Reinhard von Lohengramm's Conquest of the Universe

[Batman]

Panzergrenadiers are a WW2 creation so prussian history shouldn't figure into it. And if they don't understand what Panzergrenadiers actually are, why would they expect grenades to figure into their equipment?
And seriously, axes and crossbows? I can see technobabble rendering ray guns useless but what about old-fashioned chemical slugthrowers? You have axes, I gave G36s, I know which side my money is on.

[gigabytelord]

Panzergrenadiers are a WW2 creation so prussian history shouldn't figure into it. And if they don't understand what Panzergrenadiers actually are, why would they expect grenades to figure into their equipment?
And seriously, axes and crossbows? I can see technobabble rendering ray guns useless but what about old-fashioned chemical slugthrowers? You have axes, I gave G36s, I know which side my money is on.

I'm pretty sure it's a gas that's released into the ventilation system that's reactive to firearms of any type whether laser or slug thrower. IIRC its released specifically to eliminate the likely hood of ambushes and the like inside structures and to place everyone on even ground or some such thing.

Ah, here it is, they're called seffle particles.

[Borgholio]

Why not call them Stormtroopers instead? Not referring to the Star Wars variety but the German Stormtroopers from World War 1. They were used to storm enemy trenches and capture them without using the massed infantry charges that were more common at that time. The narrow corridors of a starship are very similar to the long and narrow trenches in Europe, so the tactics would be much the same.

[bilateralrope]

So they flood their ships atmosphere with explosives as a defensive measure ?

The only time I can see that being useful is if:
- The enemy knows they exist. Which is unlikely given how different the tech bases will be.
- The enemy believes that they are in use. Or can detect them.
- The enemy decides that if they can't capture the ship/station, they would prefer the defenders keep it than for it to be destroyed. Because if they want it destroyed, the seffle particles only make it easier to destroy.

So I have to ask, is fighting with axes and crossbows normal for boarding parties in LGOH ?

[SAMAS]

Not the ship, just the general area. There's an example of a ground battle in which they had to stop using their guns because one side deployed a seffle particle diffuser in a stairway, so they switched to axes.

[KlavoHunter]

Panzergrenadiers are a WW2 creation so prussian history shouldn't figure into it. And if they don't understand what Panzergrenadiers actually are, why would they expect grenades to figure into their equipment?
And seriously, axes and crossbows? I can see technobabble rendering ray guns useless but what about old-fashioned chemical slugthrowers? You have axes, I gave G36s, I know which side my money is on.

There are plenty of scenes that show unarmored infantry fighting on habitable planets.

Panzergrenadier seems to be the term that they use for their power-armored soldiers who fight in the most demanding and exotic of conditions, from miserable frozen iceballs, to boarding actions, to axe-fighting while on hover skimmers along the surface of Iserlohn's liquid metal shell(!).


As far as the crossbow-vs-G36 argument goes, I'm not sure if space-age materials for body armor and crossbows might render them viable. Or perhaps gunpowder also triggers the Zephyr Particles?

[bilateralrope]

Not the ship, just the general area. There's an example of a ground battle in which they had to stop using their guns because one side deployed a seffle particle diffuser in a stairway, so they switched to axes.

That makes sense. Though if it's only the general area, wouldn't shooting at it be a good way to clear out the defenders in that area ?

Especially if they are trying to fight someone who doesn't realize that the seffle diffuser is there until the explosion.

Assuming that gunpowder or energy weapons sets the seffle particles off seems reasonable as if it didn't, I'd expect the LGOH forces to use them while under seffle particles. But what about Mass Effect weapons ?
Their small arms aren't gunpowder or energy weapons. They are essentially railguns. Then there are the cryo rounds.

[Simon_Jester]

Why not call them Stormtroopers instead? Not referring to the Star Wars variety but the German Stormtroopers from World War 1. They were used to storm enemy trenches and capture them without using the massed infantry charges that were more common at that time. The narrow corridors of a starship are very similar to the long and narrow trenches in Europe, so the tactics would be much the same.

Not... really. That said, the word that "stormtroopers" comes form, the German "sturmgrenadiere," literally means "assault-grenadiers." Which would be almost as good a term for them as "panzergrenadiere," which means "armored-grenadiers."

Panzergrenadiers are a WW2 creation so prussian history shouldn't figure into it. And if they don't understand what Panzergrenadiers actually are, why would they expect grenades to figure into their equipment?
And seriously, axes and crossbows? I can see technobabble rendering ray guns useless but what about old-fashioned chemical slugthrowers? You have axes, I gave G36s, I know which side my money is on.

