Battle of Tukayyid Force Sub: Let the bidding begin

[DudeGuyMan]

I bid the opposing forces from the actual Battletech scenario. Since they barely won as it was, I'll be hard to underbid. But since they did win, we know that they can.

Haw.

[Balrog]

Is that sufficant or do you want a buy the numbers breakdown of what's in each specific regiment?

Specifics always help, especially since 40k formations (with a few exemptions) are all over the place in how big they are, along with why and how they win and the length of time you think it'd take; for example

I bid the Nahel Argama and Judau Ashta's Gundam Team.

explaining how this group would capture all the objectives against a force outnumbering them hundreds to one, especially since Gundam mecha aren't that much better than Btech mechs.

I bid a single Stargate replicator.

The Replicator gets plopped onto the planet's surface within range of an infantry platoon, who proceed to gun it down with their assault rifles. A force based upon self-replication will be counted not by their starting numbers but upon the final force used to capture the objectives. So if it starts at one but needs to produce millions of itself to win, that's how it'll be measured.

[OmegaChief]

Is that sufficant or do you want a buy the numbers breakdown of what's in each specific regiment?

Specifics always help, especially since 40k formations (with a few exemptions) are all over the place in how big they are, along with why and how they win and the length of time you think it'd take; for example

Gotcha, I'll check up on the BTech Wiki and provide numbers and estimates promptly.

[VF5SS]

[
explaining how this group would capture all the objectives against a force outnumbering them hundreds to one, especially since Gundam mecha aren't that much better than Btech mechs.

lol no

By UC 0087, Mobile Suits all have far more speed and power than any Battlemech.

I bid one New Macross class Battle carrier and its entire compliment of Valkyrie fighters. That's 450 high flying variable fighters all capable of carrier powerful reaction weaponry.

[Asdeed]

I'll bid five Coalition Army Corps from the Rifts RPG, one corps for each of the original clans in the Tukkayid invasion. The material is a little sketchy but here's my force numbers as best as I could work them out. 36,480 infantry, 7,040 power armor, 7,040 giant robots, 3,200 armor and 2,560 aircraft.

The infantry are all fully armored and fairly well equipped with heavy weapons. All of the power armor (SAMAS) can fly. Many of the giant robots come with missile systems that can provide long range fire support. Armor is kind of iffy since it's mostly APC's, but they are well armored and armed. Aircraft is a mixed bag of ground support sky cycles and high altitude interceptors.

Used properly they're a mobile and flexible force, it should offer an interesting fight.

[Sidewinder]

explaining how this group would capture all the objectives against a force outnumbering them hundreds to one, especially since Gundam mecha aren't that much better than Btech mechs.

lol no

By UC 0087, Mobile Suits all have far more speed and power than any Battlemech.

I hope you're being sarcastic. Too many anime and manga writers give major characters "special attacks" that require an opponent be "special"- i.e., RETARDED- to work. Not to mention Char neglecting to assemble a fleet to evacuate Earth's population before trying to destroy the planet's ecosystem.

[lord Martiya]

I'll bid two Zeon's infantry regiments, with twenty Dom and a couple Gaw as support.

Way too small. Even if each mobile suit was worth dozens of Battlemechs, ComGuard forces outnumber them hundreds to one. Never mind having multiple cities to capture and hold with only a couple of regiments?

Well, my idea was to use the Gaws' bombs and beam cannons to annihilate the troops and then having the heavily armored Doms mopping up the survivors, with the infantry regiments as escort to prevent missile attacks from enemy infantry or some madman to charge at the MS with a motorbike and/or a jetpack and strap bombs on them (a tactic actually used twice in Gundam against the titular mecha. The first time only thing that saved the Gundam was the fact the unit doing it was badly equipped and had just time bombs, thus letting the crew disarm them one by one, but when M'Qube troops did it to the White Base the ship was crippled in barely five minutes).
But I suppose I bid a force best suited to destroy objectives... And the objectives are all to capture, aren't they?

[OmegaChief]

Upon reading up on the actual battle some more, a new question arises, are we bidding to take the entire planet? Or just a single clans objectives in all of this? If the former I'm going to have to increase the forces in my bid, if the latter I think I could just about pull it off with what I said already.

