Renegade Legion: Interceptor analysis thread

[Connor MacLeod]

WEll as a counterpoint to 40K I'll start doing renegade legion, like I said. The one I plan to start with, of course, is Interceptor.

The way this will go is probably the following:

- Each "Primary" source (centuiron, Leviathan, Interceptor,. Legionnaire) will get their own dedicated thred. They're all pretty big and they can pretty much encompass only that

- suppelmentary materials (Wake of the KRaken, Fire Eagles, TEssDrake run) and the various technical or briefings will probably be grouped in some fashion (all the Centurion ones together, all the LEviathan ones together, etc.) I'll also probably lump "integrated" stuff into one category too.

Some integrated material qualifies as a "miscelaneous" source as its not specific to any one particualr ssystem, and will be in some cases handled individually (Shannedam County sourcebook) while others may be lumped in with another category (IE "integrated games that encomapss more than one format, as well as misc books.)


Well, with that out of the way.. first entry for Interceptor:

like the Commonwealth's Cheetah, the Lancea's main claim to fame is its speed. In a reconnaissance role, the wing lasers are replaced with hard points and mounted with a variety of ordnance or surveillance equipment. With 11 gs of acceleration, a high-thrust Lancea is the one of fastest fighters in the galaxy.

Like the Cheetah, the Lancea performs reconnaissance missions by being carried into a solar system attached to an escort, making a high speed pass through the system, then rendezvousing with the escort again to be baken back to its base.

The accelerative capabilities and the role of the Lancea. This does pretty much set the rough standard for combat accelerations in renegade legion. Note I say combat accelerations, because in this mode RL ships tend to rather sharply divide their power outputs between various systems- primarily guns, engines, and shields. Note that in theory (especially by Leviathan rules) power is going to be equally divided (roughly), but this may or may not be the case. Depending on interpretation, you could argue they devote minimal power from engines to weapons (say only gigajoules or maybe a few TJ of energy per shot) or alot (tens or hundreds of terajouels or even petajoules per shot.) And shields are a complete unknown (technically shields need NOT need power to consume. In fact its rather hard to devise a reason they do need it, but in the case of flicker shields it is probably possible.)

Each hex on the map [Interceptor] is roughly 15 kilometers (about 9 miles) wide, and each game turn lasts one minute.

I only include this one simply to establish the rough scale of combat in RL Interceeptor. Honestly, I dont think alot of things can be calculated directly form the game stats, but certain, specific things may be quantifiable, at least in a broad way. Ratios and such. One of the fwe things we might go by (and can be proven consistent in the fluff) is combat engagement/weapons ranges, ,and fighter/weapon speeds. Accelerations, or turning rates, however, cannot (we don't know if its straight line accecl or constant accel, for one thing. I've tried doing calcs on it and its hard and generally is probelmatic.)

In any combat situation, a pilot will sometimes do anything to get that extra little bit of power to put is fighter in the best firing position. In cases where he needs more Thrust Points than he has, he may push the plantt. Whenever a pilot asks his fighter to do something that is not normal to it, tehre is also the chance of breakdown.

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The table also shows that the most any plant can be pushed is by 5 thrust points.

Pushing the plant always reuslts in the pilot obtaining the extra thrust points he desires. The catch is whether or not he damaged the planet in getting those thrust points.

For max thrust of 1, ,you can only push by one thrust point, 2 points for max of 2, 3 points for max of 3, 4 points for max of four, and 5 for five and above. Note that the last rating for all except one is "automatic" damage (that is, the for a thrust rating of two, the second thrust point always resorts in damage For three the third always does, and so on.)

This is one of those "game mechanics" type stuff that is kind of quantifiable but won't tell us a great deal. We know they can "over-run" the reactors to a certain extent, but that it endangers the ship. What this amounts to in terms of rationalization is that fighter reactors (and probably other reactors) have a fairly large "safetY" margin, and that fighter pilots can (to a certain extent) push the reactors beyond these limits. This also exceeds the "safety margins" of their inertidal dampers, which is probably explained as them having a trouble rapidly adapting to sudden accelerations that one might utilize in combat.

likely, the "increase" this provides is a small one at best, probably less than double, more like 120-150%, slanted more towards the lower end. Useful for more of brief applications of power (or emergency situations), such as an increased "alpha strike" capability, or emergency shield boosts (or manuvering.)

The SOT (Safe operating thrust) also takes into account the fact that pushing hte plant usually requires exceeding the SOT, especially on ships with lower accelerations This means acceleration at levels for which the acceleration compensators are not equipped and that the forces acting on the pilot are much greater than usual.

On one hand, this suggests that the "standard combat accelerations" dictate the limits of acceleration compensators. That suggests that the ship really can't push the accelerations much past their combat accels, despite having a "surplus" of power. This may indicate merely an engineering limitation - the engines probably aren't designed to handle much more poweru beyond thw athey use in combat. THat is sensible, but they also (likely) can redesign ships to handle better (After all, capital ships can reallocate power to boost their acceel, ,so so could fighters if designed for it.)

Alternately, as I already mentioned, it may simply represent that the closert ot the "margin" the inertial dampers operate, the harder a time they have to handle sudden accelerations.

All fighters carry preset shield generators that cannot be changed during the course of the game Shields are rated according ot their rate of flicker. That is, when a shield is on, nothing can get through it, but nothing can get out, either. So that shields flicker on and off at very fast rates. Also, technology has not yet advanced to the point where a shield can operate at all times. Sheilds have ratings as low as 10 and as high as 200 or more. Th ehighest shield generator usually found on a fighter is 70. Most fighters carry shields rated at 30 to 50.

...

Shield flicker rates can be different for each side of the fighter and are determined during ship construction.

The fact that generators come "preset" would tend to suggest that the idea that fighter systems are optimized towards certain outputs (and thus are "fixed" at certain maximums) has some credence. In such case, the limitations are merely ones of design and probably could be changed if need be (IE you could adopt a more flexible system.), or, instead they could probably re-optimize for new designs (less firepower and more acceleration, for example.)

Now, onto shields. We can deduce certain conclusions about how shielding in REnegade Legion works:

1 - its not an absorption/retransmission systme, like we know certain other universes use. Rather its more like a physical barrier that deflects/retards certain attacks (more like intangible armor, or a physical barrier.) It is also "double blind".

2 - bypassing the shield is not illuminated on here, but it is heavily implied in other sources (and will be expanded upon agian later) that you either hit the shield when it is "off", which is a matter of factors (timing, range, etc. - and mainyl is ivnovled in the "painting" bit) or by brute force (the force field itself is virrtually imepentrable, but it seems it can be "worn down" by pounding away at it until the generators overload or fail - conversation of momentum, probably) The former does imply a certain amount of "tactics" to offense and defense (strategies to bypass the sield effectively) while the latter probably is more simple but time consuming (and may help explain why ship combat lasts so long)

other aspects, such as the reasons (and theory) behind flicker rates and why shields consume so much power, are addressed later.

Damage to teh weapons tracking circuits and computers directly affects the To-Hit number.

I mention this largely to establish that fighter weapons (and other systems) are very heavily computer assisted and/or controlled.

Long range sensors: without the scanning capability of long range sensors, it is extremely difficult for pilots to find their carrier ship. These sensors come into play mostly in campaign scenarios.

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Scanner systems: When tehse are damaged, teh fighter is no longer able to fire its scanner silhoutte seekign missiles.

A bit on deteciton systems. By the way they're described, RL long range sensors are almost certainly passive sensors of some sort primarily. ACtive sensors could be, but they'd be alot less accurate for moe things (the signal has to go out and return, and it lights you up to the enemy more accurately.) FTL active sensors are a possibility, but evidence as stands tends to mainly argue against it (at least for fighter-scale objects.)

The fact that long range sensors are "campaign only" also tends to suggest they aren't utilized as much in combat (at least on fighters. Misisles is another story.) except maybe to track/locate the fighters. TArgeting sensors are probably active.

The SSS's scanner system is almost certainly active, but it may only represent a "kind" of active sensor (A specialized one)

Fire computer: The main weapons computer is destroyed, and so no further wepaons fire is possible.

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Shield synch computer:

This computer coordinates weapons shots with the shield generator. Because the shield flickers, teh weapon must fire while it is off. If the synch computer is damaged, the pilot must fire through his own shields beofre he can hope to hit.

Again, more indication of the systems that are computerized on a fighter. The weapons, again, are noted to be computerized. Its interesting that they deem it "impossible" to use weapons without computers (IE almost no manual system.) This may be a combat on the nature of fighter combat (For example, they engage in high velocity long range passes that may occur faster than human reactions could allow - or manuvering may equire computerize dpredicitve/tracking systems to keep up.)

Oddly, the shield synch computer ihas a sort of manual aspect. One assumes, though, that in some cases it may require a "lowering" of flicker rate, as some sources suggest flicker rates that can greatly exceed human reflexes (eg painting lasers in centurion.)

Target locking cricuits:

Predictor computer

Range finder computer

Target trackign computer

All of the above are components in weapons accuracy. Basically, fighter targeting is highly computerized, in toher words. Basically yet more evidence of how fighter targeting sysems are included (note the use of predictor computers, ,rangefinders, and such - the extent of variables that appear to need to be compensated for may explain why manual firing isnt used.)

[Connor MacLeod]

New update - some more fun calcy stuff too

Acceleration compensator
This equipment allows the pilot to survive high-G maneuvers. If it is damaged, the fighter's safe maximum thrust is 5. If this limit is passed, the pilot automatically suffers daamge at the rate of one damage point per turn for every 2 thrust points exceeding the limit.

Going by "in rules" we can figure that a normal "human" in RL can take up to 5 gees or so without ill effects.

This also, rather oddly, tends to suggest that RL acceleration compensator operates at their full limits, which is a bit odd, given you'd want at least a little margin for error (unless this is also acocunted for in "safe thrust." 7 gees or so seems to be the threshhold for "harm" (so technically, you could go six gees.) And of course there is the "thrust option", which does suggest at least a small margin in some cases.) The other possibile explanation, as I have mentioend previously, is that its not so much an absolute "limit" as it is a matter of efficiency - beyond the "safe thrust" limits, inertial dampers may be less effective, and grow moreso the further the safe thrust is exceeded (ie 90% effective, 80%, etc.)

Amusingly, if one wanted to "play around" with game stats and real life data, one could probaby look up some "human gee tolerancese" figures somewhere (like wikipedia) and try to see if there really IS a 1:1 poitn conversion. Something tells me it might not be, but there are also alot of variables there that can fudge it. You could probably get out tens of gees acceleration for fighters that way (which just goes to also show why I'm cautious about using game stats.)

