
4000 406 203
5000 505 252.5
6000 604 302
7000 703 351.5
8000 802 401
9000 901 450.5
10000 1000 500

Range of FTL detection of in-tyspace disruptions. AS I said if Tau shimmer is detectable in realspace, it is unlikely that these would be even close to applying.

The chance of a T-doppler station detecting a T-space disruption passing over it is based on the intensity of the disruption, which in turn is based on the mass of the ship generating the pattern. Small ships (patrol class) are vey difficult to detec,t while a batleship is relatively easy to detect. Depending on the "quality" of the detection, a T-Doppler station can always determine where a detected ship is heading, know with realtive certainty how fast it is going, and guess its mass (a player would needa high detection roll.) If a group of ships is traveling in a fleet, each disruption wave generated by each ship may be detected. While a single corvette might be undetectable, when a thousand travel on the same course, some percentage of the fleet will almost always be detected.

It is possible to guess the destination of a ship detected inT-space by simply projecting along its current flight path. It is impossible to say, of course, exactly where along the projected destination line the ship will exit T-space.

Size of disruption is based on the size/mass of the ship which makes some sense (bigger the ship, mor matter to interact with or displace the tachyonic medium, hence the greater the disruption.)

Military ships have limited endurance factors, similar to endurance factors of comparable 20th century warships. They must be resupplied with consumable stores, such as food, air and spare parts. While the technology to create a ship with a reasonably self-sufficient ecosystem (total air recycling and self-sufficient food production) is available, the same technology would make the warship useless militarily.

Self explanatory. The interesting bit is the ability to make self-sufficient starships, but at a tradeoff of military utility. The interesting corollary to this is - why not create dedicated ships to attach to the logistical train of the fleet? One posisiblity is that they simply cannt provide enough ships to feed/support an entire fleet, but that is up for debate. Another possibility is simply that TOG or RL have no need of such, as they are rarely far away from assistance from a nearby base, which seems more likely.

Fighters have even less endurance. Eequipped with variable gravity fields, entertainment tapes, and alpha-wave sleep-inducing devices, a fighter can support its crew in reasonable comfort for about five dayts, with no degradation in the crew's combat efficiency. In six to tten days, a pilot is forced to depend on his fighter for survival finds combat efficiency impaired, but he still can carry out routine operations. AFter ten days, the support systems become overloaded with waste products, and the pilot will die soon after.

Fighters have a 10 day effective endurance. That seems a bit.. "long". i'm reminded heavily of the old thread here discussing the possibility of Rebel pilots sitting for days on end in their fighters and how difficult that is. Now that doesn't totally apply here, since they clearly DO make some considerations for comfort (including waste removal), but they put a clear limit of up to 5 days on that, and I imagine that there are still further limits when it comes down to staying in a single position (RL cockpits don't look very adjustable, but I could be wrong.) I would also imagine that anything longer than 5 days is undesirable except in unusual situations, because you're exceeding what is likely a built in "safety limit" - they probably expect a pilot to normally operate only within 5-6 days or so before being cycled back (due to impaired combat efficiency and emergency reserve.)

There is some evidence for this. In "Wake of hte Kraken" they mention fighter pilots being less than happy about having to float about in a fighter for less than a day with only life support.

To do the calc I'll cover 1 day, 5 days and 10 days.

Earlier was mentioned a 4 AU maximum operational range at maximum thrust. Assuming 4 au over 10 days... (2 au in 5 days to accelerate up, and to accelerate down) doesn't really require much acceleration.. not even quite a steady gee of acceleration. If this were the case, then either they spend alot less time accelerating and spend most of their time at velocity (which sort of goes against the 4 Au at maximum thrust - not that one gee is even close to max thrust.) Max velocity is like .005 c

Assuming 4 au over 5 days (2 aU in 2.5 days for acceleration and slowdown) is around 4 gees. That works better, especially since that's within the magnitude for heavy fighters. Velocity is ~ .011c

(2 au covered in 12 hours) is.. interesting. we can get tens of gees (upwards of 50 gees) and velocity is some .04c So yeah.

The bulk of the evidence suggests ~5 day timeframe, but there is some other stuff that could fudge the calcs upwards (it assumes nothing other than straight line travel.) but it fits the evidence better than the other two, although its technically possible for tens of gees dependign on interpretation as I've oulined before.

The real 'interesting' bit is the high realspace speeds, given that thousands of km/s is typically not supported by the game rules.

Ships try to avoid letting their disruption pattern pass over T-doppler stations, or at least keep these incidences to an aboslutel minimum, to reduce the ship's chances of being detected. If a ship cannot avoid a T-doppler station, it will attempt to minimize the amount of warning the station can give the ship's enemy.

For obvious reasons.

A ship may choose to make the trip in a series of jumps, which will minimize the disruption pattern. This tactic results in a slower trip, but offers fewer opportunities for detection., which will minimize the disruption pattern. This tactic results in a slwoer trip, but offers fewer opportunities for detection.

..

While only one station has a chance to detect the ship, rather than six, teh same trip takes nineteen months, beacuse the ship must stop for thirty days after each jump of 10 LYs. This travel time exceeds the inherent endurance levels of most ships, which could only make this advance by resupplying along the way.

A bit more on stealth tactics and the tradeoff betwene speed and detectabiliy. The endurance limits are also interesting

Most attackers move toward their objectives in a series of jumps of varying length, avoiding all T-Doppler stations between their base and their target. They drop out of T-space into N-space just before their disruption pattern can be detected by the T-Doppler station nearest their target, then increase to a very high FTL entry speed, creating a disruption pattern greater than the distance to the target. The attackign ship can be upon its enemy almost without warning, and this technique creates a minimum of shimmer heat build-up. If a ship needs to retreat, it will have the flexibility to do so.

IF a ship is sufficiently small, it might risk detection in order ot reach a location quickly. Corvettes and other patroll class ships often risk detection by intervening T-Doppler stations, b ecause it is unlikely that such small ships will be picked up on T-doppler sensors. A battleship, on the other hand, will keep its disruption pattern as small as possible, because it is very liekly that even a single ship of that size will be detected.

"accepted' modern tactics. The implicit assumption is that all ships have the same performance envelope in T-space, but practical stealth considerations re what slow bigger ships down.