[Ford Prefect]

explaining how this group would capture all the objectives against a force outnumbering them hundreds to one, especially since Gundam mecha aren't that much better than Btech mechs.

The Zeta and ZZ Gundams are literally mach 3+, the ZZ can trivially split apart an 80m+ asteroid with a single blow of its beam saber, all of the MS in the Gundam Team are faster on the ground than any Dom ever put in production, and in the UC0087-0088 era you regularly see beam rifles blowing apart asteroids half the size, or the same size, as mobile suits. The Gundam Mk.II and Hyaku Shiki can jump so hard that they can catch a launching space rocket that has a head start. The Nahel Argama can do this. Even in the One Year War mobile suits could accurately hit targets at 10km.

I'm not suggesting that they would literally go head to head with hundreds of battlemechs at once, but they don't need to. This is actually better odds than fighting against Neo Zeon, and the Gundam Team won the First Neo Zeon War - not because they could defeat hundreds of dudes in one battle, but simply because you don't need to. Judau and co actually are sneaky and cunning even if they are massively dysfunctional as a team: they wouldn't think of anything of utilising their massive advantage in mobility to perform hit and run attacks: they're also Newtypes so benefit from, you know, precognition. Ultimately you win if you can make the enemy force surrender, and when ComGuard realise that they actually cannot concentrate the force necessary to actually defeat the Gundam Team - and they can't - they will.

[Balrog]

Well, my idea was to use the Gaws' bombs and beam cannons to annihilate the troops and then having the heavily armored Doms mopping up the survivors, with the infantry regiments as escort to prevent missile attacks from enemy infantry or some madman to charge at the MS with a motorbike and/or a jetpack and strap bombs on them (a tactic actually used twice in Gundam against the titular mecha. The first time only thing that saved the Gundam was the fact the unit doing it was badly equipped and had just time bombs, thus letting the crew disarm them one by one, but when M'Qube troops did it to the White Base the ship was crippled in barely five minutes).
But I suppose I bid a force best suited to destroy objectives... And the objectives are all to capture, aren't they?

Correct; besides, the Gaws would've just been swarmed by Aerospace fighters and destroyed in short order, leaving everything else to be cleaned up by ground forces.

Upon reading up on the actual battle some more, a new question arises, are we bidding to take the entire planet? Or just a single clans objectives in all of this? If the former I'm going to have to increase the forces in my bid, if the latter I think I could just about pull it off with what I said already.

You have to capture the same twelve cities the Clans were suppose to capture.

The Zeta and ZZ Gundams are literally mach 3+, the ZZ can trivially split apart an 80m+ asteroid with a single blow of its beam saber, all of the MS in the Gundam Team are faster on the ground than any Dom ever put in production, and in the UC0087-0088 era you regularly see beam rifles blowing apart asteroids half the size, or the same size, as mobile suits. The Gundam Mk.II and Hyaku Shiki can jump so hard that they can catch a launching space rocket that has a head start. The Nahel Argama can do this. Even in the One Year War mobile suits could accurately hit targets at 10km.

Then you're going to have to provide some calcs to back those up, since the stats given for machines like ZZ Gundam aren't much better than a Mech or ASF (in some cases worse, like its max acceleration).

Remember also that you have to capture and hold the objectives; that means eventually you'll have to stand and fight to protect your territory, and ComGuard will have the chance to bring overwhelming firepower.

[OmegaChief]

Ah, back to work increasing my bid then, I was hoping to do this without a Titan Legion, but we'll see what I come up with.

[Batman]

I bid the opposing forces from the actual Battletech scenario. Since they barely won as it was, I'll be hard to underbid. But since they did win, we know that they can.
Haw.

You do know that the Clans lost, right?

[PainRack]

You know that's a smaller invasion force then the USSR had in East Germany alone by a factor of five in manpower and around 1:3 in armored vehicles. More aircraft, but the USSR literally ran out of space for airfields in East Germany anyway. Not a very good basis to try to take over an entire planet from.