T-space Damper: THe T space Dampers counteract T space effects that cause extreme nausea and mental debilitation in most life forms. The Dampers must be repaired before any other repairs can be attmempted on a ship in T-space.

Dangers of T-space on a human and some of the systems employed to counteract that.

Though it is possible to fly through a hex occupied by an asteroid, only the best or bravest actually do it. Whenever a fighter enters a hex occupied by an asteroid, the pilot must make a skill roll, subject to modifications noted in the Asteroid Piloting Table.

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If two ore more asteroids end their movmvent in the same hex consider it a collision.

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An asteroid has 200 damage points. If someone wants to go on an anti-asteroid crusade, he should keep track of any damage inflicted on these poor, defenseless hunks of rock. Asteroids may be damaged by weapons or by collisions with one another.

More game stats, but should be roughly calcable. We know the size of a hex, and given teh indications above, the asteroid in question must occupy the vast majority of it to represent a credible collison hazard (more than half, more probably at least 60-70%), which gives us an indicator of how big it must be (7-15 km, roughly. More probably 10-15 km.)) And, given that it can be damaged or destroyed by fighter weapons, firepower could in some way probably be derived from it. Hell, you could probably do point conversions, but I'm not sure I'd go that far.

Note that according to the ADC, it would take between 180-610 megatons at least to fragment a rocky asteroid by the cratering calcs. an iron asteroid would take 4.7-16 gigatons to fragment.

Igneous rock fragmentation (centrally buried explosive) is between 1 and 3.4 gigatons.

In a broad manner, we can determine that interceptors DO have access to or employ kiloton/megaton range weapons (both energy and missile) for combat purposes, which would be cosnsitent with powerplant/engine performance and with the ability to destroy cities.

All missiles have a minimum range of two hexes. That is, they cannot be fired at targets in adjacent hexes.

Minimum missile ragne is 30 km.

Radiation Intensity Seeking Missile:

The RIS missile must obtain a lock-on before firing. IT can only be shot at a target fighter's rear arc because the missile tracks the target plant's exhaust radiation.

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The attacking fighter must have a clear line of sight to the target and must be within ten hexes to attempt a lock-on roll. If the lock-on roll succeeds, the missile is launched with the velocity of the firing fighter and moves with a thrust of 12.

... The missile has an intelligencec score of 15 and will do 30 points of damage.

Stats on the RIS missile. It also gives us some indicator of how stealth/masking techology works in Renegade Legion (the only way you could "suppress" it is to direct it in a single direction, which we may assume they do here. Much like STarfire verse cloaking, really.)

Scanner Silhouette Seeking Missile
The SSS missile locks on to the configuration or silhouette of its target. An undamaged and fully functional scanner is required to fire this missile. The attacking fighter must have a clear line of sight to a target within its 60 degree forward arc and be wtithin 30 hexes.

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If the lock-on roll succeeds the missile is launched with the velocity of the firing fighter and moves with a thrust of 15.
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The missile has an intelligence of 8 and will do 20 points of damage.

SSS missile. This seems to utilize "active" target acqusition, which seems to differ from conventional targeting systems on the ship in some manner./

Transponder guided Missiles

TGMs track a fighter's transponder signal. This signal is normally broadcast by a fighter to identify it as a friend or enemy. TGMs also behave differently in that they can be launched at any time and appear in the hex in front of the firing fighter, with the fighter's facing and with a velocity of 0. Then, during the Combat Phase, the missile will make a lock-on roll against any target not broadcasting a friendly transponder signal within its forward arc and within 30 hexes.

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All TGMS have an intelligence of 7 and do 15 points of damage.

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there are two models of TGM and the difference between them is their ability to distingush between enemy and friendly targets. The TGM Mk 1 will lock on to any target not broadcasting a friendly transponder...

The TGM mk II is someitmes albe to distinguish between enemy and friendly ships that are not sending out a transponder signal.[

TGM stats, including the imrpoved variants.

Dead-Fire Missile Cluster

A DFM is designed to inundant a target with a large number of small, high-velocity missiles. The rationale being that if you shoot enough missiles at a target, some will get through the shields.

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DFM clusters have a range of six hexes and the normal weapon to-hit procedures are followed.

If the cluster hits, it will inflict 12 points of damage ot the target.

Deadfire missile cluster. May give us an idea of what it takes to saturate a fighter's defenses.

ECM

Fighters can mount electronic countermeasures equipment on their hard points. There are two basic types: pods and missiles. ECM pods give the fighter a -3 to hit modifier, which provides a small measure of protection against the final To-Hit roll of an incoming missile.

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The ECM missile is a single-use but very effective antimissile weapon. When launched right before the incoming missile hit, it provides a -8 modifier To-Hit modifier to the missile attack.

ECM doesnt seem to be an inherent part of fighter defenses, oddly.

His [ejected pilot's] emergency life support system will keep him alive for 30 turns (that is, if he did not activate it earlier.)

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Virtually all fighters are capable of picking up a drifting pilot. They have small man-sized pockets within the ship's armor where a man in a space suit can strap in and hook into the fighter's won life support system. The drifting pilot is even partially protected by the armor and shields and iwll survive if the fighte rsurvives.

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The floating pilot has a very limited thrust capability. He has 3 thrust points available to him, but they can only be used once.

Life support and escape pod capabilities for fighters and pilots. They quite obviously do put high stock in pilot recovery and make alot of provision for safety and security.

He first decides which shields to power and to which level. He must also deicde which weapons to power. These decisions are based on the controlling player's best guess of the current tactical situation.

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Players should note that in this game, there is no allocation for thrust power. The ship always has power available to its maximum thrust.

Corvettes can allocate power between shields and weapons, but thrust (for some reason) is fixed. There is no logical reason for this, but we may infer its a design limitaton if it isnt something game-balance related (we know cap ships can be "optionally" allowed to allocate power between various systems.) Either way works for in-universe rationalization.

[Connor MacLeod]

Next update...

To travel faster than light, an FTL-capable craft must be travelling at a velocity of at least 30 hexes per turn. To travel FTL accurately, the ship must have maintained a straight line course for the five turns previous to translation, with at lest three turns being at a velocity of 30+ hexes per turn.

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Turns spent straight line 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Chance misdirection: 100 95 90 75 50 10 1

More "game mechanics" oriented stuff, but it actually proves consistent with minimal T-space entry speeds mentioned later (7.5 km/s at least)

This gives us a rough indication of the time needed to "accurate"y plot a course - (at least 5-6 minutes for a reliable course.)

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I'm not going to retype the course adjustment table (time taken to get back to origianl destination) The time taken can vary from 1 (0 turns in straight course) day to 1 hour (6 turns in straight course) for 1 day of travel time, up to 60 days (0 turns) to 5 days (6 turns) for 10 days of travel time.

2 days: 10 days (0 turns) to 4 hours (6 or more)

3 20 days (zero) to 8 hours (6 or more)

4 30 days (0) to 12 hours (6+)

5 35 days (0) to 16 hours (6+)

6 40 days (0) to 20 hrs (6+)

7 45 days (0) to 1 day (6+)

8 50 days (0) to 2 days (6+)

9 55 days (0) to 3 days (6+)

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It the T-space Dampers are damaged, there can be no repair work done until they are fixed because the damper counteracts the extreme nausea and even mental debilitation that most life forms experience in T-space. If the T-space radiation damper is damaged, teh whole crew must undergo detox procedures as soon as they return to normal space to conitnue a healthy life.

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A ship running for T-space is vulnerable, as its location can be predicted fairly accurately.

Dangers of travel in t-space and the effects it can have on an organic being.

Also, T-spacec travel is considered "predictable" in terms of tracking destination (at least one assumes if they can track the ship0

A ship traveling directly toward the ground increases its velocity by 1. A ship traveling directly away from the ground decreases its velocity by 1 each turn.

In broad strokes, this would seem to confirm the idea that thrust = 1 gee, though I suspect this is still an over-simplifcation.

[qouote]
Space borne installations provide a wide vareity of services and functions. From prisons and industrial manufacturing centres to Very Large Communications Arrays (VLCAs), these expensive facilities are tempting targets for any raiding party. As potential targets, many installations are armed and armored. Able to generate massive amounts of power and to mount any weapon system without regard for weight installations can be very formidable targets.

Though lightly armored comapred to the massive forts and fortresses, most installations are usualyl a good match for a squadron of fighters.

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An installation occupies seven hexes on the mapsheet.
[/quote]

As noted here, the Renegade Legion universe uses a plethora of orbital installations and faciltiies for a variety of roles, including (most imporrtantly) manufacturing and infrastrucutre as well as VLCAs. This also tends to make them important military targets, so they are also armed (And can also therefore lend themselves to system defense.)

Usually endowed with lots of power and variable shields, selected sides [of installations]
can be made nearly invulnerable.

Installations flicker shielding can be made so "fast" as to be "nearly invulnerable", which would seem to indirectly argue agianst the (10% of all shots getting through, sincec its hard to consider that "nearly invulnerable if 1 shot in ten still can damage the target beneath the shields.)

This presumably is only possible due to their insane power draws, which probably explains why fighters (And some corvette) shields never are "nearly invulnerable.)

Each hex of the facility contains a turret armed with a variety of weapons, usually including 7.5 lasers and MDC 12s

In other words, such facilities generalyl carry fighter-grade weapons for point-defense duties.

Main computer: This computer controls the installations main function, be it manufacutring, communications, or some other.

orbital installations (like capital ships and fighters) utilize heavy automation.

If the crew is not able to effect repairs [on life suppport] within five turns, they must swtich over to energemcy systems. The emergency system is good for 30 minutes.

how long emergency life s upport lasts onboard installations.

Lifeboats fre in space are represented by crew markers and are given an initial velocity of 1 in any direction. Unlike ejected pilots and gunners, lifeboats may enter an atmoshepre safely.

Lifeboats can survive atmospheric reentry without much ill effect,

[Connor MacLeod]

Next update, more calcs... I'm kinda surprised noone's commented or given any objections or insight or anything

Ship class Power rating range
Battleship 100,001+
Fighter carrier: 30,000+
Cruiser: 75,001-100,000
Frigate 50,001-75,000
Destroyer: 30,001-50,000
Escort: 15,001-30,000
Corvette 7501-15,000
Gunboat 2501-7500
Fighter 2500 or less.

the "power rating" system. I can't say I really put much faith in this, at least in any "linear" sense when it comes to scaling from fighters to cap ships.