T-Doppler stations are commonly deployed defensively inside a system, and in deep space as a picket line along a border. most deep space T-doppler stations are automated, though manned stations are not uncommon. All T-Doppler stations have P-comm links to a system's defense headquarters or the theater headquarters.

Use of automation for orbital facilities. So they do have automated technology. And like in many casees they use p-comms in clever ways.

Small escort-class ships specially modified to carry T-doppler sensors are used as mobile platforms and listenign posts, and are affectionately known as "snoopers". These ships supplement T-doppler networks, or establish positons close to enemy naval bases in order to monitor enemy fleet movements. These ships are also equipped to monitor N-space flight within an enemy system and gather intelligence data by monitoring in-system communication. Finally they can serve as a control station and supply base for intelligencee agents operating on a planet, allowing agents to use a P-comm transmitter the size of a cigarette pack instead of one the size of a small truck. A squadron fo fighters is often attached to these mobile stations as protection against enemy attack. (A snooper can usually detect a large ship closing in on it in time to jump inot T-space, but it might not pick up a squadron of fighters until too late.)

Moble patrol-scale FTL detection platforms.. glorified elint ships. Note the miniaturized p-comm, showing how sophisticated and well developed technology it is.

Ships can be detected by the bursts of light they create as they exit T-space. The bigger the ship, the more intense the burst of light. A ship can conceal its exit from space by jumping to an insystem point which places an object, like the system's sun or a planet, between the ship and the observing station, thus masking its exit brust. If a sensor is scanning the exit area, the probability of a ship being identified as it exits T-space is based on the mass of the ship.

Defense forces can easily determine all the blind zones of each sensor, which can be covered by the scanning arcs of other sensors. The simplest method of achieving full coverage is by placing a sensor high above and below a system's orbital plane.

Once in N-space, a ship can be detected in a manner very similar to present-day radar detection. The probability of detection is a function of distance to the target, quality of the set, size of the ship to be detected, and the amount of "noise" a ship is making in the form of active electronic emissions and thrusting. A small or shut-down ship has a lower chance of being detected at any given range than a large ship that is applying braking thrust and actively scanning for the defenses of a system.

This implies the 'flashes" of T-space exit are effectively FTL. The interesting bit is the "once in N-space' detection simialr to "radar"d etection. It suggests they may not use radar ( or at least just radar - ther eis nothing wrong with radar) but they don't specify what it is. I'd imagine lidar/ladar but its not specific. One interesting possibility is that they're detecting FTL "shimmer" from an emerging ship like I speculated above, but this isn't obvious or specifically stated. in any case I would still imagine radar/lidar and other detection forms are at least in use.

Also the typical sci fi "shut down emissions and be harder to detect" which accompanies the inevitable "there's no stealth in space' argument. i'll just say that either way, they can somehow mask themselves from easy detection, wehther it works as described or they have exotic magitech to help mask them.

As mentioned above, in order to give a system as little warning as possible, ,a ship will attempt to make its final jump into a system at maximum speed. Arriving insystem at maximum speed means that the ship must travel a minimum distance of 5 LY in its final jump, given an average exit error of +/- 1 AU. Also, given that a ship can only make an effective attack by reaching its objective at a speed lower than its exit speed, it would need to apply braking thrust for a certian period of time, which will almost certainly reveal its presence, giving the defenders an opportunity to mass local forces against it.

Finally, if a battleship arrives insystem at maximum speed, it will be unable to change its course enough to allow the commander to fly a deceptive course to his objective. A slower entry speed gives the commander more grand and operational tactical flexibility at any level of thrust.

Once in N-space, ships manuver by applying thrust to change course and velocity.

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The more trhust that can be applied over any given period of time, the greater the magnitude of course changes available.

More on the tactical options of starship combat, the limitations, and suchnot.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2011-07-28 12:02am

I just decided to throw in all the rest of the Prefect operational briefing to wrap it up. Enjoy!

Attacking forces will attempt to keep as many targets as possible in their manuver sphere for as long as possible. This tactic requires the attacker to have enough thrust to change his vector suddenly. The attacker forces the defender to provide protection to multiple locations, reducing the actual number of enemy forces the attacker must engage. However, once a target has been mathematically eliminated as a possible objective, the system commander can release the assets defending that target to reinforce other possible targets, if they can reach those targets in time.

some of the major variables of combat. Numerical superiority seems to be a big factor, despite the variable kinds of vessels that exists. This might suggest, as tonnage suggests, that the capabilities of individual vessels is not significant from class to class.

Deep space interception of an incomng ship favors the side with the most thrust. If a ship flies a straight path, then interception with almost any type of ship is mathematically possible. If the ship is able to manuver effectively at high velocity, because it has a high thrust, then an attempted interception becomes much more difficult, if not impossible. The only way to guarantee an interception is to have the attacking force's manuver sphere enclose the manvuer sphere of the other ship, as shown below.

If the manuver sphere of the intercepting ship does not enclose the manuver sphere of the other ship, an interception may still occur if the target ship is unaware of the location, speed, and heading of the intercepting ship, or if the target ship is willing to be intercepted.

(A successful interception does not automatically mean that the ships will engage in a dogfight-type battle. It is possible for the ships to be traveling so fast relative to one another at the point of interception that they only g toff one shot before they pass out of effective range.)

More on tactics. The big implication here is that main engine thrust also plays a significant role on manuverability. Note how velocity and thrust influence combat styles.

Recon missions use stealth, speed, and manuverability to the maximum abilities of the ship and crew. A typical recon force consists of a mother ship (normally no larger than a patrol class ship) carrying small recon drones or fighters. The mother ship exits T-space at high speed, attempting to mask its exit flash using the methods described above. The mother ship's entry into N-space is designed to send the ship into a fast, hyperbolic orbit around the system's sun. In order to keep its risk of detecton to a minimum, the mother ship doe snot apply any thrust, or use any active intelligence gathering methods. If detected, the mother ship will use thrust to modify its course enough to keep its manuver sphere out of the manuver sphere of any possible intercepting ships. The longer the mother ship remains undetected, the lower the possibility that a successful interception can be launched.