You're not taking over an entire planet. You're waging a campaign to take over 12 "cities: situated around the planet and in diverse terrain types, ranging from mountaineous and swampy. The only terrain archetype that wasn't represented was pure desert and artic condition.

No orbital support, ground and air forces only. You can throw in some naval units if you really want, but I don't recall any of the objectives being particularly close to any major bodies of water, so keep that in mind.

Actually, there are.

A representation here.
In the end, the battle objectives were divided by the Council as follows:

• The Smoke Jaguars would land first, with the cities of Dinju Heights and Port Racice their targets, two of the largest cities on the planet.

• The Nova Cats would attack the cities of Joje and Tost.

• Clan Ghost Bear was assigned the cities of Spanac and Luk.

• The Steel Vipers bid for the objectives of Kelly Springs and the Kozice Ranch Station.

• Urcunat and Kozice Prime were the targets of the Diamond Sharks.

• The Jade Falcons chose Humptulips and Olalla as their targets.

• And the Wolves were given the remaining targets of Brzo and Skup, as well as the final 'drop slot' onto the planet. Five days after the Smoke Jaguars would set foot on the soil of Tukayyid.

(sarna wiki ) The major relevant sourcebooks are Invasion Clans, Wolf Clan sourcebook, Jade Falcon Sourcebook, Battle of Tukayid scenario pack along with a couple of novels which touch on this, namely, the Clan Wolf and Jade Falcon arc.(Phelan and Aidan Pryde).

In preparation for the battle, Comstar bid the majority of her armies to defend the planet. She was able to secure the use of Tukayyid large agricultural warehouse to store large amounts of munitions and equipment for the battle. Due to the deficiencies of clan logistics(I deplore the highly simplistic examination of clan warfare), the Comguards set up a variant of the Bandit defence combined with huge concentration of supporting forces like artillery for a Castle Defence. Namely, the use of mobile forces to raid Clan forces while a relatively less mobile defence line, engaging from ambush or other hidden prepared positions to pin and slow them down.
Her engineering positions were sufficient enough that an entire city Olalla was "reconstructed" into a death trap, essentially razing the city and rebuilding it to feature hidden bunkers and exit positions for mechs, vehicles and infantry.

The terrain around the objectives are
Dinju Heights: Mountaineous. A pass led into the city itself that was heavily defended by Comguard forces.

Port Raccice: a port in riverine terrain. The chosen drop site was in the marshes surrounding the river delta. And since its a delta, that means an ocean where the port well, send its ships to.

Joje and Tost were plains cities, a river and lake was near the chosen drop site and route that allowed a ambush by Nova Cat forces on rallying ComGuards units.

Kozice Ranch Station and Kelly Springs were apparently situated near or even in a park area that featured geysers, mud and etc. Kelly Springs IIRC in IS Atlas is stated to have hot springs for which tis named, but I can't confirm this.
After dropping in the plains, the advance featured Devil bath, geysers, boiling mud, with pathways surrounded by granite columns.

Urcunat and Kozice Prime were cities situated at opposite end of Kozice valley. Diamond Shark drop zone was dropped right into the middle of the valley between their targets.

Spaanac and Luk had no significant terrain apart from some hills and a water source, although that may be imposed from the mappacks rather than....... well, you know.

Olalla and Humptuilps were plain cities that had a major river blocking access from the chosen drop site.

Brzo and Skup featured forrest and hilly terrain where Wolf and Comguard forces raided against each other and force protection.


For simplicity sake, I suggest that the forces be assigned to the original drop site, although I leave it to Balrog whether insertion tactics should feature the force sub technology and tactics.

[Whiskey144]

In this case, I change my bid to the following:

The entirety of X Corps, 4621st Imperial Army, and two additional Guard Regiments.