To put it in perspective: In Leviathan a Shiva BB has 4 millon tons mass and 150,000 units of power. A Gladius heavy fighter has 2500 power and masses 210 tons.. so a nearly 20,000x difference in mass... but onyl a 60x difference in power.

Note that if you applied the "design" rules for Inteceptor to a capital ship, the power outputs would probably be alot greater. Leviathan really simplified on that.

A ship's first line of defense are its shields. Fighters have four shield generators. Larger ships have six or more. Each generator can be designed or set at a different flicker rate. Most ships have high ratings on the bow and stern and lower ratings on the side generators. Gunboats and larger ships can mount variable shield generators whose strength can be changed frrom turn to turn depending on power allocation. These can be adjusted during combat at the cost of power points where a fighter's sheilds are permanantly set.

Differences in shields between fighters and larger ships (mainly flicker rates) and number of shields carried (which seems to be based on facings mainly)

Man was not built to survive high acceleration. Average pilots can perform normally while sustaining a thrust of 5. Thrust rates greater than 5 require acceleration compensators to counteract the extra force acting on the human crew. Compensators are rated at the thrust they can cover. Any ship that plans to go faster than a thrust of 5, ,must have an appropriate compensator.

Two things here: 1.) it seems to imply that compensators don't have much "margin of error" in them (They apparently are pre-set like shields). The second one is that a thrust of 5 seems to represent "average" human g-tolerance while being able to perform. I dont know if this owuld support the 1 thrust = 1 gee idea, or produce a different variable, but it may be worth investigating.

Once all of the components have been chosen and their weights and power requirements totaled, the thrust of the fighter can be calculated. To do so, ,simply find the amount of excess power by subtracting the total power requirements of the ship from the total power put out by the engines. Then divide this by the tonnage of the craft.

The Itnerceptor means of deriving thrust. Which, as I noted, is different in LEviathan (thrust is determiend by ship class.. which seems more of an abstractino)

Shield table:

Flicker rate Power
10 1
20 2
30 4
40 6
50 12
60 24
70 48
80 96
90 182
100 264
110 528
120 1056
130 2112
140 4228

Flicker rates and power consumption. I do assume this generally applies to fighters and small craft... (bigger ships with larger power generation can afford bigger flicker rates)

Laser length Power
7.5/1 10
7.5/2 12
7.5/3 15
7.5/4 18
7.5/5 20
7.5/6 23
5/1 7
5/2 9
5/4 14
5/5 17
5/6 19
3/1 4
3/4 11
3/5 13
3/6 15
1.5/1 2
1.5/3 5
1.5/4 7
1.5/5 8
1.5/6 10

Power consumption of varying classes of lasers. Might be used to determine laser outputs of a specific kind, although I wouldn't presonally try point to poitn conversions

Weapon type Power
MDC 8 6
MDC 10 11
MDC 12 12
EPC 9 25
EPC 14 37
EPC 18 47
NPC 9 7
NPC 16 10
NPC 20 18

Power chart for MDCs. Same potential value as the laser chart.

Acellerator compensator table
Rating: Power
6 4
7 4
8 5
9 6
10 6
11 7
12 8
13 8
14 11
15 12

Acceleration compensators. 15 thrust seems to be the upper limit, though I'm wondering if that's neccesarily true..

In the 64th century, a regenerate Humankind was rebounding from the devastation of the Snow Plague, which had contanimated almost every Human world and killed over 80 percent of the Human race.

The Snow Plague's mortality figures seem to vary depending on sorucee.. from 80 to 90+ percent of the total human population.

Because of distance, there were three levels of Senators: Clarissimi at the world level, Spectabiles at the provincial level, and the powerful Illustrus Senators at the capital of New Rome.)

The different Senators and the different levels of the TOG/Terran REpublic they served/do seve.

Buntari's siege was successful, and 125,000 KessRith soldiers surrendered to him. After grandly wining and dining the captured KessRith commanders on his battleship, General Buntari had the shutters of a huge window drawn back to reveal a sparkling panorama of the peaceful green planet Durmella. Then, while the KessRith officers watched in horror, he ordered his ships to bombard the planet and all the KessRith soldiers and civilian population until the atmosphere boiled away ant the planet burned red with heat.

When reports of this reached Grand General Constantin, he and his carrier battle group, under the command of his sister, Admiral Sefra Constantin, ,tracked down Buntari and forced him at gunpoint to resign on the spot from the military.

Ah yes, the [in]famous "planet killing" incident I mentioned before.

Melting the crust and "burning away" the atmosphere is probably going to take at least e26-e27 joules minimum. More likely alot more, ,because the atmosphere is transparent and it would only burn away as a side effect, and there are always ineffiicencies (probably meaning at least an Order of magnitude increase, probably two or more.)

How long is implied by the fact that Buntari forces the KessRith to join him in watching after a dinner - they're kept guarded, forceed to watch their planet's destruction. This implies it took less than a day, given biological considerations (sleep, h unger, elimination of bodily wastes, etc.).. more likely no more than a matter of hours

Its also implied Buntari probably had no more thn a Battleship group, ,or perhaps a Squadron, at his command when he did this, given that Constantin goes after him with a Carrier battle group and that is obviously a more powerful force.. so probably no more than 50 ships, no more than a tenth of those battleships or cruisers.

Assuming ~12 hours and 50 ships.. it would take at least e20-e21 watts of sustained firepower to boil off the atmosphere.. at least. This is an average (IE it treats all ships as equal, when in fact they'll vary in power), ignores inefficiciencies, and so on and so forth. We can safely say the RL ships are well into the high GT/low TT range.

[Connor MacLeod]

Standing as tall as most humans and weighing about 200 kilos, the Kessrith are easily the strongest of the major races. Thick skin plates protec the KessRith's tail, back, chest and arms., giving them an added advnatage in physical combat. A large, thick skull protects their brains and provdies an attachment for their thick and massive jaws.

Physical description of KessRith.

Currently, the KessRith Empire is united under one clan that ruled the Kessrith's world of origin, Sovi'KessRoth.

Current condition of the KessRith empire.

On the afternoon of 15th June 6680, First consul Kershaw was addressing more than a thousand of the most powerful men of the realm at the opening of the Senate, when a .5 kiloton nuclear device exploded underneath the building. The senate building and all who were in it were immediately vaporized. The rest of the city's population, some 2 million, died frrom the concussion wave or in the firestorm.

Buntari's assassination attempt (half a kiloton nuke.) Of more interest is the fact that there were 1000 Senators present, giving us a lower limit on their numbers.

SSora
Standing about one and one-half metres tall and weighing about 70 kilos, the Ssora walk on two legs, balanced by a prehensile tail and they have two arms ending in three fingered hands.

Ssora physical description.

Instead they [Constantins] put him [Gregory Novick] aboard a fast courier crewed by trusted officers, and sent him off in the direction of the Magellanic Cloud.

References to indicate a destination. The distance was around 150,000 ly IIRC (stated later) away. It takes Novick less than a year to arrive (by the time the Legion has reached the Commonwealth, Novick is either already in with the Vauvusar, or has gone there and back to the Commonwealth who he is noted to speak with below) This woudl be between 4-9 months, depending on how you interpret the latter (see below)

This suggests that the "fast courerir" can make at least hundreds of thousands of c easily, and cover hundreds of thousands of ligth years with little trouble. (Though doing either does not mean its neccesarily a "common" feat. It may be a capaibility only for certain kinds of ships- very specialized ones.) Broadly, if we wanted a more firm number, we're looking at between 200,000-400,000c.(though this is still conservative) - slower than the 100,000 LY/month, but faster than the 10,000 LY/month that becomes "standard" later.

Senator Novick, who had spent the last month conferring with the Human population and the Vauvusar in the Magellanic Cloud, was now speaking to the Commonwealth on the Constantin's behalf.

As noted above Novak seems to have reached the Magellanic cloud in less than a year (about nine months.. 10 months for the LEgion to reach the commonwealth minus the month he took to confer.). It may alos be interrpteted to mean that Novik travelled to the Magellenic cloud and THEN travelled back after an unknown time to confer with the Commonwealth (assuming they didn't correspond at a distance.) The time basically breaks down to between 4-9 months or so of transit time.

On 15 September, 6681, 308,364 Legions and 3,804 Battleship groups, along with most of the officer's families, followed the flaghship Righteous Fury into T-space.

For ten months, thsi Legion, labeled renegade by Caesar Buntari, fought its way across KessRith space, hoping to get to the Commonwealth before being intercepted by a massive fleet sent out by TOG under Grand Admiral tokar. Understandably, the Commonwealth was being extremely cautious about a request to allow a Terran military force three times the size of its own to enter and remain in its space.

Commentary on the relative sizes of the intiial Renegade force compared to thte (then current) Commonwealth. 1/3 the Legion would be about 1,250 Battlehsip groups and ~100,000 Legions. Presuambly at this point it didnt include the KessRith allies either.

For hours, Admiral Sefra Constantin rallied her forces and threw them at the KessRith, hoping to protect the packed troopships. Just as all seemed lost, she was surprised to see the KessRith units pull back.

Combat time between the Terran and KessRith forces lasted "hours", giving an indication of starship durability/combat engagements.

Standing almost two metres tall and weighing about 85 kilos, the Vauvusar have two main color variations.

Vauvusar physical description

Then the Terran Overloard Government presented its demands. About 40 percent of the [Naram] Republic's territory was absorbed into the TOG and beceame known as the Dalvik District (dalvik being aram for "conquered") The infiltration of the remaining Naram provinces continued, to where the current first Consul of the Naram REpublic is possibly a TOG agent.

From below (later) we learn the DAlvik district is bout 68 Senators, so 68 Prefectures. From other sourcs (like Legionnaire) we can determine that that comes out to ~80,000 or so individual systems. If this is 40% of the original Naram territory, the Naram Republic initially held some 200,000 systems.

{quote]
Imperial Consouls are the Caesar's personal advisors, though they sometimes hold other governmental potiosn as well. The number is usually ten, though it may vay.There are always seven REgional Consuls to advise the Caesar on each of the seven districts that compose the empire. Th eother three adivse on economics, internal affairs, and foreign affairs.[/quote]

Description of the Consuls and their duties.