At some point in its mission, the mother ship will launch one or more fighters (or drones) to survey points of interest not within range of its passive intelligence-gathering devicese. Because a fighter is much harder to detect than even the small mother ship, it can use thrust ot modify its orbit through a system and still have a low chance of detection. IT can also use active intelligence gathering methods if the situation warrants such exposure. Detecition of the fighter is not as damaging tto the mission as the detection of th emother ship because the fighter's high thrust gives it a very large manuver sphere. The mother ship recovers the fighters outside the system, and the team jumps for home.

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Stopping a recon mission requires a great deal of effort, skill an dluck on the part of the system's defense forces. If the defenders receive a T-doppler warning early enough, they can saturate possible exit ares with fighters equipped with flash scanners. But because the recon ship will undoubtably have made its final jump at an extremely high speed, any warning time the defenders receive will be measured in minutes. It is unlikely that a system could scramble fighters to the exit area in time.

Once a recon mission is detected, the defenders will probably launch an interception attempt using high-thrust fighters. Ships with a thrust lower than the intruder's ships cannot force an interception, because a slower ship's manuver sp[here is always smaller htan that of a faster ship. Thus, capital ships are usesless for deep space interception, unless they are lying directly along the flight path of the intruder and are completely shut down, and thus undetected.

...

Defending ships at rest with a thrust capability roughly equal to that of the incoming ship can only intercept if they lie between the intruder and its target. and even then, they would only get off one shot before the enemy ship streaked past. Most recon ships ae well-enough armored and shielded to absrob multiple attacks from ships of similar size.

Only very fast ships, such as fighters, have a chance to successfuly intercept a recon mission. Other ships can only position themselves so that, in order to avoid interception, the intruding ships must pass well outside of effective sensor range when passing their objective.

recon missions in detail. The one recurring theme we get to is how much planning and mathematics seems to go into plotting courses and such. This, along with the implied limits on reaction mass, tend to limit the level of "magic/absurdity" in the drive system compared ot others (EG STar Wars or Trek.) Then again these are small ships as well, whicha re diffrent than bigger ones.

Raiding tactics vary, but all use the same basic principles of stealth, manuverability, and speed as does a recon mission. A mother ship covertly enters a system, launchers smaller ships that attack a target, and then recovers the raiders. UIsually the mother ship is not directly involved in the attack, and attempts to avoid detection altogther, because damage to its FTL drive would mean the loss of the entire raiding force.

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The raiding force must possess sufficient firepower to destroy a target. This is problematical for two reasons. If the force does not slow down, it will only get one pass at the target. If the force is large enough to destroy the target in one pass, it is large enough to be detected early in the mission, increasing the likelihood of a successful interception. Any interception is likely to succeed in this situation because the early warning gives defenders a chance to adjust their forces early, and because, in fighters, heavy firepower is almost always offset by low thrust.

Most raiders slow down enough to allow multiple passes against the target. But by slowing down near the target, they invite interception by high-thrust enemy ships.

...

In most caes, a raid commander will decide on an optimal attack force of fighters and corvettes, because this force mix gives the defender a minimal amount of advance warning and the attacker a reasonable level fo firepower.

raiding missions. Implicit in this is that carriers (and thus likely carrier squadrons/carrier groups) are the desired sort of force. Squadrons or even individual vessels seem more likely than groups, given the tradeoff between size and detectability discussed above.

In fact, using a large cpatial ship [for raiding] offers several advantages. The capital ship will almost always have enough firepower to destroy its target in a single pass, and so the force no longe rneeds to slow down. This, in turn, reduces the likelihood of a sucessful enemy interception in deep space. The capital ship also has a grerater survivability rate than a group of fighters, thus lowering casualty levels in the attacking force.

Having a battleship pop out of T-space close to the objective at high speed, vaporize its target as it goes streaking past, and then re-enter T-space before the defenders can react seems to be an excellent tactic. But several factors negate the advantages of this raiding tactic.

The first problem is that a capital ship has low endurance. In order to reduce the risk of alerting defense forces, a battleship must travel at a minimum T-space speed. With an effective T-space speed of only 5 or 10 LY/month, and only a few months of stores aboard, a capital ship cannot be used to penetrate very far into enemy held space without a s upply ship escort.

Using warships for raiding. Note the definition of "short" rendurances. This implies that most ships probably can only cover a few tens of thousands of light years at most before needing resupply. In practical terms, the actual range would be halved because of the 'tau shimmer' limits.

The second problem is that, in order to ensure an effective high-speed attack against a target, the capital ship must attempt ot exit T-space at a distance greater than its exit error. Thus, if a ship wishes to give a system the least amount of warning of its arrival by making its final jump at maximum speed, it will have to jump to an exit point at least .127 AUs from its target. AT exit speed, the ship would travel that distance in about 24 hours in N-space. IF the actual exit point is greater than .147 AUs from the target, a second minimum-speed jump can be made to reach the target, but it would take a battleship with a thrust of 2Gs six hours to slow down to minimum entry speed. A battleship is forcecd to provide at least six to twenty-four hours notice of its arrival, if it is not detected earlier by the T-doppler pickets.

Seven hours is sufficient time for a commander to gather all his insystem forcese against a raider. TRwenty four hours warning time will allow the theater commander sufficient time to reinforcec the system.

Again, whatever you think about the game system, they do at least make a strong effort to keep it internally consistent and the guys do their math

The majority of inhabited systems, however, present a target-rich enviroment to raiders. At any reasonable level of colonization, the resources of an inhabited system will be exploited to the maximum extent in order to avoid the extensive interstellar import of necessities. Economic targets, such as asteroid/planetoid mining, metal processing, and solar energy collection stations will exist throughout the system. To protect these assets, a commander must detect the incoming raid as early as possible.

T-doppler and N-space sensor stations are scattered throughout the system to provide a commander with advance warning of an attack. To protect these military installations, the commander needs to employ fighting forces, which in turn require the deployment of a logistical network throughout the sysm,e. P Comm relay stations, maintenance facilities, emergency rescue services and fighter rearming/refueling stations must be established and deployed in such a manner that the defending commander can mount a reasonable military force to cover attacks against any point in the system.