This consists of the:

Tallarn 17th, 89th, and 331st Desert Raiders regiments
Tallarn 3rd, 12th Armored regiments
2356th, 2378th Storm Trooper Companies
23rd Elysian Drop Troops
114th Cadian Mechanised

Tallarn 17th (and presumably 89th&331st) consists of 10,684 infantry, supported by:
39 Leman Russes
150 Sentinels
49 Chimeras
48 Basilisks
6 Bombards
12 Griffons
20 Hydras
5 Salamanders
15 Samaritans
3 Atlas
38 Trojans

Tallarn 12th (and presumably 3rd) Armored consists of 4,039 personnel, operating/supported by:
129 Leman Russes
30 Leman Russ Demolishers
9 Baneblades
2 Shadowswords
90 Sentinels
106 Chimeras
48 Basilisks
20 Hydras
79 Salamanders
12 Samaritans
10 Atlas
50 Trojans

23rd Elysians consists of 2,866 infantry/personnel, supported by/operating:
182 Valkyrie Assault Carriers
30 Vulture Gunships
42 Sentinels
54 Powerlifters
36 Trojans

114th Cadian Mechanised consists of 3,947 personnel operating/supported by:
362 Chimeras
30 Basilisks
20 Griffons
10 Hydras
29 Salamanders
18 Sentinels
10 Samaratins
5 Atlas
6 Trojans

Supporting all this will be 5 squadrons of Thunderbolt heavy fighters, 2 squadrons of Lightning superiority fighters, 3 squadrons of Marauder bombers, and 2 squadrons of Marauder Destroyers; each squadron consists of 10 aircraft. Attach a 4-strong Warhound Titan scout group for further support.

This brings the total force to:
46,943 personnel/infantry (this does not include Storm Troopers or Navy personnel for the attached air support, as no numbers are available on their composition)
2,947 armored vehicles (all types; excludes aircraft)
332 aircraft, various types
4 Warhound Scout Titans

For those who might be wondering, yes, this force is extremely similar to that which was present for the Taros Campaign. In fact, it's based on it.

[keen320]

To what extent can you wreck the cities taking them? Do they need to be mostly intact? Or is it just control the city's limits?

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

How would a Bolo Mk33 stack up?

[keen320]

How would a Bolo Mk33 stack up?

I was totally thinking about that!

I, however, would probably bid a brigade of Mark XXV Bolos. There should be enough (not really sure of the numbers, but I'd guess twenty something at least) to take and hold the cities. Taking them would be easier than holding them, after all. Any one or two of them would require a lot of firepower to take down.

Actually, I'm not sure that this isn't too much. I just don't want them reoccupying the cities the minute I leave, so I figure at least one Bolo is needed per city.

Seems like a good time to use this:

[RIPP_n_WIPE]

I honestly think that a single Mk33 could handle them all. Even if you take out the Bolos nuclear arsenal it could

Destroy landing ships while they are in orbit.

or

Hold on to one city and wipe out the entire invading force

or

Zip from city to city killing everything.

[keen320]

I honestly think that a single Mk33 could handle them all. Even if you take out the Bolos nuclear arsenal it could

I think you're right. I just figure it could be way too much of an overbid. I figure it's battle screen makes it pretty much invulnerable to Battletech weapons. Might be true of a mark XXV, too, though.
Also, the 33's "infinite repeaters" could slag mechs all by themselves.

[Ford Prefect]

Then you're going to have to provide some calcs to back those up, since the stats given for machines like ZZ Gundam aren't much better than a Mech or ASF (in some cases worse, like its max acceleration).

Remember also that you have to capture and hold the objectives; that means eventually you'll have to stand and fight to protect your territory, and ComGuard will have the chance to bring overwhelming firepower.

You want evidence? Here we go.

This is Emma Sheen using the Gundam Mk.II's long beam rifle. While Elle doesn't have this particular weapon, the Zeta Gundam's mega launcher is at least as powerful, though almost certainly more. In any case, it's a good starting point.

First off all, here's a good shot of Yazan's Hambrabi a couple of frames away from nipping in behind it. He's trying to use it as cover from Emma because she's been ruling his dudes hardcore, so he's very close to it. In MA mode, the Hambrabi is 17.9m long and 15.9m wide.