In an empire composed of billions of worlds, no single group of men could hope to represent so many planets and people. Alexander Trajan created a systm of three classes of Senators, the Clarissimi Senators, the Sectabiles Senators, and the Illustrus Senators./

intiial discussion of the various Senators. Also note the "empire" has "billions" of worlds. We're not told if this is as of the Terran Republic or TOG, though it serves for either well enough (TOG might be larger later on though, due to their conquests)

[Connor MacLeod]

This time we cover some more of the political strucutre/aspects of TOG:

An elected representative of a single planet, a Clarissimi Senator attends a session of the provincial Senates at least once every four years via VLCAs. Though each world in TOG is ruled by a Governor, the laws of TOG permit the Clarissimi Senator of that world to dictate policy to the planetary Governor if he so chooses. To further strerngthen their power, Clarissimi Senators often attempt to curry favor with the prefect of the local legion.

TOG government, again noting the multifacted nature of ruling (governor AND a Senator.. and Legion prefects probably count too.)

Also note the mention of "local legion" which suggests there is at least one legion (of unknown type) per planet. This could mean no more than 8 million (inhabited) planets, or billions of actual (potential) legions overall, depending on how one wished to interpret it.

Also means at least one VLCA per system (which I believe is a given, but its worth noting still)

Each Spectabile Senator is the elected ruler of a province within the TOG. They exercise genuine power to set policy for their particular provinces, and are answerable only to their superiors. Spectabiles also act as Proconsuls in their Provincial Senates. They meet at the Prefecture Senate (also called the Spectabiles Senate) every two years. At least twice more every year, they meet via VLCA to discuss issues and pass laws.

The next step up from Clarissimi Senators, and the provincec level of government.

The seven districts of the TOG are subdivided into Prefectures, based on population and phenomena such as star clusters, arms, dust clouds, and so on. A single Illustrus Senator represents each prefecture. The Illustrus Senators are elected by the Spectabiles Senators in their region, rather than by popular vote. Their appointment is then subject to approval by members of the Illustrus Senate and the Caesar.

Illustrus Senators are something akin to mini-Caesars, especially in their home regions.

...

The Illustrus Senate must convene in person at least once every four yearas, though the Caesar may call special crisis sessions. In the off-years, the Senators convene via VLCA (every provincial, prefect, and regional capital has at least one VLCA)

The number of Senators per District is as follows:

Orion District 78
Sandarne District 50
Ssora District 104
Dalvik District 68
Terran District 350
Mochov District 175
Mompono District 175

The highest level of Senator, the Illustrus, and all the data pertaining to therein. Seven distrtics with variable numbers of prefectures, although the total number of prefectures given here is 1,000 (whether or not this carries over to "Later" RL stuff is unknown.

In command of a planet's branch of the ICS (Imperial Civil Serivce), governors wild almost total power over the lives of their planet's people. Usuaully able to get waht they want with a quick punch at the ICS computer, they are the de factor ulers of their worlds. Tension between the Governors and Clarissimi Senaors usually rusn high. The Clarissimi tend to enlist the military as their ally, while the ICS Governors look to the Lictor.

More on the "divided" nature of TOGs government

Praetors are department heads within a district, but their responsibility tends to be very specialized, e.g. Praetor in charrge of all statistical data on the sexual behaviour of Livestock in ADverse Envirioment sin the District.

..

The Governor Praetor is the head of the ICS in each District. He is a powerful figure whose most important task is to collect taxes. To insure that nothing interrupts the flow of revenue, the Governor Praetor can override even an Illustrus Senator, using a bit of blackmail as a cudgel. Governor Praetors usually have connections to the Lictor, to the point of actively working for it.

Praetors seem to be government specialists of a sort. Some are useufl, some not so useful. And also more in their interactions with Senators (and why the two sides dont seem to get along.)

These [Overlords] serve as troubleshooters and hired guns of the Caesar, with tasks ranging from factfinding trips to torture to assasinations of enemies.

..

The number varies with the Caesar, ranging from 31 under teh reign of First ProConsul Mischenko to 59 during Caesar Tourlaville's reign.

...

Overlords wield tremendous power. Once assigned a task, they have free reign to do anything neccessary to achieve the goal. The most powerful Overlord heads the Lictor in its work of espionage, assasination, and blackmail. All Overlords maintain a working reliationship with the Lictor, and have the authority to give orders to Lictor agents if neccessary.

Overlords are yet another kind of specialist, and seem to be a counter for the more powerful levels of Senator. They're also very powerful.and complete bastards, I'd guess.

Praetorian Guard
These legion-sized units are assigned the task of protecting the Caesar and the Overlords, as well as serving as an elite reserve during wartime. Recruits are culled from the elite of the military schools based on their skill and their devotion to both Caesar and the empire. The recruits also undergo special indoctrination that raises their loyalty to near fanatacism.

The organization of the guard remsembles that of the Mecahnised Infantry Legion. They have a wide range of fighting equipment at their disposal and also employ enough transports and warships to protect themselves and t heir charges. There are currently 286 Praetorian Guard units.

The Elite of the Elite. Its also funny to think there are manyy ore of them than Traviss thinks there are clones.

First created under the reign of First Proconsul Kershaw, the Lictor is the dark arm of the TOG Government. Its sinister influence pervades all levels of government, because of its actions and by the sheer paranoia it inspires.

..

The Internal Security division (IS) handles matters such as infiltration of underground Renegades and the various assasinations ordered by the CAesar and Overlords. The External affairs division (EA) is responsible for matters relateing to other realms, such as the Seduction of the Naram. There is intense rivalry between the IS and EA.

All evil empires need an Inquisition like organization. The Lictor is the TOG's. They seem pretty ruthless bastards, all told.

Citizens are protected by the jus civile.

Citizenship is now hereditary, with citizens making up about 30 percent of the population.

..

Though this [Patria Potestas] relegated women to the status of possessions, they still serve in military. They cannot rise above the rank of Centurion Maximus, however.

..

A citizen's duties include three years of military service, the responsibility of voting for Senators, and periodic acts of mercy to their slaves or employed plebians.

...

Plebians and slaves may purchase citizenship from corrupt magistrats and senators, though very few can afford it. Members of alien races can become citizens only after the race as a whole has proved itself. Even then, only individual aliens are promoted to citizenship.

Description of citizens, telling us about 1/3 of the TOG
(male) populace is defintiely military potential.

Plebians are the largest grgoup within TOG, comprising slightly over 45 percent of the population.

..

Plebians are protected by the jus gentium, a body of laws pertaining to their class and to the administration of conquered races. These laws protect a plebian from bodily harm and provide limited protection of his wealth and property. Plebians can hold posts in major corporations and may even own them if the firms are not defense-related industries. Plebians can enter into contracts with ciitzens, including defense-related arrangements, if the individual has received Lictor clerance. Plebian scan enter the military and may even aspire to citizenship by virute of some heroic action.

...
conquered alien racecs rise from slavery to the plebian class once they have proven their loyalty to the TOG.

Description of the plebian class.

Plebians make up nearly half of the overall population Though limited, they can be in the military too, which increases the potential military recruits to 75% of the male population.

Slaves in TOG are the empire's disposalbe source of manpower. Most of their rights are covered by property laws tat prohibit deliberate mutilation or misuse of one's own property. Not much other protection exists for slaves, though a few Citizens Consul groups will take slave cases before Magitrates (This exposes them to intense and constant scrutiny by hte Lictor, however.

Only citizens can own slaves. Males may not marry into a higher class, though females may. Twenty-five perceent fo the TOG popuilation are slaves.

A person becomes a slave in various ways. First, he may be someone who was caught actively opposing the TOG. Second, ,he may be a member of an alienr ace that has actively fought against the TOG, such as the KessRith. Third, he may hae sold himself (or his offf-spring) into slavery for a certain period of time. Such a citizen can reclaim his rights and property once his term of service is up.

[/quote]

Slavery as desc ribed seems mroe of a fashion or cultural thing than an actual necessity (As in they need slaves for production or whatever.) Slavery is used in certain pursuits (mining and construction) but its known they make extensive use of automation. THey'd almost have to, given how small a percentage of the overall population slavery is.

[Connor MacLeod]

Next update for Interceeptor:

There are almost eight million legions, ,each composed of over 50,000 men, as well as 100,000 battleship groups and innumerable lesser warships and transports and their crews.

The scope of the TOG's military might. We aren't told definitely how the legions breakdown, but there are hints/implications that this is not the sum total of their whole ground forces (just basicall ythe active/offensive elements, the elite.) Either the TOG drastically under-utilizes the potential pool of military recruits they have for the ground forces, or most of those are purely garrison/militai forces stationed to individual planets (the RL equivalent of PDF in other words.)

On the navy side, we have "100,000 battleship groups." In this context I have come to believe they originally meant "battleship group" and "Battleship squadron" to be interchangable. Later, however, the term "battleship grroup" came to mean multiple squadrons, so there are alot more than that. In additon, ther e are "innumerable lesser warships and transports" which aren't parrt of the battleship grroups proper. This presumably would include Carrier groups and squadrons, cruiser groups/squadrons, and stuff like that.

every male citizen and plebian (except those of untrustworrthy alien racial background) is conscripted on his 16th birthday. Recruits serve a minimum of three years, though most sign up f or at least six to take advnatage of better benefits.

...

Women can enlist any time aftr their 16th birthday but the percentage has dropped from 40 percent to 20 percent since the Patria Potestas There is a strong effort to attract more female enlistment, however, to bolsterr up some sagging legions. More than 40 alien races are currently represented in the Imperial Military, amounting to about 30 percent of the troops.

Distribution of the military and the conscription guidelines. Note that given the size of the TOG empire and the number of planets (and thus probable population sizes) the number of potential recruits available can be quite immense (arguably far larger than the 8 million legions bit.)

It takes a navy of massive proportions to transport and protect the 8,000,000 Imperial legions, as well as to take part in offensive actions. With at least a billion separate warships and three times as many transpors the imperial Navy can mount devastating invsions.

A more exact number of warships and transports. Note here that its also implied the 8 million legions are purely an offensive arm, with the aforementioend Navy assets being dedicated to supporting such offensive operations. This may not include civiliaan transporrts/freighters (commercial interest) as well as defensive fleets and grgound forces (which may be what covers the conscription and garrison forces, again following the PDF analogy)

A fighter weighs less than 20 tons, and is piloted by a flight Officer.

A (technical) definition of a fighter.

Other classes of ships include gunboats, corvettes, escort vessels, frigates, destrroyers, cruisers, battleships, carriers, communications vessels, and a dizzying array of transport vehivcles (some of which can carry severa full legions.)