If detected, a raiding force will attempt to force defenders to commit their assets to protect one target, then change direction abruptly to hit another target. This ploy can be accomplished in many ways. One is to send a force into the system a few hours before the actual attack force to make a feint at one target. This force will break off as soon as other defense units are pulled out of position.

A second method is to launch largge Wing- or Group-size fighter raiding forces, each with multiple objectives. The entire Wing arrives in the system simultaneously, and so can overload a system's defenses. This tactic again creates a high probability of detection while in T-space, thus allowing defenders to reinforce the system.

More tactics stuff, including feinting. The major thing in this quote, however, is the implied level of development and industrialization of the solar system, and the kinds of facilities they have. It also implies that a great many individual system is not only densely inhabited, but also quite heavily defended.

Early warning and identification of the attacker's objective is the key to defending any system. Early warning is a tremendous force multiplier. fF an attack is detected early enough, reserve forces from nearby systems can be deployed to augment local forces. Even three or four hours is sufficient warning to move insystem FTL ships into positions, using microjumps, that will allow them to launch fighters to intercept attackers.

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For the most part, raids are conducted by fighters carried by patrol class ships. As previously stated, this force mix is preferred beacuse the defending forces normally cannot pick up the incoming raid until it is only a few hours away from its objective. The high-thrust capabilities of a fighter allow it to keep multiple targets in its manuver sphere, thus tying down local forces and preventing htem from massing against the raiders.

For much the very same reason, defense forces rely primarily on fighters. No system has enough large ships to station one or more at every possibel target, even those in planetary orbit. Fighters can patrol wide expanses of space quickly and easily. At planetary distancecs (for example, the Earth to the moon), fighters can reposition themselves against an intruder so quickly that their effective zone of contorl is vastly greater than that of a capital ship. Coupled with small FTL carriers, fighters can provide effective insystem forces capable of covering multiple targets that no one capital ship could cover.

Importance of small craft to raiding and defense, and the importance of detection. Assuming ~ 10 LY between systems, the average FTL speed is 20-30 thousand c, although it disregards time to accelerate and decelerate from lightspeed - simply accelerating up to a fairly high speed owuld take close to an hour, nevermind slowdown.

This also suggests that some small ships (destroyers and frigates and escorts, at least) can respond quickly to attack.

In mobile defense, the system commander deploys Squadrons of fighters, supported by FTL motherships, throughout a system. These forces have high thrust for deep space interception attempts, and can be massed quickly against an intruder. Using this tactic, a system can easily be defended against raiders with only a small expenditure of naval assets. But by threatening multiple targets, an attacker can force a defender to choose only one or two tagets to dfend, leaving the others open to attack.,

Rather than relying on the mobility of the system defense forces, a system commander can garrison each potential target with sufficient forces to drive off a raid. This point-defense tactic can be a more cost-effective means of defense than the mobile tactic if the system has only a few targets to defend. The fighters do not require FTL motherships and can be run with lower thrust (and thus heavier armament.) This tactic again allows the attacker to amss against one target and prevent the defender from doing likewise to coutnerattack. All targets must be equally well defended. If a multitude of targets exists in a system, an inordinate expenditure of resources is required to defend them.

Hardening important installations also proves effective against raiding, and can supplement point-defense tactics, but it is expensive, and in some cases technologically difficult to achieve, if not impossible.

Like with ground combat, space combat seems to place an emphasis on mobility warfare.

A typical deployment of naval forces and detection equipment for a relatively minor system with one inhabited planet under control of the Commonwealth appears below. The other planets and asteroids are being commercially exploited in some manner. The system's T-doppler sensor station is in orbit around the habited planet, along with a naval station capable of supporting the resupply and minor maintenance needs of a Battleship Squadron, and a fighter station capable of supporting and maintaining a Fighter Wing.

The Naval forcecs in the system conssits of a Wing of fighters, which is sixty Squadrons. The Wing has sufficient FTL carriers to simultaneously lift all teh Squadrons, with each covertte capable of carrying one fighter squadron. A force consisting of two medium-sized destroyers is also stationed in the system.

The planet is defended by one Infantry Legion, an Armor Auxilia, and a number of ground defense installations.

In addition to insystem forcees, the system commander can call on a theater reserve force of a Battleship Squadron. Once released by the theater commander, this Batteship Squadorn can arrive insystem within 24 hours.

If we knew how large a "theatre" was we might estimate an average response speed. Minor planets have at least a couple warships each, it would seem, with major systems having larger assets. I'd assume that most "common" forces are typically smaller and less powerful than a battleship squadron, however - a carrier or cruiser/frigate squadron, for example.

On the other hand, in terms of system defense you don't really need huge vessels, since resupply is easy and you can use powerful weapons like missiles (especially in frigates.)

This also is only for the Commonwealth. I imagine the TOG, having more warships, might have better defended systems. Whether these are or are not part of the billion or so/hundreds of thousands of battleships squadrons/groups mentioned elsewhere is up for debate, as we know there are also third/fourth tier defense groups that exist.

Note the existence of Armor auxilia. I assume that Infantry and GArrison auxilia may exist as well (thus providing a substantial number of units existing outside the standard "Legiion" frameworks.)

The implied "one infantry legion per minor system" is also intresting if applied to Tog, in the same way that Garrison legions can be (per certain population numbers) - we can easily get to millions, if not billions of potential "Legions" in that regard. Possibly, they aren't officially "Legions" but more appropriately auxilia that could be formed into Legions should it be necessary.

The system commander has deployed N-space sensors at each of the worlds in the system. He as also established orbital detection stations to provide 100% coeverage of the system. Flight size fighter bases are also scattered throughout the system, each of which can house twenty-four fighters and four corvettes. The station carries enough supplies and spare parts to allow one or two months of continuous war-tempo operation, These bases also have sufficient maintenance facilities to repair most battle damage, though their supply of parts is limited.

Each fighter station supports four FTL corvettes and a Flight of fighters. The Corvettes are primarily used to move the Squadron into a patrol area, or into position to intercept an intruder.

Nine fighter flights are stationed at the main fighter station in orbit around the habited planet, along with the required FTL corvettes. The remaining Fighter Flights are stationed one each on the Fighter bases scattered throughout the system. EAch base also supports four FTL corvettes. The two destroyters are stationed at the naval base.