In other words, this shit is enormous. Despite the fact that Yazan is chilling behind a pretty significant chunk of rock, Emma proceeds to take the shot:







Just to reiterate, the Gundam Mk.II saw a 50m tall, 100m+ long asteroid, blew it up and killed two guys on the other side. Meanwhile in Battletech, you can take cover behind buildings and it will soak damage. But this is a heavy weapon, what about something lighter? Here's Mashymre Cello being unimpressed by the ZZ's transformation sequence:







The ZZ Gundam is 22m tall. That asteroid is 40m in diametre. Now, while you can't take everything in the technical statistics at face value, much as you can't take everything in the animation at face value (otherwise you get silly shit like 1000g Zeta Gundams), I do think for comparitive purposes it's a decent way to get an idea how powerful mobile suits are relative to each other. The Hamma Hamma's shield beam guns have roughly the same the power output in the statistics as the Zeta's beam rifle - I would have actually gotten some images of the Zeta blowing up asteroids but to be honest it's hard to pinpoint a specific moment out of a fifty episode series. I mean if you absolutely insist I will go and dig some up. Anyway, the point is that the ZZ's beam rifle is rated as being more than three times more powerful than the Hamma Hamma's shield guns. I had another, even more dramatic example of Mashymre blowing up asteroids but I can't be stuffed uploading them because there's shitloads more to cover.

But one more thing about the ZZ Gundam:



It will cut you up. The Hamma Hamma is 24m tall. It's a littlle hard to judge the size of the asteroid here because of Mashymre running the fuck away, but it has to be at least three or four times as thick as the Hamma Hamma is tall.

But let's move on and get some higher definition shots of mobile suits in action, through Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn. Note that while Unicorn is in UC0096, the actual differences in capability won't be that excessive: there was no jump in speed or power between the Gryps Conflict and the Second Neo Zeon War like there was between the One Year War and the Gryps Conflict. Certainly a lot of MS in Unicorn wish they were as powerful as the Zeta Gundam. Let's start with having a look at the power of Marida Cruz' funnels. Thanks to Stark for bothering to cap this for me.





Keep in mind that Marida's Kshatriya is about 30m tall. That's a big hole: it happens quickly too. Late in the first episode, Banagher decides to get Marida the fuck out of his space colony. So he grabs her and hits the throttle:











So despite the fact that Banagher is pushing Marida so hard that she's getting her face smashed into her own console, the funnels still have the time to melt a their way through. Incidentally, Riddhe Marcenas does something similar, only he does it with one shot of his mega launcher. So the actual sequence in motion suggests that Riddhe blasted through two doors in one shot.



A Jegan's armour takes much less damage from each funnel beam than that door. Incidentally in episode 3 of Unicorn - and in a lot of other episodes of Gundam for that matter - we see suits actually tank beam weapons on their hand shields and soak the damage. Durability on mid-UC mobile suits is generally quite impressive. While certainly the Kshatriya is a tough little monster, it's not going to huge hugely outside the range of the Gundam Team suits, given that the Gundam Team is all made up of high end mid-UC MS. However, let's have another look.

My man Daguza lets rip at Marida with his Loto's missile fist. He actually scores a hit in the process.





Unfortunately ...



Anyway, after a misadventure with an ECM missile, Marida finds herself lodged halfway inside a gigantic fuel tank. In a fuel dump full of gigantic fuel tanks.







Well I mean that had to have had some effect, right?



Oh.

Let's cut to Banagher's classmates, trying to escape Marida and the Londo bell forces accidentally destroying an entire colony.







They got vaporised, champion. But wait, there's more. Marida slices a Loto in half with one of her funnels, and the upper half launches itself at our hapless heroes:





Riddhe saves with a casual backhand. Did you know that in Battletech you can successfully use a tree as a club? Meanwhile a ReZEL slaps away tons of giant robot without taking any damage at all. Honestly at this point I could go on and on and on and continually post pictures of mobile suits dealing and taking more damage that FASA has ever conceived of, but the post is already three AUs in length. But it goes on: while we cannot take everything in the technical stats at face value, one of the areas we can generally accept as being close to accurate is ground speed. Generally speaking the ground speeds given more or less correspond to reality, so 360km/h Dom Tropens aren't massively unlikely. Further, when Judau and co face desert modified Dowdage units under ace commander Rommel - Dowdages being the last in the Dom line - the Gundam Team walked all over them. Even in unfavourable conditions (Roux complains that a ground battle in a desert isn't the Zeta's forte) and on the wrong end of an ambush, the Gundam Team comprehensively overwhelm Rommel's troops, proving far too fast and agile for the remnant Zekes to keep up with. When the AEUG assault Jaburo early in Z Gundam we see that literally every MS in operation is able to maneuver in the same way as a Dom, skating around effortless at high speed. It's largely impossible to judge directly from the visuals, but again we have a very direct instance of the Gundam Team effortlessly outperforming high end Doms.

In terms of actual flight speed, there isn't a variable MS around with a listed airspeed which isn't at least mach 3. The Zeta has it, as does the Asshimar. The Gabthley is listed as mach 25. We've actually seen the Hyaku Shiki and Gundam Mk.II - both nowhere near as powerful as the ZZ - jump after a launching space rocket and catch up despite it being literally miles into the air.

The individual unit performance here has an enormous disparity. The Gundam Team has literally every advantage in terms of performance and is made up of clairvoyant pilots. When you take into account the effects of Minovsky particles on sensor performance, it would be trivial for the Gundam Team to enact massively damaging hit and fade attacks. I agree with the proposition that they cannot hold locations, but they don't need to: they just need to make it too costly for ComGuard to hold those positions. And if ComGuard tries seriously bunkering up then they come under the risk of Beecha just blasting them with the Nahel Argama's hyper mega particle cannon, against which ComGuard has literally no defence. They could be hiding beneath a mountain range and they'd get wiped out. I mean, sure, ComGuard can just reoccupy the cities that the Gundam Team liberate, but nothing really stops the Gundam Team from blowing them up all over again. ComGuard will run out of resolve sooner or later.

[Manus Celer Dei]

It's probably helpful to note that almost all of that stats given for mobile suits on MAHQ come from fluff like the model kits which tend to be somewhat divorced from the actual animation, probably because there's little, if any, input from people who actually worked on the show.

[Night_stalker]

I'm bidding a ACU, UEF style.

http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Command_unit

That should be sufficient to secure 12 cities.

[Kingmaker]

Remember, you want to win with by the slimmest margin possible. I doubt over the top mecha or superweapons that can straight up wipe out the Comguard are going to qualify.

I'll tentatively bid a regiment of Terran Federation Mobile Infantry for each objective city (so a total of 12 regiments, for about 25,000 cap troopers, if I recall correctly). However, that does raise the question of deployment. If one were to bid a force that normally deploys on or near the objective from orbit (e.g. MI, Space Marines, ODSTs), or by some other peculiar method, are they stuck with the Clans' original LZs, or do they get to deploy in the usual fashion ? Presumably the Comguard defenders will be informed and redeployed accordingly if the latter is the case.

[lord Martiya]

Correct; besides, the Gaws would've just been swarmed by Aerospace fighters and destroyed in short order, leaving everything else to be cleaned up by ground forces.

Well, at this point I'd like to change my bidding to something a bit bigger whose capabilities I know relatively well: from Macross (original series), five divisions worth of mechanized infantry from the UN Army (not too different from modern infantry: apparently the only major difference is an heavier number of man-portable anti-tank missiles to take on the Zentradi), supported by the titular ship's complement complement of 212 VF-1 Valkirye, 120 QF-3000E Ghost (drone fighters, space and atmosphere worth), 3 Destroid Monster (heavy artillery), 40 Destroid Defender (anti-aircraft artillery), 20 Destroid Phalanx (anti-aircraft missiles) 85 Destroid Spartan (heavy combat, short range) and 500 Destroid Tomahawk (heavy combat, long range. Basically, take a Spartan and replace the arms with particle cannons).

[OmegaChief]

I'm bidding a ACU, UEF style.

http://supcom.wikia.com/wiki/Command_unit

That should be sufficient to secure 12 cities.

Do remember you're judged on the total forces you use in the campain, including those you build on site, so don't think you sneak a victory that easilly