Groups of lesser vehicles are usually organiseed around battleships to make a battleship group. These usually consist of a vital communications vessel, one or two cruisers, four to six destroyers, and four to eight lesser picket ship. One or two battleship groups are sometimes attached to the huge carriers which can carry at least an entire fighter wing.) to provide heavy weapons protection for the generally lightly armed carrier. There have been instances of groups larger than a carrier group assmbling into task forces and fleets, but these formations disband immediately upon completion of th emission.

Some regional fleets, under the command of a specific adrmiral, do exist as a floating reserve. Some of the more important Praetorian Guards use a battleship group as protection, while the Caesar uses two complete carrier groups for protection.

Mention of other ship classes. Of note:

- Communications vessels (which presumably refer to mobile VLCA arrays) and transports (being able to carry "several full legions" and their eqipment is considered impressive, it would seem.)

- composition and organization of a battleship group. Note that these numbers have varied with alter editions (no mention of the communications vessel for example, and the "picket ships" were replaced by frigates/destroyers and escorts/corvettes.)

- Mention that one or two battleship groups (Ior squadrons, depending on interpretation) can be attached to Carrier groups (or squadrons.) Carrier groups seme to be the largest permanant military formation.

- mention of "reserve" fleets, and "regional" fleets. Also the Praetorians and the Caesar himself have their own battleship groups (or in the case of the latter, carrier groups.)

The Commonwealth is a Human-Baufrin civilization in the far end of the Orion Arm, comprising some 40,000 stars, and stretching across and arc of space roughly 45,000 light years in length.

Given the above information, the Commonwealth seems rather sparsely populated and spread over alot of territory (unlike, say, TOG.) This can be a double edged sword I suppose.

The [snow] Plague affected Humans and Naram only, and wiped out 80 to 90 percent of the Human/Naram population in space. The epidemic left countless planets vacant, both in the Commonwealth in Orion and in the Human Empire around Terra.

The Snow Plague again, note that its mentioned that for the scale of the TOG and the human galaxy, humanties numbers (a s mentioned much later in Legionnaire) and population figures seem alot lower than one might expect for a civilization this old. The Snow Plague is probably a good reason for this (humanity is still rebuilding from the epidemic.)

A large portion of the Commonwealth Humans were of British stock, and they patterned their government on the old British model of an electoral democracy with a parallel nobility government consisted of a two-house Parliment (House of Commons, House of Lords) led by an elected Prime Miniter, accompanied by a Noble. A Baron presides at the planetary level, a count at the County level (50 planets), and a Grand Duke t the Dukedom level (50 counties.)

...

The commonwelath crest is a crown surrounded by 21 stars representing each of the Grand Dukedoms, including eight now in the hands of the TOG.[

21 Grand Dukedoms, with 50 counties and 50 planets per county - 52,000 planets roughly (or roughly 1.3 planets per star.. multiple planets per system may be inhabited.)

[Andras]

Fighters can get up to 250 tons though, a 20 ton fighter would be pretty pathetic and doesn't exist according to the Interceptor source-books. The lightest fighter about 70 tons.

I worked out a Fleet organization system based on the Leviathan sourcebooks, but it's not canon in any way

BatDiv= 1 Battleship
CruDiv= 2 Cruisers or 1 Cruiser + 2 Frigates
DesDiv= 4 Destroyers

Squadrons (Ron) consist of 3 Divisions
A typical BatRon consists of 1 each Div: 1 BB, 1 CA, 2 FF, 4DD, plus a couple corvettes
A CruRon would not have any BBs, a DesRon would be only destroyers.

Groups (Gru) consist of a reinforced Squadron with up to 2 add'l divisions, for example a TOG Hunter Killer Group has 3 battleships, 2 Cruisers and 4 Destroyers

Fleets are 2 or more full Rons under one command.

If the largest unit is a carrier, then Car is used as a prefix, ie CarBatRon, CarCruDiv

(from memory, subject to editing after I get to my work computer Monday morning)

[Andras]

Ok, I ran out of edits on that post.

Commonwealth Hunt/Kill Groups have 3 Ventrix Battleships, 2 cruisers and 4 destroyers.

TOG Battleship groups have 3-5 Shiva class BBs, 2-4 Cruiser squadrons, and 4-8 Frigate and Destroyer squadrons. (Leviathan Capital Ship Briefing pg 108)

[Connor MacLeod]

Damn I really have to get mym hands on a copy of that capital ship briefing. Its rarer than Space Marine

The fleet organization is still interesting though3, because one fo the things thats wonky about RL (one of the areas that its inconsistent) is in the organization. Wake of the Kraken for example had a Battleship group (IIRC) compsed of two battleship squadrons. I wont even get into what's all in the Shannedam County sourcebook.. so I doubt yours are any less problematic than the "official" ones.

Part of this I think is because they were doing ongoing revisions of "canon" such as it were. With every different game system (From Interceptor to LEviathan to Prefect to Legionnaire, etc.) it changed either a little bit or alot.

And yeah you're right, fighters are alot largert han 20 tons. I initiailyl thought I'd erred on tha tquote but going back to look, thats how it was. Go figure. *shrugs*

[Andras]

To follow up on my proposed fleet orgs, I missed a level when doing it form memory.

Squadrons= 3 Div,
Groups* (Gru)= 1 Reinforced Ron with up to 2 extra Ron ,
Forces (For) is 2-3 full squadrons,
Fleets are more then 3 squadrons.

*Commonwealth only, as noted above, TOG Groups are a collection of about 10 squadrons.

[Connor MacLeod]

The Commonwealth is in the unusual position for a government of having a dual military structure, the larger part of which is not technically under its control. The 300,000-plus Renegade Legions are the backbone of Commonwealth defiance of the TOG. Fighting alongside them are some 200,000 Legions of the Commonwealth Armed Forces (CAF.)

...

Each [RL and CAF] is obliged to follow the orders of the other when necessary, although the Renegade Legions interpret "necessary" much more independently.

The Renegade Legions actively recruit on Commonwelath planets, and there is still a flow of trained soldiers coming in from the TOG. Young Commonwealth men and women consider it a great honor to be asked to be a legionnaire.

The Grand Parliment of the Commonwealth provides about 80 percecnt of the Renegade Legion's yearly budget, with leveis on the many planet-owning Renegade families making up the rest.

Organization of the dual Commonwealth/Renegade Legion forces - combined they have half a million legions (compared to 8 million for TOG), but most of the budget comes from the Commonwealth as well.

I have to say I can't really decide if the whole "dual, independetnt" command structure is a good idea though. While it may have some advantages (Allowing one force to act if the other is tied for some bizarre reason), the fact they can (and do) conflict and have opposing agendas/methods despite having similar goals is bound to create more problems than it solves. The added fact they draw upon a similar resource pool also must lead to some unneccesary friction/competition.

They [Baurfrin] stand about one meter tall, weigh about 60 kilos, and have three pairs of legs extending from the center of their segmented bodies.

Baufrin physical stuff

Among the Renegades, the Legions are surface fighting units while the Navy fights in space and within the atmosphere. Aquatic navies, or units used for ship-to-ship actions, are considered special divisions of the branches.

Structure of Renegade Forces.

About half of the 200,000 Commonwealth Legions are modeled after the typical Renegade Legion. The rest are a variety of organizational forms representing the different civilizations that have gone into making up the Commonwealth.

Units designated 'B'ekkal" are patterned afte rthe Naram B'ekkal. They are highly mobile, lightly armored and equal in size ot Legions. They ar manned mostly by humans and Naram-humans.

"KessRith" units follow the unit organization favored in the KessRith Empire. They are heavily armored and highly potent, but rather slow, and samller than Legions.

Unit designated "Buafrin" are modeled after the organization favored by the Baubrin. Medium armor, medium potency, average speed. They too are smaller than the average Legion.

"Vavusar" units, of which there are only a few, are extrmeely potent and agile, but they have little armor. They are smaller than Legions.

"Mixed" units are just that.

"Infantry" units are composed mainly of foot soldiers, with enough light vehicles to move them about swiftly, but minimal air, armor or artillery support.

"Heavy Infantry" units have more armor, air, and artilley support, an the better protected infantrymen carry more potent weapons.

"Mechanized Infantry" has all the support of HEavy Infantry and also uses heavily armored personnel carriers, with heavy supporrt from tanks and artillery.

Uniuts designated "Air Mobile" are basically the same as light infantry units, but they move about the attlefield by air rather than on the ground.

Units designated "Armored" or "tank" have the use of weapons vehicles, either ground effect, tracked, or anti-grav, depending on whether they are classified "Light", "Medium" or "heavy". They usually have heavy artillery support.

"Artillery" units are armed with long range weapons systems like cannons, large lasers, or missiles. They are usually supported by small infantry units and tanks. They are designated "Mobile" if the weapons ar emounted on anti-grgav or tracked vehicles or packed into aircraft.

[Long] commentary on Commonwealth forces organization. Note that because the Commonwealth tends to draw from a common, multispecies background, means that their logistics are alot more complex than TOG or Renegade logistics, as they have to accomdoate the diifferences and/or variations in each forces, and this can mean that not all stuff they are carrying may be interchangable (things like ammunition, medical supplies and certainly food will differ from species to species, and each must be carried)

The Royal Army undertakes most ground action. The Royal Navy is responsible for all starship action, including action by fighters of the Royal Fleet Aerospace Arm. The Legions and smaller units of the Royal Marine Corps handle boarding actions between ships. They are also trained to deal with certain types of ground action, such as seizing and holding spaceports. Action by all fighters based on planets are the responsibility of the Royal Aerospace force.

Antiterrorist squads, combat engineers, and commando units make up the Special Forces. The Planetary Militia are composed of forces specifically related to the various planet's surfaces, such as aquatic navies, ground effect vehicle units and special terrain forces, as well as transportation and supply for all military operating on their worlds. They also act as reserves, and provide special terrain advisors to Royal Army and Royal Marine Corps units on their planets.

structure of Commonwealth forces. Its not known here whether the Planetary Militias are part of the Legion counts provided before or are separate.

In this dimension, which lies at right angles to our own, the absolute minimum speed of any particle is the speed of light. When a ship reaches its entry speed for T-space, its drive sends it neither right nor left, up nor down, nor forward nor backward, nor any combination of these normal directions. Instead the vessel shoots THAT way at a seemingly impossible right angle through one of Professor Ho's dimesnional seams. It instantaneously reaches a velocity above the speed of light in proportion to its speed of entry.

The nature and elements of Tachyon space and T-space travel.