Again, in-system defenses, including detection assets, are significant.

The outlying fighters are used primarily for point defense of the local military and commercial facilities, and to make deep space interceptions of any hostile force. The fighters in orbit around the habited planet provide a point defense force for the planet, and can reinforce any of the outlying posts.

The system commander uses the N-space sensor statisons as a picket line for early warning of incoming ships. In most cases, a small patrol class ship approaching a detection station will be picked up.001 AUs away, even if the ship is shut down (approximately an hour away from the station.) A shut down fighter can escape deteciton until ti closes to .0001 AUs (approximately half an hour out, if speed is 75 Gs and the fighter wants to slow down to a reasonable manuver speed at the target.) Larger ships will be detected at greater ranges. Use of thrusters or active scanning systems by the attacking ship greatly increases the range of a detection station.

Detection distances and travle times (assuming 'run silent') - I'll gloss over the whole stealth in space argument (we dont know how they stay stealthed) if there is a linear scaling, the difference between patrol ships and fighters suggests destroyers might be detected .1 AU away, frigates 1 AU away, and cruisers/battleships over 10 AU away (which at this point is getting inot the billions of kilometers.

Travel speed (probably relative, rather than absolute) for a Corvette at .001 AU over an hour is 41 km/s roughly, and 8 km/s or so for fighters. Acceleration is probably somewhat trivial over those times, easily within the single digit gee range.

If an intruder can be dealt with by a single Fighter squadron, then a squadron from an outlying station will attempt to intercept it, usually by using a corvette to carry the Squadron to an interception launch point. This intercepting Squadron will not launch from any base with an assigned point defense mission within the intruder's manuver sphere. If the intruding force is too large to be handled by a Squadron, the system commander can asign additional assets to intercept it. The system commander must be cautious about committing his forces against an attacker, as over-commitment against one inttruder coudl lay the systme open to an attack from an as-yet-undetected force.

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TOG forces prefer to sortie their fighters out to meet the incoming threat, fire a salvo of missiles, then race back to re-arm and engage any surviving ships close ot the target. While this tactic can be effective, the TOG force may not make it back to the objective area in time to engage the surviving enemy. Renegade and Commonwealth doctrine calls for the point-defens forces to engage close to their attacker's objective.

Defensive strateigies. Self explanatory.

During the pre-attack phase, the invading force makes a detailed recon of the system, and attacks system defense installations and forces at the discretion of the commander. Surpsie is essential during this phase. If the T-doppler coverage for one system was completely destroyed and no other system was similarily attacked, the local theater commander might consider moving part or all of his theater reserve to that system. Thus, deception is also of primary importance during this phase.

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It is difficult to hide the movement of such a [invasion] force, thoguh pre-attack activities should create enough of a diversion that the defending commander might have only one or two days notice before the entire fleet enters orbit around the planet.

The defenses of the system should be thoroughly reconned before the attack. An advance force arriving a short time ahead of the main force will take out the system's N-space sensors, as well as secure or destroy any other outlying facilities. This will not completely blind the defenders, but it will force them to rely on sensors near the habited planet or use their combat ships for patrol duties. In either case, this tactic will limit the defender's ability to react to manuvers by the invasion fleet, especially the smaller elements.

If the mission includes capturing a space facility intact, Marine forces will accompany the advance force. Outlying ground facilities may be captured by marines or legionnaires, depending on the situation.

Large scale attacks, more feints as part of combat strategy, and response times at such a scale.

Also note the use of Marines in ground attack roles.

If the invading force makes a high-speed jump into the system and is accompanied by battleships, it will appear about six hours out from the planet.

Depending on how high one defines speed this could be as little as half a light second (7.5 km/s exit velocity to 4 million km (187.5 km/s supposed "max" velocity.)

In most cases, the defenders will have sufficient time to move forces to the system before the invasion fleet actually arrives. It is almost impossible to hide the movement of a battleship in T-space or N-space, and an invasion force requires battleships in order to seize and hold a planet. The size of the defending fleet depends on the advance warning the theater commander received, the location of his reserves, and threats against other systems in the theater.

If the defender elects to oppose the invading fleet's landing with his fleet, the standard method is to intercept the invader near the planet under any available covering fire from planet and orbital defense systems. In most cases the attacker will only skirmish beyond the effective range of ground-based defenses.

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The Fleet in being strategy attempts to create enough doubt about the defending fleet's actual capabilities that the invading fleet holds back from fully intervening in the ground battle.

Battleships have huge strategic importance, not simply for their size and firepower, but their value in invasions. Those traits however make them virtulaly impossible to hid in T-space or in realspace, which lends credibility to the idea that battleships can be detected at billions (or tens of billions) of kilometres.

The interetsing thing here is implied that ground based defenses might have considerable range - quite probably moreso than they do in ship to ship combat - thousands or tens of thousands of kilometres for bombardment (or for ground based guns shooting up.)

The invasion fleet will be accompanied by numerous supply and maintenance ships, along with other logistical support units. Unless the invader controls the economic assets of the planet, it must protect its replenishment fleet, in order to remain in the system for any length of time.

The defender can force the enemy fleet to use most of its assets to protect its logistic elements by withdrawing to secret bases within the system and launching raids against the invader's support elements. Fighters locate and track the enemy supply ships, then destroyers micro-jump into the midst of the supply train, ravage it, and get out again, without revealing the location of their own bases. A fleet can also operate form nearby uninhabitable systems, keeping in contact with the insystem forces by P-Comm, again launching raids against the logistical elements of the invader's fleet.

Again starships seem to have (By RL standards) relatively short endurnaces, hence the importance of a significant logistical system and transport fleet to support it. Which is, of course, a vulnerability as the logistics raiding tactics indicate.

The invaders generally choose Landing zones (LZ) protected only by smaller planetary defense installations, described in Interceptor. Large defense installations (Battleships on the ground) are avoided, and left to be cleared by the ground troops.

