555th 'Triple Nickel' at Hoth

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-11-28 11:33am

Okay Mike O'Neal and the 555th Mobile Infantry replace the rebel defenders at Hoth.

The 555th's ammo is topped off, along with power, and the Grim Reapers are along for the ride (with anti-lander loadouts).

Backing them will be SheVa 09, aka Bun-Bun

What happens to the imperial walkers?

white_rabbit · Post by **white_rabbit** » 2002-11-28 01:48pm

severe immediate and very quick death..

Vejut · Post by **Vejut** » 2002-11-28 07:05pm

pardon my ignorance, but what is the 555th mobile infantry? Are we talking about an RL infantry regiment, One of heinlen's groups, or what?

Raptor 597 · Post by **Raptor 597** » 2002-11-28 07:48pm

Starship Troopers Mobile Infantry? Anything on calcs? And what are Grm Repeares? Never read the novels.

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-11-28 09:02pm

The 555th Mobile Infantry is the best Armored Combat Suit unit on Earth from John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata series (A Hymn Before Battle, Gust Front, When the Devil Dances).

Each trooper is clad in a suit of advanced power armor. An ACS trooper is capable of moving faster than an Abrams tank and is a good deal more survivable (at least against the Posleen). In one instance Mike O'Neal (this unit's commander) survived hand detonating and anti-matter limpet mine... granted he survived just barely and he'd lost both legs and an arm but he survived. Another member of his unit survived having half a skyscraper sized starship land on him (ripped in half by this same mine) and earlier that day those same ACS troops survived having a not quite mile-high building collapse on them. Hits from kinetic weapons that would demolish a Bradley Fighting vehicle just bounce off it and IIRC a terawatt range laser only has enough power to penetrate one face of the armor.

Standard weapon for an ACS trooper is a 'grav gun' which fires a 56 gram depleted uranium bullet (though instead of using gunpowder for propulsion the grav gun uses anti-matter). These projectiles move so fast they strip the electrons out of the air.. meaning they leave a trail of lightning behind them and the kinetic energy they have is such they tend to explode on impact (the two power quotes we get seem to sync, one saying 100 kilos of TNT, the other 200 lbs which works out to 90 kilos so we could just have a case of the author rounding up). These rifles have a rate of fire of 500 rounds per second and the ACS troops carry enough ammo for 3 hours worth of fighting.

Suits also have shoulder mounted anti-matter grenade launchers (though these grenades have less AM in them than the bullets in the grav guns.. they do however provide lots and lots of nasty shrapnel to make up for it).

Grim Reaper suits are the heavy weapons specialists. Carry more ammo but are less well armored than a standard suit. The three loadouts we've seen so far consist of rapid fire flechette cannons, suit mortars, or the anti-lander guns (which is what they have for this scenario). The Anti-Lander guns fire a 75mm projectile with an internal anti-matter rocket which the one time we've seen them used so far was able to accelerate it's projectile to a speed of 1000 kps before impact.. and each fires 5 rounds per second.

So..

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2002-12-02 02:38am

A lot depends upon the kinetic resistance of an AT-AT, which is essentially unknown.
Which incarnation of Bun-Bun anyway, and what ammunition loadout?

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-12-02 09:59am

After it gets 'riffed'

4 rounds standard
4 rounds area effect.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2002-12-02 11:06am

The SheVa gun cannot survive direct combat with the AT-ATs - the thing is essentially an antiaircraft gun, not a tank. It could plaster the area with those area-effect nukes (assuming none are shot down in flight).

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-12-02 12:58pm

phongn wrote:The SheVa gun cannot survive direct combat with the AT-ATs - the thing is essentially an antiaircraft gun, not a tank. It could plaster the area with those area-effect nukes (assuming none are shot down in flight).

It can engage them quite easily though even with it's standard shells, and no AT-AT has the slightest chance in hell of shooting one of them down.

And Bun-Bun's gotten some armor (and a bunch of now working metalstorm turrets) slapped on him n Hell's Faire.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2002-12-02 02:26pm

SylasGaunt wrote:
phongn wrote:The SheVa gun cannot survive direct combat with the AT-ATs - the thing is essentially an antiaircraft gun, not a tank. It could plaster the area with those area-effect nukes (assuming none are shot down in flight).
It can engage them quite easily though even with it's standard shells, and no AT-AT has the slightest chance in hell of shooting one of them down.

There are more AT-ATs than Bun-Bun can engage quickly enough. And why couldn't they engage the shells, hmm?

And Bun-Bun's gotten some armor (and a bunch of now working metalstorm turrets) slapped on him n Hell's Faire.

That armor is unlikely to be sufficient to protect the SheVa gun against the heavier weapons of the AT-AT - and it doesn't protect everywhere. They don't have to obliterate the thing, a mission kill is good enough.

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-12-02 02:44pm

phongn wrote: There are more AT-ATs than Bun-Bun can engage quickly enough. And why couldn't they engage the shells, hmm?

An area effect shell can allow him to engage the whole group at once, not to metnion even the standard shells are carrying an anti-matter explosive (and at the kind of dispersal we see in the movies shrapnel's gonna be a bitch).

And look at the difficulty they had engaging the snowspeeders how do you expect them to engage a smaller target moving at something like mach 8?

That armor is unlikely to be sufficient to protect the SheVa gun against the heavier weapons of the AT-AT - and it doesn't protect everywhere. They don't have to obliterate the thing, a mission kill is good enough.

And they have to do it without getting zapped.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2002-12-02 03:00pm

SylasGaunt wrote:
phongn wrote: There are more AT-ATs than Bun-Bun can engage quickly enough. And why couldn't they engage the shells, hmm?
An area effect shell can allow him to engage the whole group at once, not to metnion even the standard shells are carrying an anti-matter explosive (and at the kind of dispersal we see in the movies shrapnel's gonna be a bitch).

Shrapnel? From what?

And look at the difficulty they had engaging the snowspeeders how do you expect them to engage a smaller target moving at something like mach 8?

Snowspeeders maneuvered and may have had some sort of limited ECM equipment. Shells travel on a ballistic arc that is almost trivial to determine and rather easy to shoot down.

Bun Bun has a few targets to engage and we don't know how it's going to use maximum range - are the ACS troops sending targetting information? The moment one gets into range it'll start raining down fire on Bun-Bun along with its compatriots.

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-12-02 03:40pm

phongn wrote: Shrapnel? From what?

The AT-AT it just went off inside

Snowspeeders maneuvered and may have had some sort of limited ECM equipment. Shells travel on a ballistic arc that is almost trivial to determine and rather easy to shoot down.

A snowspeeder isn't moving at 2.5 kilometers per second either, nor is it a mere 8 inches across.

Bun Bun has a few targets to engage and we don't know how it's going to use maximum range - are the ACS troops sending targetting information? The moment one gets into range it'll start raining down fire on Bun-Bun along with its compatriots.

Max range in the case of the ACS is as far as they can see remember, a missed round is going into orbit.