The minimum speed for entering T-spacec is 2.5x10^-5 C (C=Speed of Light) which puts the vessel into T-space at a speed of one light year per month (ly/month.) Maximum entry speed is .5c, which results in the incredible speed of 100,000 ly/month onc ethe vessel enters T-space.

Note that in later editions (Starting with Leviathan onward) top FTL speed is something like 10,000 LY/month for warships and maximum entry speed is far less than even 1% of c. in principle one might treat this as a retcon, but another possibility is that the 100,000 LY/month may represent specialized ships, or a "burst" Speed capacity (one that trades endurance for speed - certainly accelerating up to a significant fraction of lightspeed is NOT going to be very efficient in terms of energgy and propellant.) Alternately, it may require special vehicles or technologies (or ship designs) to take advantange of. (And even if it did, it would be hideously more detectable than the speeds given in latter supplements anyhow.)

To acceclerate the ship forward, the I-K Drive uses an anti-gravity compression chamber that super-heats hydrogen and helium atoms to near-relativistic energies before they exit the chamber.

In other words, they're reaction drives that fling propellant out at relatavistic speeds. Although the effect mayhave some technobabbly elements to it (using AG for example)

This also means that power generation can be estimated if we know mass and accelerations. We do, but the masses given in latter supplements for starships are rather low thoug for capital ships.

In T-spacee, where stars are black objects radiating streams of Tachyons of all possible colors and speesd, ships could not communicate with other ships or planets, fire their weapons, or maneuver in that alternate reality. The energy necessary was several grades beyond iompossible. Though scientists experimented with a number of solutions, the results were disastrous. The engines either dissolved into puddles of molten metal or whole vessels exploded into Tachyon particles. These failures led to the discovery of a new inviolable universeal law: in T-spacee, it is possible to travel only in a straight line.

More details on T-space, and limitations on T-space travel.

To navigate in T-space, a ship must aim precisely towards its destination as it accelerates to entry speed. The further the destination, the longer the distance the ship must travel before entering T-space. To put the ship on a precise enough path required the development of highly precise navigational computers. These computers are rated at the acceleration in Gs at which they can calculate an accurate course.

For example, it takes a 5 G navigation computer 150 hours to calculate a course through T-space toward a destination 100,000 light years from the entry point. During these hours spent calculating, the ship must be accelerating up to .5c and be under the computer's complete control. For a computer rated at 20 G, it would take only 50 hours to navigate a safe course over the same distance of 100,000 light years. (In a crisis, a captain might choose to override the computer and take his ship directly into T-space before computer calculations are complete. He knows, of course, that he risks becoming permanantly lost in doing so.)

Like with SW hyperdrive, T-space travel relies on precise coordinates before the jump. What is interesting here is that the existence of "20 G" navigation computers suggests that some ships (including T-space capable ones) are capable of double digit gee acceelerations. This may be a design consideration or it may be a power allocattion one (By game standards, ships tend to operate with power evenly distributed between all major systems - wepaons, engines nd shields , so again in theory accels could be boosted by re--allocating power at the expense of other systems.)

Knowing a ship's path and speed is a sure way to infer its destination, especially because T-space vessels leave telltale trails that indicat etheir direction of movement. When pursued, a ship's captain must often play cat and mouse by making many short hops in zigzag fashion in and out of T-space, hoping to throw his pursuers off the trail.

Tracking ships using T-space travel and its influence on tactics.

Because normal matter is slightly out of syncrhonization with the energies of T-spacec, when the two come into contact, it creates a kind of disharmony, or friction. The phenomenon is known as Shimmer heat, and shows as a brilliant flash of light as T-space vessels reenter normal space. The bodies of the passengers also continue to shimmer slightly upon reentry. Over time, this disharmony results in serious overheating. The time limit that vessels or people can remain in T-space is about 30 days. AFter that time, Tacyhon Meltdown - and death- occur. First the ship and its passengers melt into a pool of metals and assorted organic smears, and then the whole mass explodes into a shower of Tachyons, with the atoms of the victims converting into base Tachyon energy.

To disperse the effects of Shimmer Heat, people and things must spend an equal amount of time in normal space as they have just spent in T-space. Someone who has spent 29 days in T-space, for example, must then spend another 29 days in normal space to totally rid himself of Shimmer heat.

Explanation of and reasons for the necessity of "bleeding off" the shimmer heat accumulated in T-space.

The basic principle behind the P-comm system is relatively simple. When an electromagnetic wave is passed through a wave grate generator, polarization occurs. Those portions of the electromagnetic wave not lined up with the wave grate being generated are filtered out. If two waves grates wer eoperating with their wave directions at right angles to one another, they would effectively block the electromagnetic wave from passing beyond the second wave grate. What no one understood was what happened to the energy present in the thwarted wave. It remained a mystery until the scientists of Delta Alphecca passed a Tachyon detector behind two workign wave grates and discovered that an extremely energetic system wave of Tacyhons was being emitted.


...

The beauty of the P-comm system is its simple technology. (Indeed, it is so simple that almost anyone can construct a P-comm system to listen in to what the galaxy is saying.) THE P-comm system also compacts easily into a group of circuit tubes, and so is suitable for use by even the smalest ship.

The evolution and principles behind P-comms. Its also a relatively well understood, developed and diverse technology (like SW subspace, only far more so, given how utterly compact it can be.)

A ship cannot transmit or receive using a P-comm while traveling in T-spacee, which could be inconvenient.

...

..Mmessages sent via P-comm coujld travel no fater than 20,000 ly/month.

Limitations of P-comm. Its interesting that the top speed is a mere 20,000 LY/month, even though it is mentioned befor ethat ships can go 100,000 LY/month. One would think that it should be posslbe for P-Comms to achieve similar speed if not faster. This may be proof of the 100,000 LY/month speed being a typo, or it may hint at limitations peculiar to P-comm but not to hyperdrive (although that seems a bit odd.) Or maybe there are some sortts of limitations that limit achieving such speeds with P-comm despite it being possible (IE power draw, engineering limitations, etc.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Another entry.. more tech stuff including fighter scale weapons and defenses...

When Stomtra transmitted his message at the appointed time, Dr. Jessica Sulta was startled to hear the Professor's voice over her speakres at the same instant he spoke. A fwe moments later, teh same message came across via the P-Comm.

...

It seeemed impossible, but the "echo" they had been pursuing was not the trailing ghost of a message but the instantaneous transmission of information from Terra to far-off Pluto.

...


"normal" reality uses lenght, width, height, and time. Those also exist in T-space, but with a slight difference in the boundaries of possibility. What the two soon-to-be rich and famous researchers assumed was that their messages had traveled (if such a word applied) through a previously unknown reality, where time was not a factor.

Further explanation of the mechanism behind P-Comm and how it applies to the evolution of VLCA.

This is not to say that the VCLA is wihtout disadvantages. The first of these is the sheer size of the system. In order to communicate effectively with the most distant star an array of ultra-sensitive polarizing transceivers at least a kilometer in area is required. This requires that each installation must draw enormous power from either solar panels or an harmonic crystal generator. Like its predecessor the P-comm, the VCLA is also inoperable in T-space.

The most serious limitation was that the array must be aimed directly at the recipient of the message, which requires sophisticated computers to accomplish.

As a result, VLCAs are usually huge complexes of arrays, solar collectors, and maneuvring engines orbiting a few select worlds. Some of the larger VLCAs are equipped with several arrays to handle several messages simultaneously. Communications ships, usually reserved for navies, are huge affairs bedecked with enormous, ,yet fragile, panels that can be lowered and stored for flight.

The description of the size, design, function and variations on VLCAs.

Scientists discovered that by coupling a working P-Comm transceiver system with a doppler radar set, they could obtain a visual or aural picture of the surrounding sphere of T-space. This joining of the two systems became known as the T-doppler, and allowed operators to see approaching and departing ships as they traveled in T-space.

Though the T-doppler was a boon to space traffic control, the major benefactor was the military. Though the device detects approaching ships within only a certain sphere, it does offer the military enough warning time to prepare a proper defense.[

T-doppler. It seems, curiously, that it is an active system, and yet it only seems to be able to detect objects in T-space, particularily since its implied to be an active system. PErversely, alot of the latter descriptions seem to imply its not an active but a passive system. And if the system was active, and it interacted with objects in T-space (Despite being in realspace) one would suspect the interactions could also go the other way (or vice versa), and that their FTL sensors could detect objects in realspace too. Go figure.

me, I'm inclined to think they may have some form of FTL realspace detection (they have fTL comms) but thats just me and I doubt its going tob e more than accidental/incidental evidence. (but there's enough of that too)

Mass driver cannons usually consist of a long tube made of superconductive metal to which twining rails of a magnetic material are attached. Fed into the breech of this tube are the projectiles, usually four or five centimeter slivers of hardened steel. An extremely strong current passes through the tube to accelerate the projectiel down the barrel on the crest of a wave of magnetism generated by the tube and rails.

...

On the downside, MAss-driver cannon is heavy and tends to take up quite a bit of space, which is precious in the smaller vessel classes. Also the speed of a Mass-driver shell is relatively slow, so its effective range in a high speed space battle is limited.

Its not certain whether 4-5 cm is the width or the length, but I'm betting on width (40-50 mm would be consistent with airplane cannons, if slightly larger.) With the ranges, you would expect velocites at least in the tens or hundreds of km/s, if not hundreds/thousands of km/s (and a shell that weighs a couple kg easily) you could expect single/double/triple digit GJ shells at least possibly low TJ with higher velocities (Thousands of km/s)

Lasers are coherent beams of light generated through Gennium-Arsenic crystals. Once up to power, the laser bolt is turned loose and focused through optical lenses or electromagnetic aiming devices. The amount of damage it can do depends on the laser's distance from the target, as its beam tends todisperse and grow weaker over long distances.

Lasers have superb penetrating power. While most weapons cause conical-shaped damage profiles when striking armor plating, the damage profile of a laser hit is a column. It is not uncommon to see armor plate that can easily absorb a mass-drive hit to be drilled right through by a laser hit.

I find it curious that lasers can be focused through EM appartus, but oh well. LAsers are also cutting weapons quite obviously, this probably means that most of them are sustained-beam weapons (or a lot of single pulses), as too high a single pulse might be explosive.

Gennium-Arsenic is a dun-colored ore that exists only on violent worlds whose catastrophic forces combine perfectly to create thsi rare ore. BEcaue the ore is so often associated with posionous gases or radioactivity, or with volcanos and other unstable land conditions, many realms force slaves or criminals to do the dangerous work of minin gGennium Arsenic.

/...