Preliminary bombardment, designed to knock out local defense installations covering the landing zone, can be carried out from orbit, because these assets are fixed. Mobile defense batteries can only be knocked out if they are spotted by ground observers.

some gorund based defense stations are comparable (offensively and defensively, it would seem) to battleships, whilst smaller ones are equivalent to smaller warships. The battleship scale ones are completely invulnerable to (conventional) attack, which is interesting considering that ground warfare consists of potential nuclear-grade firepower.

Even more frightening, considering the size of a planet and how well armed a battleship is, this means there are probably multiple, if not MANY such stations on a planet. If that weren't enough we know that some orbital stations can also match (if not exceed) battleships in offense and defense as well, which really means that if any enemy gets into range a planet can unleash SCARY huge amounts of firepower. This is of course counterbalanced by the fact that planets and defence stations (ground and orbital) are essentially immobile and can probably be attacked from outside the effective range, however, although the sheer number of guns implied probably makes this less of a vulnerability than it might appear.

Also note the "mobile defense batteries", although how they are mobile and what scale they are (and what kind of armament they carry) is completely unspecified. Makes some sense though to have them, as that offsets the vulnerability of otherwise static targets. My guess would be missiles and light guns (anti fighter or poitn defense.)

The first landing wave is launched using small assault boats carrying light grav vehicles. These forces are escorted by fighters and led by a destroyer. The destroyer leads the assault forces to within one kilometer of the surface, knocking out any fixed installations that survived the initial bombardment. At one kilometer the grav vehicles are ejected, and the boats return to the relative safety of space. The tanks decelerate and move toward their objectives.

After the first wave has secured the landign zone, the second and third waves are landed directly on the surface of the planet, rather than beign dropped from robit.

Grav vehicle deployment. Note the use of destroyers in atmospheric roles to support.

The smallest installations [defense] are simply turrets mounting fighter type weapons and missile launchers. The large installations are effectively capital ships without the drives, consisting of laser bays, masive missile batteries, and a host of small turreted point-defense towers. Small defensive installations are effective against fighters, corvettes, and incoming Thor javelins or missiles, as well as ground vehicles. LArge installations equipped with bay-type weapons can damage a capital ship, but are too unwieldy to engage ground targets.

The defense stations outlined, again. Once more, smaller ones are fighter/patrol craft level, and bigger ones are warship grade. Interesting that the smallest installations are expected to be capable of taking out Thor Javelins or missiles - as the strong implication will be at least one, if not both, will be traveling at considerable velocity (hyper-velocity/reentry speeds, probably) when they get into range of point defense guns - we're talking seconds at most to locate, track and fire.

The fleet must first seal off the planet from outside support. This requires that a significant portion of the fleet be stationed near the planet as a mobile reserve. Next, the fleet must ensure that its own logistic train is protected from raiders, and that ground forcese receive supplies in a timely manner. Finally, the fleet must be arrayed in such a manner that it can quickly form up to defeat a defending relief fleet.

These considerations greatly reduce the number of fleet assets that can be assigned to directly support the ground action. at best, a Legion commander can expect to have only a single battleship or a Squadron of destroyers availabe for ground support.

Naval blockade conditions, as well as probable naval assets available to ground units. Note the mention of destroyer squadrons. This probably means frigate squadrons exist too.

Bay lasers can fire accuratly through the atmosphere. Fixed targets whose positions are known through orbital observation (though small installations can be camouflaged to a certain extent) or espionage make easy targets. Mobile targets require a surface observer to designate the area with a special laser and call in the fire mission.

Naval fire controll (NFC) teams will be assigned to the combat elements of the legions (approximately ten, or one for each Cohort) Fire control teams can call in fire form the orbital gorund supporrt group within a minute. Fire reqeusts from non-NFC units require substantially more time to process. While a time delay is not as critical against a fixed target, it does make mobile targets almost invulnerable to non-NFC-directed bombardments.

Orbital bombardment, static vs mobile defense, and fire control units.

Note that the existence of ground based shielding on static targets (and the general fact starships will not want to level planets to take out defenses) is a non-trivial advnatage for static bases despite their immobility. As noted before, large installations (Especially the battleship-scale ones) can effectively be nigh-invulnerable to orbital attack.

Also it does seem likely there are mobile orbital batteries, although again what kind exist isnt known.

Grav vehicles operate by manipulating the local gravity field. A planetary body must have a minimum gravity of .05 Earth normal for a grav drive to function. Maximum altitude is 15 kilometers above the main surface of an Earth type planet, but the maximum altitude varies according to the local gravity field. For example, the maximum operating altitude on Mars is 5.7 kilometers, and the moon has a maximum operating altitude of 2.5 kilometers. Some terrain features on low-gravity worlds cannot be surmountd by grav-drive equipped vehciles; in other words, grav operations on low G worlds are more heavily influenced by the terrain than are operations on Earth-normal planets.

Grav drives are different from the anti-grav drives used by fighters and ships to maneuver in the atmosphere. Anti grav drives simply negate gravity, and require some form of thrust jet, fan, propellar and so on to impart lateral movements. This type of propulsion is extremely vulenrable to damage, making the anti-grav drive vehicles significantly less survivable in cobmat than grav-drive vehicles.

Grav vehicles accelerate and decelerate in much the same way as 20th Century aircraft, in that the turning radius is a function of airspeed. The turning radius of a grav vehicle is always much larger than that of a ground vehicle.

Grav vehicles advantages and disadvantages. The primary notable details are how the gravity of a world affects performance heavily, and the fact the Marshman drive is different from mere AG (its more a reactionless drive than just a repulsor.) The implication here is that a variety of Anti-gravity vehicles may exist alongside Marshman grav vehicles - they probably fill in the helicopter/gunship role, if anything (not quite a fighter but not quite a grav tank either.)

note as well the drawbacks of grav tanks, mainly in the turning radius and acceleration issues.

Grav vehicles operating at tree-toip flight (TTF) and below (20 meters or less) can attain a maximum safe speed of 240 kph over clear ground. Movement through built up areas, trees and rubble is slower, but can easily reach 96 kph. Higher altitudes allow safe speeds of up to 900 kph.

Grav vehicles supplement the dirvers' reactions with terrain avoidance sensor systems, which allow the grav vehicle to operate at high speeds even through woods or other broken terrain.

Variability in grav tank speeds and altitudes. although relatively slow compared to their other performance, 96 kph moving through "built up" areas is damn impressive - far better than a M1 Abrams.

Grav tank defensive equipment (shields and armor) is the same as that found on a fighter. Grav tank offensive equipment is also the same as that found on fighters, except that the weapons are designed to work best in terrain-hugging combat. In grav-tank ground combt, 95 percent of all direct enemy sightings occur at ranges of 4 kilometers or less, and so weapons are optimized to engage targets at this range. Because engagement ranges are so short, tanks have the advantage of using painting lasers to penetrate shields and Gauss cannons to penetrate armor.

Most grav tank weapons except for lasers, use hyper-velocity kinetic energy to penetrate armor. Lasers must first penetrate a tank's shields in order to damage armor. Shields can be negated by painting lasers which, once locked on, can read the flicker rate of the shield and synchronize firing to bypass the energy field. Sheer distance in space and lag time, makes these shields useless on ships.

Fighters vs Tanks outlined in more detail. Frankly this does a bette rjob of trying to reconcile Interceptor and Centurion than previous tanks do. It suggests that it is not impossible for tanks to engage at greater ranges, just like fighters do, but it would require some changes to be made - the nature of such changes we don't know, or exactly how/why they are optimized for close range. The corollary of all this is that fighters and tanks are not optimized for fighting each other either, so having the greater rnage does not automatically give a fighter an edge.

Also note the explicit mention of "hyper velocity" KE weapons (mass drivers and Gauss cannons.) This means Gauss cannons must be at least 2-3 km/s - probably at least 3 km/s, given that 2 km/s is close ot the current performance benchmark. This is also probably conservative for KE rounds, as it would assume non-sabot tank rounds are as hyper-velocity as the saboted ones (meaning that the sub calibre munitions are probably quite a bit faster.. 1.5-2x faster if we go by modern tank designs as a sample.) Mass drivers probably go in the tens if not hundreds of km/s range, given the greatly reduced mass and the fact in space they have a range of hundreds of km.

Lastly, the excuse again given for why painting lasers don't work in space combat is "distance and lag time." Which can be true in certain combat styles (high speed passes and such), but it wouldnt neccesarily be in others - considering that typical engagement ranges are hundreds of km, and top range is supposed to be a mere 1500 km. a tens of km or less "short/point blank" range is not inconceivable, and it should be quite possible to "paint" the target at that range.

This goes for both fightrs and capital ships both.

An interesting and curious implication for Gauss vs painting lasers is that painting lasers can be used to allow physical rounds to bypass shields as well as lasers. Indeed, no mention of Gauss weapons ignoring shields - they're specifically mentioned as anti-armour, which would run contrary to the implications in Centurion. Different kinds/modes or types of flicker shield, perhaps?

Because of ground clutter, or built-up areas, a fighter can only engage a grav vehicle that is operating close ot the ground (at tree top or normal flight) using strafing or dive-bombing attacks. Fighters can attack grav vehicles operating at a higher altitude (low altitude flight) in the same manner as normal airborne targets.

A fighter will always defeat a grav tank flying at LAF, because the fighter need never close to within the 4 kilometer effective range of the tank's guns. A grav tank will almost always defeat a fighter of equal weight at TTF or NF, a fact which explains the development of specialized tanks, rather than grav-equipped fighters.

Anti-air vehicles are specialized tanks with fire contorl systems capable of firing missiles into space with the same restrictions as small defense installations.. AA vehicles can fire only three or four missiles in each salvo.

Grav vehicles are expensive and difficult to build and maintain, much as were 20th century helicopters. Ground vehicles are cheaper to build and easier to maintain, but unlike grav vehicles, ground combat vehicles cannot exceed 100 tons or go faster than 86 kph cross-country, and require a power plant that prevents them mounting shields.

More fighter vs ground combat. The implication seems to be range is the deciding factor in whether a tank or fighter wins, and that the two are roughly equal. Other sources have hinted that grav tanks have an edge in armor and shielding, but this must not be a dramatically significant one.

Grav Vehicles do have many similarities to helicopters, it is true, although they are quite superior in durability, which is a major difference. This owuld support the idea that other grav vehicles fill in a "helicopter-like" role, including with the weakned durability.

Note the AA vehicles and their orbital-missile range ability - implied range of hundreds if not thousands of km. Also note their comparison to a small defense installation. Is this an example of the "mobile" defense batteries mentioned before?

Grav forcees operate in widely dispersed formation when attempting to contact enemy forces (Contact). Once contact is made, the grav forces attempt to collapse on the contacted enemy unit (concentrate) in order to bring overwhelming firepower to bear (combat.) By concentrating, however, an attacking force increass its chance of enemy detection. The enemy commander can then attmept to preempt the opposing stirke by concentrating his own forces against the attackign force, or by using space bombardemnts to break up the attack.

Grav combat tactics again, heavily geared towards mobility.

During the contact phase of an operation, the Legion will operate in a dispersed formation, fronted by a screen of pickets attempting to locate enemy forcecs. In advance to contact, the Recon Element Operation Zone will be approximately 200 kilometers wide and 100 kilometers deep. Recon is normally the operational responsibility of a single Cohort reinforced by significant signal assets. This element is followed by a Lead Element Operation Zone of about the same dimensions, but contianing two to three manuver Cohorts as well as artillery support. The Main Body Operating Zone contains the remaining Legion forces, consisting of six Maneuver Cohorts and the remainder of the artillery and support elements.

During this phase of theoperation, the recon element attempts to locate the main body of the enemy force while screening its own Legion from teh detection attempts by enemy forces, a classic cavalry ission.

More on grav vehicle tactics, emphasizing dispersal and mobility.

The organic sensors of a light grav tank or ACP have a maximum effective range of 50 kilometers. Larger vehicles Electronic Warfare (EW) suites are less effective, primarily because the thickness of their armor and the intensity of their own shields interferes with clean signal reception. Intervening terrain can block or distort sensor readings at a distance, though within 15 kilometers, any grav vehicle will be able to detect moving active vehicles regardless of the terrain. The size and activity of the target als impacts the probability of detection: larger vehcles are more likely to be detected than smaller vehicles, and a dug-in vehicle, operating its sensors in passive mode and covered with emission-suppressing netting, has a much lower chance of being detected than one operating at tree top level using active sensor arrays.