Once mined, the ore is sent to be grown into crystal. This proceess is so complex that it can be done only in a zero-G enviroment. First, the crystal is "sseded" by immersing a diamond "bud" attached to a rotating shaft in an electrically cahrged froth of crushed ore. The charged ore collects on teh surface of the diamond and begins to crystallize. Once a sizable crystal is started, the diamond bud is broken off, to be used again. The crystal is then examined fo rpurity and trueness before being placed back upon the rotating shaft, to be bathed and grown in th eore again. The crystal is then examined for purity and trueness before being placed back upon the rotating shaft, to be bathed and grown in the ore again. After another interval, the crystal is examined once more. This lenghty process of bathing and then examining the crystal continues for as long as it takes to create one of the right length and diameter.

Crystals range in size from .5 meters long and about a centimeter in diameter for hand weapons to an incredlbe ten meters long and ten centimeters in daimeter for the largets laser cannon on a battleship. Purity is essential.

..

Needless to say, both the mines and orbiting facilities at which the crystals are grown are often known as "Crystal Gardens," are prime military targets.

Description of Gennium-Arsneic technobabble crystals and how they are employed in laser weapons and mined. Its rather curious they have to use slave mining rather than (Say0 robots, since we know from other sourcees (Tessdrake station) they do use autmated constrtuction.)

The electron particle cannon (EPC) strips away the electrons from atoms, usually hydrogen or helium atoms from the I-K Drive's fuel reserve. Then, a complicated series of superconductive magnets and focusers accelerate the streams of electrons to near the speed of light before spewing them at the target. Though the magnets, focusers and mechanisms to acquire the electrons are relatively small and lightweigh, the power required to fire the weapon is high.

The EPC is a short range weapon. The beam, which is visible in space as a faint blue line, is most effecitve for close-in fighting between ships. an EPC hit is dispersed over the surface of the target. Thus, rather than penetrating armor plating, EPCS boil it off in large chunks, a layer at a time. Because planetary atmospheres prove to be too much of a barrier to the high negative charge of an EPC beam, it has not been possible to develop versions suited to planetside combat.

Electro particle cannon description. As a near-c weapon it should probably have a potentail range of thousands of km, though in reality its "charged" nature would cut down on this greatly in space (probably even more than the ranges they give it here.)

The Neutron Partticle Cannon (NPC) works by first stripping the neutrons from an atom (usuaully helium or lithium). As neutrons have no charge, it is impossible to manipulate them with electromagnetic forces, a problem that scientists long ago solvd with "masking." In this process, the cannon's mechanism bombards the neutron with tachyons (1) to substantially reduce the neutron's mass and (2) to lay an almost imperceptible charge on the neutron. Once the neutron is charged, superconductive magnets and focusers, much like those in the EPC, can accelerate the neutron.

Once it has left the cannon, the neutron gradually reconverts to its original state. This accounts for the unexpected ability of the cannon to do more damage at a distance than up close, making it an excellent long-range weapon. BEcause neutrons are many times heavier then electrons, the neutron beam can effectively penetrate armor if it hits a target. Its major drawback is that the weapon requires much pwoer to fire and its machinery is frequently sullen.

Though there have been many attemps to have the two weapons share focusers, magnets and the like, all efforts have so far been disastrous failures.

I really have to wonder why they needed to invent such a technobabble method to accelerate neutrons rahter than just use their gravwank (they can use their gravity conrol to accelerate charged particles for their engines, but not for their beams?)

moreover, this suggests tachyons can indeed have some sort of realspace interaction of some kind, which again begs the question of why no alternate FTL comms or sensor system (the tacyhons must be able to provide propulsive force to the neutrons, after all) even if the tachyons literally did not "return" they probably could detect the scatter/bounce via T-doppler or some such.

The RIS missile is guided by the radiation emissions of its target. Modern countermeasures have greatly reduced these emissions from most areas of a combat craft, but the engine exhausts are still "hot" enough for these missiles to home in on. Their relatively simple guidance controls allow for a larger warhead, but by quickly swinging the stern of the craf tou of the RIS' scanning arc, manuverable ships can cause the missile to lose their lock-on.[

Basically a heat seeking missile.

The SSS missile scans its target prior to launch and builds up a three-dimensional image, or silhouette, of its target. As the SSS guides itself ot the taget, it continually scans every object in teh scanner arc and compares it to the computer image of its targert. Necessary adjustments are made in its course, and the missile flies itself into the target. Early versions of the SSS could be confused by having a ship of the same class corss closely behind the target ship. Current versions of the SSS have more effective discrimination systems that ar enot as easily fooled.

An active, self-guided/tracking warhead. A more sophisticated sort of "radar guided" missile one assumes, since as I recall it does use some sort of scanner built into the ship.

Planetary gravity reacted with a tank's anti-gravity device to create a wake of pressure-gravity, a fine sheet of extreme gravity extending a few centimeters around the tank's l ower surface. This made all but the most powerful weapon veer harmelssly away or detonate prematurely.

...

The results [of a shield test] were less than satisfying, for the shield quickly drew more power than the system could supply. In later trials, the professor discovered that when the shield passed the poitn of no return, the wave of pressure gravity collapsed upon itself. His unfortunate assistant was literally rippled to death even before the shield detonated.

Pressure-gravity technobabble shield tecqhnique. One presumes that logically the gravity is more of a byproduct than what actually provides the shielding itself (gravity brainbug) and may expalin the method by which they can operate their ion drives. It probably also provides EM like functions, though the loss of energy from constantly having to "re-start" the process probably creates detection problems of it sown.

The reason why they do the "flicker shield" thing does make some sense given the destructive effects if the shield persists...(its probably like creating some sorrt of technobabble black hole/singularity thing) so you have to "cut off" before it gets permanant. A possible mechanism for "creating" the field effect while causing an energy expenditure might involve creating some sorrt of "spinning" matter mechanism (a sort of gravity field might be created as a side effect, real life scientists have speculated on using similar techniques in Bose-Einsstein Condensates to create a sort of "anti gravity" effect I believe) and having to constantly "re-spin" the field would require a constant energy draw.

One has to wonder though why the grav drives of tanks and such do not suffer this problem.. however..

To lessen the shield's power demands, a new version was developed to flicker like a strobe. In the fixed type most used on fighters, teh flicker rate was preset and unchanging. In the variable version, the pilot could set the shield to flicker at different rate,s according to his needs.

A shield's effectiveness is measured by teh number of on-off cycles it goes through in a second (flicker rate) Under combat conditions, a shiled rated at 70 would intercept most incoming attacks 50% of the time. THere is no theoretical limit to a shield's flicker rate. THere are two practical limits, however. Firt, as the flicker rate increased, the power usage increased geometrically. A flicker of 200 would have a power requirement of a small city. Second, there seems to be a limit on battlefield effectiveness. No matter how fast the flicker rate, at least 10 percent of all shots get through.

[/quote]

I'm not really sure there is any definite relationship between accuracy or flicker rate beyond this, or why power would "increase geometrically", or why 10% of shots would get through regardles of how fast a flicker rate you go (Centurion and Leviathan seem to offer data contradicting this, anyhow) The best rationalization I can really think of is that this applies mainly to fighter-grade shields, since fighters are alot more limited in shielding than bigger ships.

The "fixed flicker rate" also seems odd as Centurion implies tanks can vary their flicker rates to defeat lasers.

[Connor MacLeod]

There are 40 worlds in the [Shannendam] County. In the current game year of 6831, TOG has captured 16 Shannendam worlds during the 20 years of fighting within the County.

The current game year and the number of worlds in Shannedam conty. Both are important for latter analyssi.

Precious metals are another vital resource with which the Shannendam County is blessed. It mattered little what metal was needed, be it TroCobalt for the construction of advanced electronics, or rare Molybdenum-Titanium alloys.

Types of materials utilized in the Renegade Legion universe.

Industrial worlds to process the abundant natural resources are numerous in the region, but none are moer important than the Tiven-Rilus-Ope'Diar Industrial Megaplex. This consortium of major industries on the three worlds banded together about a century ago to drop all barries that restricted free trade between them..

The region is also heavily industrialized, at least 4 (probably far more) industrial worlds.

The average population of each planet in the county [Shannendam] was about one billion, wiht the highest on Shannendam IV (now known as Deifance) at about four billion, and 300,000 on Novuta, the least populated planet in the realm.

Of the 40 billion inhabitants, about 42 percent are human of mixed anceestry and beliefs.

Assuming the population averages per planet hold for other counties, there could be 40-50 trillion beings in the Commonwealth. If we assumed this population balance held for the TOG (unsubstantiated but reasonable, given the Commonwealth is on the fringe of the galaxy while the TOG is older, more established, and a denser region) it qould be quadrillions of people (at least 1-2 million systems.) at least, but potentially upwards of quintillions (implied billions of systems) which does fall within the range hinted at in the latter Legionaaire sourcese (more than a few quadrillion but less than quintillions)

When the TOG battleship IWS Death Wind was rammed and destroyed by the Commonwealth heavy cruiser CPS
Windwona, teh battle was permanantly lost for the TOG.

...

Seeing this, the rest of the TOG naval forces no longer fought to win, but merely to survive. Though the battle was to last another two days, the TOG forcecs never came close ot landing their ground units.

Mention of a "two day" battle, and a battleship destroyed by collision with a heavy cruiser (speed/velocity unknown, so it cannot be calced, but even at a low velocity the sheer momentum involved should be nasty regardless.)

.. The IWS (Imperial Warship) Wolf's Blood.

clarification of what IWS stands for.

The 345th Commonwealth Wing is a new unit formed from the remnants of the 132nd Commonwealth Carrier Wing (The Disrespectful) and the 321st Interceptor Wing (The Commonwealth Hustlers), both of which were decimated in the First Battle of Defiance. The remainder of the new wing was filled with pilots and weapons officers fresh from various academies. Most of these untried men and women came from the planet Xiphias, perhaps the most beautiful planet in the entire Commonwealth.

The unit's completely new carrier, the CPS (Commonwealth People's Ship) Beauty of Xiphias, was built at the Xiphias shipyards, as were many of the fighters the sons and daughters of the planet would be piloting.

...

Now that they have just entered Shannendam County, ,the veterans are tense with expectation..

the fighters and the carrier of the 345th Commonwealth Wing was built between the First Battle of Defiance (around 6829) and the current time (6831), which indicates that it took les than two years to build and oufti (and transfer ot the system.) Given the fact it carries a full wing, this probably means a frigate sized vessel (larrge frigate or small cruiser perhaps.) giving us a definite benchmark on starship building.