The Legion's signal assets are also heavily involved in the contact phase. Signal Centuries are made up of two types of vehicles, EW and ECM. EW vehicles carry massive passive and active sensor arrays, ,and even moderately effective neutrino detectors. These vehicles significantly increase a Task Forcee's chance of detecting large bodies of enemy forces. ECM (electronic countermeasureS) vechiles are designed to mask, jam, and deceive enmy EW vehicles in order to defeat enemy attempts at pinpointing firendly forces.

Sensors and ground vehicles as well as various factors influencing detection. 50 km is, I think, not bad for organic sensors, although its not an absolute. Also note that armor and shielding is implied to have some sensor-blocking properties of their own by this statement, which is unsurprising. It's quite possible flicker shielding and armor have significant roles in the ability of RL universe warships to be stealthy in space.

Once the enemy's exact location has been established, the Legion commander needs to rapidly concentrate his forces against a weak area of the enemy line. The recon element maintains contact with the enemy force while the lead and main body elements of the legion concentrate to a front of 25 to 40 kilometers. IF the size of the enemy force is equal to the friendly force, this rapid concentration can result in a local superiroity of five to one or more, thus guaranteeing that a friendly force will rupture the enemy line.

If the enemy has successufly detected the friendly forcee's main body, however, they can also collapse their forces and achieve parity or even superiority on the local battlefield. Usually, the reacting force does not have time to complete its manuvering before the battle is joined, and so goes into combat at a disadvantage.

In this phase of the operation, the superiroity of grav equipped forces over ground In general, a grav-equipped force has an operational speed approximately 240 kph, while a ground force has an effective operational speed of 30 to 40 kph, and is significantly restricted by terrain. This disparity allows the grav force to concenterate up to seven times faster than the ground force. The ground force must conduct all its operations in a more concentrated formation, reducing its ability to control the surrounding terrain or face overwhleming odds when it engages a grav-equipped force.

Note an "effective operational speed" of a mere 30-40 kph is likely implying a large, combined formation (combat vehicles of varying types plus support elements all operating in unison), considering many of their tanks can reach up to 100 kph even with out grav drive. 30 - 40 kph "effective" speed is quite impressive, especialyl if you compare it to a group like the Imperial Guard.

Generally, the lead element of a Legion, a Manus of four Cohrots with artillery and engineer support, will attempt to break through tehe enemy formation. The legion commander normally holds the main body forces in reserve as this battle develops. If neccssary, a Manus can form to support the lead element's attack if it bogs down. Two Cohortt Manus can also be formed, and sent to make flanking attacks while the remainder of the main body supports the lead element attack.

..

Time on target barrages from orbital battleships and cruisers can blast the way clear for an advancing Cohort. Fighters can peerform ground attack missions, either in conjunction with friendly forces or alone. Fighter missions become problematical only if the grav forces are operating in the dirt, forcing the fighters to come within effecitve range of the tank's guns, whcih can bring down a typical fighter in one shot. If the enemy is attempting to operate out of ground clutter, tehn the fighters will be able to defeat them easily. Space superiority primarily serves to drive the enemy grav forces down into the terrain, restricting its manuverability.

A glimpse of combined arms warfare, including orbital and fighter assets. Note tank guns being capable of taking down a fighter in a single shot, if they're within range. (And if they're within range they probably can be painted.. or a Gauss round will ignore shields due to size/mass.. take your pick.) This again suggests fighters are somewhat more fragile than tanks, but not dramatically so. Their range advantage sill presents an obstacle as it limits the altitude tnaks can operate at.

Grav forces are extremely mobile, not tied down to or constrained by terrain, if supply elements are also equipped with grav vehicles. However it is impossible to repair vehicles on the move, or resupply a moving vehcile from a space transport, or care for wounded soldiers in the back of a mobile hospital. These functions must be performed at fixed bases.

The supply Manus of a grav legion is capable of maintaining and repairing the vehicles of the Legion, as well ask eeping the combat elemetns supplied with consumable stores, as long as the operation is not overwhelming. Most grav Legions cannot carry more than a day's worth of combat supplies, however. If off-planet resupply efforts are sporadic, and local supplies cannot be attained, the Legion quickly becomes ineffective. Ground bases, complete with warehouses, repair facilities, hospitals, administrative offices adn barrakcs for incoming troops are a vital part of a successful operation.

Because these fixed bases are lucrative targets for orbital bombardments, they need to be protected with massive defensive capability. These bases are generally heavily armored and shielded, and have laser arrays and missile batteries fully capable of engaging orbital forcees. Most of these weapons are not capable of engaging enemy ground forcecs, but like their space-borne bretheren, ground bases have numerous turreted weapons for point defense against missiles and fighters. These weapons are equally capable of engaging a grav tank, and make taking a base a dangerous mission.

Importance of fixed bases vs mobile assets and a further illumination of advantages or disadvantages. Note fighter scale guns can take on a tank.

Operations are directed at enemy bases. Enemy and firendly forces manuver against one another, with recon elements attempting to locate and fix the enemy force. The attacking force attempts to bypass the enemy forces and strike directly at the base. The enemy force interposes itself between the attackers and the base and forces a battle. Both forces concentrate on the battlefield, and the battle is fought. If the battle is indecisive, the forces break contact and disperse again, and the attacker continues to maneuver around the defending force.

Once the defending force is defeated, its remnants will reatreat to the base where it will supplement the ground vehicle equipped garrison units. The attacking grav Legion will then attempt to break through the final defensive line of ground, grav and fixed defensive forces, to disable the orbital defense systems. Once the attacking force accomplishes that task, space forces can attack unopposed, which in turn means that the stationary installation is indefensible, and the remaining mobile forces are forced to withdraw. If no alternative supply base is avialable, the defending forces will quickly be mopped up as attrition and lack of supply reduces their numbers.

Ground war offense and defense. Note the combined use (again) of fixed, gground based and mobile air (grav and fighter) assets.

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Renegade Legion: Prefect analysis thread

Renegade Legion: Prefect analysis thread

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Re: Renegade Legion: Prefect analysis thread

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