Current standard doctrine calls for deep in-system interceptions by Penetrators, Cheetahs, or Avengers, while the Guardians stay close to their assigned installations and engage only those TOG forcecs that come within a few hundreds kilometers.

fighter engagement ranges of "a few hundred kilometerS", suggestin 200-300 km (which meshes up with the hex stats, I should add.)

the pilots did a very convincing statistical study. This study showed that 40 percecnt of TOG's critical war industrial capacity was in space or on vacuum worlds. The study also showed that if TOG responded to Gull deployment by relocating only 10 percent of that capacity back onto planets, the economic loss to TOG would be 156,457 times the cost of the entire projected Gull procurement.

the TOG (and likely the commonwealth) has a significant space-based industrial capacity (shipyards, orbital manufacturing, and as we learn in other sources, mining and other duties)

Also we can do some economic calcualtions here.
The Gull costs some 2.45 million talents. Assuming there are 15.000 Gull fighter wings (assume roughly 1 wing per system, and double that number in the combined Navies), or about 13 trillion Talents total, factoring in the "Gull vs trade" multipler mentioned, 10% of TOG's space-baesd wartime industrial capacity is 2 quintillion credits, which maybe gives us an indication of their military spending/economics capability, and this is conservative (Based on the number of gull wings). though we also dont know how long the time this would be spent over. It does give us a benchmark of how much the TOG is willing to spend on a relatively minor war (one that isn't significantly draining the economy/resourcese of the empire as a whole) and hints at what they might be able to throw into a bigger one (an order of magnitude more at least)



Various (relevant) TOG ship stats:

Lancea Light fighter

Mass: 71 (tons?)

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced): 10 (11)

Power rating: 700 right and left engine (1400 total)

Streamlining/Antigrav?: Yes/No

Weapons: 2 wing mounted 5/1 lasers, 3 hard points (5 without lasers)


Verutum Light fighter

Mass: 99 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced): 6 (7)

Power rating: 600 R/L engine (1200 total)

Streamlining/Antigrav?: Yes/No

Weapons: 2 wing mounted 5/1 lasers, 1 EPC 14, 1 NPC 16 (both PCs in bow), one hard point. ( 3 w/o lasers)

Spiculum medium fighter

Mass: 127 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced) 8 (11)

Power rating: 1000 right/left engine (2000 total)

Streamlining/Antigrav?: Yes/No

Weapons: 2 wing mounted 7.5/4 lasers, 3 hard points (5 without lasers)

Pillum class Medium fighter

Mass: 148 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced) 7 (8)

Power rating: 800 center engine (600 right and left engine) 2000 total.

Streamlining/Antigrav?: Yes/No

Weapons: 2 wing-mounted 7.5/3 lasers, 2 MDC 8 (bow), 1 hard point (3 without lasers)

Martiobarbulus class heavy fighter

Mass: 193 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced) 6(6) (we may assume "high thrust is at least 7, and the 6 is a typo)

Power rating: 1100 Right/Left engine (2200 total)

Streamlining/Antigrav?: Yes/No

Weapons: 2 Wing-mounted 7.5/3 lasers, 2 MDC 10 bow), 1 hard point

Gladius clas sheavy fighter

Mass: 210 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced) 6 (no high thrust mod)

Power rating: 800 centre engine, 850 right/left engines: 2500 power total.

Streamlining/Antigrav?:

Weapons: MDC 10 (2 in turret), EPC 18 (2 in wings), 5 hard points.


Cingulum class corvette

Mass: 1059 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced): 5 (no replacement)

Power rating: 5000 left/right engine (10,000 total). 1272 additional alloctable power

Streamlining/Antigrav?: No/Yes

Crew: 7, passengers 2, is FTL capable, and has turrets (Rear)

Weapons 7.5/5 laser (2 forward), 7.5/6 laser (2 forward) 5/6 laser (2 rear), MDC 12 (2 forward):5/4 laser (2 in turret) MDC 12 (3 in turret)

2 hard points.


Commonwealth/Renegade Legion fighter stats

Cheetah Light fighter

Mass: 73 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced): 10 (11)

Power rating: 600 (center engine) 450 (left/right engine) 1500 total power.

Streamlining/Antigrav?: Yes/No

Weapons: 2 5/1 lasers (wing mount) 2 EPC9 (wing mount)

Guardian medium fighter

Mass: 108 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced): 4 (4 - assume error, might be 5)

Power rating: center engine 900

Streamlining/Antigrav?: Yes/No

Weapons: 5/2 lasers (2 wing mounted), 2 EPC 18 (bow mounted)

Space Gull Medium fighter

Mass: 128 tons

Thrust (mod: with MDCs replaced): 6 (8)

Power rating: 750 left/right engine, 1500 total.

Streamlining/Antigrav?: No/No.

Weapons: 2 Wing mounted MDC 8s, 2 bow mounted EPC 14

Penetrator class medium fighter

Mass: 139 tons

Thrust (mod: with NPCs replaced): 7 (9)

Power rating: 1,000 left/right engine, 2000 total.

Streamlining/Antigrav?: Yes/No

Weapons: 2 wing mounted NPC 16, 2 wing mounted EPC 14


Avenger heavy fighter

Mass: 175 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced): 7 (8)

Power rating: 1200 left/right engine (2400 total)

Streamlining/Antigrav?: Yes/No

Weapons: 2 wing mounted 5/4 lasers, 2 wing mounted MDC 8, ,1 bow mounted EPC 18

Na'Ctka Moquka (Fluttering Petal) heavy fighter

Mass: 245 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced): 5 (5, but assumed 6 and 5 an error)

Power rating: 900 center, 800 left/right (2500 power)

Streamlining/Antigrav?: No/Yes

Weapons: 2 MDC 8 in wings, 2 7.5/5 lasers in wings, 2 5/5 and 2 5/4 lasers in turret.

The prototype Petal had two 7.5/6 lasers in place of the MDC 8s, and tiny 1.5/1 lasers instead of the current hard points. This weapons mix resulted in a 4 G acceleration for the ship.

The extra laser power sucked up 2 gs worth of acceleration frfom the Petal. Assuming a fairly low thrust velocity (say ~10% of C) given the ship{s mass and the accel, that would correspond to an energy output of around 8e13 joules, or slightly more than 20 kt ot power all those extra lasers, putting fighter weapon firepower )probably= well into the TJ range (possibly multi kt)


Pegasus class Corvette

Mass: 1042 tons

Thrust (mod: with lasers replaced): 4 (none)

Power rating: 5000 Left/Right engine, 1406 allocatable power

Streamlining/Antigrav?: No/Yes

Crew 7, passengers 3, FTL capable (Yes),

Weapons: 4 forward 7.5/6 lasers, 2 rear 7.5/6 lasers, 2 left/right (wing) 5/6 lasers, 2 bow MDC 12, Turreted EPC 18, EPC 14, NPC 20, NPC 16.

[Connor MacLeod]

Last entry for this.. from the back cover (I believe)

TOG's victory is soon to be final. All that separates you from the vacuum of space a couple of tons of fibroplastic armor and your skill. You are sitting on an engine that can push you at 10 Gs, constantly praying that the acceleration compensator doesn't get hit. The fighter carries enough Lasers, Mass Drivers, Electron-Particle Cannons and Missiles to char a city, and you know how to use them with deadly accuracy. You know your ship better than you know your wife. If the predictor computer, or the power coupling, or even the auxiliary helm control takes a hit, you'll know it long before the damage lights come on. You can feel it in your gut. You'd never have lived this long if you couldn't. Join the Elite Forces of either side in this final Confrontation. Hail Caesar! Join the Elite Forces of either side in this final Confrontation

Several things of note

- Armor on a fighter generally seems to be multi-ton (this isnt a surprise I think, its pretty much integral in the vehicle design rules.)

- Engine thrust is 10gs. This may be per engine, or overall. Probably overall, though the odd way they phrase things and the way they handle stats sometimes it could be per engine (There's implications for double digit g accels even though the intent didnt argue for that, anyhow.) And certainly if power allocation were taken in you could (at least) triple thrust.

- The fighters carry enough firepower to inflict citywide damage. I would infer that "char" means to more or less destroy or level a city, t hough its not clear whether this is instantaneous firepower or sustained, and in any case it includes missiles, which may arguably (depending on outfitting) carry the bulk of the firepower for doing so in any case. It does imply significant firepower for the energy weapons (nuclear scale, which would be consistent with the calcs I have done based off of thrust, anyhow.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Something I forgot to comment on/calc on in the old thred I just realized

Note the qutoe from before:

For example, it takes a 5 G navigation computer 150 hours to calculate a course through T-space toward a destination 100,000 light years from the entry point. During these hours spent calculating, the ship must be accelerating up to .5c and be under the computer's complete control. For a computer rated at 20 G, it would take only 50 hours to navigate a safe course over the same distance of 100,000 light years.

Note that during the time spent calculating the ship must be accelerating up to the given speed. .5c is roughly 150,000 km/s. Doing so in 150 hours is 540,000 seconds, or an acceleration of ~28 gs. For 50 hours thats a little over 80gs.
Now, I know those don't mesh with the "5g" and "20g" figures mentioned as the computers, but its illustrative of the idea I originaly expounded: the acceleration figures of RL are not as stringently fixed as the "thrust/" game stats or other sourcecs indicate.) There's alot of wiggle room for varation in acceleration. Not much (they'll never reach thousands of gees, or even likely the high hundreds of gees) but they still have enough evidence for "higher than single digit gee" accelerations.
The discrepancy here may be accouned due to different things: the times could be longer than stated (it isn't required to take the statement literally... the 50 or 150 hours may simply be parrt of the time to reach .5c, for eaxmple.) maybe its a matter of power allocation, or it may be tied into the compensator. Or the 5G/20G figures could be interpreted differently or just erroneous.
As it is, its better to just treat the "28G/80G" calcs as an order of magnitude calculation - a range of values fitting in with what we already know, and that the true value may fall somewhere in between there. Either way it still tells us that "tens of gees" accel for both big and small ships are quite possible.

[starlord]

Hello to all renegade legion fans: I've curiously noticed that RL was still being discussed here.

Might you know that efforts are being undertaken to preserve this Sci fi universe under the starshatter and freespace space sims? As such, we might have use for your technical advice/modelling skills.

As such, Might anyone be interested in joining us to help with this endeavour? RL threads exist in the starshattermods and hard light production forums.

We hope to have replies from you soon.


best regards.


starlord.