As far as I can tell, the technobabble 'zephyr particles' cause... something like a fuel-air explosion... when any high-density energy discharge occurs. That includes chemical firearms, so everyone's stuck falling back on musclepowered weapons. It's silly and stylistic, but they aren't just ignoring the question of what happens to slugthrowers.

Also, my impression is that most combat forces do in fact have rayguns, rocket launchers, and so on available, and use them when they can get away with it. It's just that both sides of any given battle use zephyr particles so frequently that it's suicidal idiocy NOT to be prepared for their use... which means carrying axes and crossbows.

And since reliance on musclepowered weapons favors the guys in (powered?) armor and with extensive close combat training, boarding troops use zephyr particles at the drop of a hat.

Panzergrenadiers are also supposed to fight alongside and against tanks (hence the 'Panzer'). What were they doing in a boarding action? They're ground troops. Their only reason to be on a starship is they're being transported to planet XYZ to blow stuff up/capture it. While supported by tanks and AFVs/IFVs.

I am of the understanding that the Empire's original founders were really very keen on German & Prussian history, but didn't understand all the nuances, so it's most likely a deliberate in-universe mistake.

If it's a mistake, it's an accidentally not-mistaken mistake.

"Panzer" is actually from the German for "armor," which is why it was used to describe tanks in the first place. It's short for "Panzer-kampf-wagen," which means literally "armored-combat-vehicle" or some such.

(There are no hyphens on German nouns, but I put them in so it'd be easier for English speakers to parse)

So "armored-grenadiers" could reasonably be rendered as "panzer-grenadiers." And "grenadiers" is a customary term for elite infantry formations in Western usage, especially in German, even if no literal grenades make an appearance.

As an update, I found a potentially very useful resource on the topic in on the board (no thread necromancy thanks!) with a lot of screencaps ready to use.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=144861



This looks to be to scale, is it? If so the Thor Hammer's range can't be good.

Incidentally the more I hear about this series, the more I am interested in watching it properly.

It's really cool.

But no, that image is definitely NOT to scale, making it to scale would contradict a wealth of both dialogue and on-screen visuals. That is a wireframe schematic which is not displaying the entire enemy fleet (even tiny fleets have thousands of ships in the LoGH setting).

The reasonable assumption is that rather than making it to scale (and therefore useless), it is abstracting out whatever information the user doesn't need, so that a commanding officer can use it to make tactical decisions. Portraying the battlestation as having visible size on a battlefield with a scale of light-seconds is exactly the sort of thing you might do in a schematic, to avoid confusion and ambiguity.

Or perhaps, say, to allow for display of damage to the station on the same plot as you show the enemy fleet and the main gun's firing arc.

[Borgholio]

Not... really.

No? Stormtrooper originated as Sturmtruppen, which meant "Thrust Troops". They would enter an enemy's trenches and attack them from within using infiltration tactics. While they did indeed use grenades, I can't find any reference to them being called "sturmgrenadieres". In fact, I can't find any reference to any units called sturmgrenadiere at all...

[Batman]

Um-actually, 'Stormtroopers' is a pretty direct 100% accurate translation of 'Sturmtruppen'.

[Simon_Jester]

Sorry, I got my terms mixed up, and come to think of it 'Sturmgrenadiere' comes from a bad source now that I think hard about it.

'Sturmtruppen' is, yes, as described. Thing is, 'Stormtroopers' is a good translation of 'Sturmtruppen,' but 'assault troopers' would be about as good, because 'Sturm' in this sense is being used in a way that shares a root with the English phrase "to storm a fortress."

Using 'panzer' or 'armored' to describe the elite soldiers of the Empire in LoGH works pretty well. Calling them 'grenadiers' is a flourish.

[NecronLord]

I am in fact aware of the german term for armour is panzer, more specifically it's one of the terms for armour, though not the most generic. A suit of armour on a man, is usually though not always rüstung, which is the term generally used for armour in itself, while when talking about type of armour they use the term panzer more frequently, IE a suit of plattenpanzer (plate armour) is generally called rüstung when not being specific as to type.

This is not a hard and fast rule, but say, taking off de.wiki "Ringelpanzer waren kostbare Rüstungen" (Ring-armour was costly armour).

My (very limited, from a few years back in school) understanding of german is that if you were making up a term for armoured-grenadiers they would be rüstunggrenadiers if anything, but it is hardly pertinent really to their military skills, and it's obvious IMO they're named for the real-life panzergrenadiers.

Anyone with a better knowledge of german, feel free to put me right if necessary, though.

But this digression aside I am wondering why they are using crossbows instead of say, airguns or grenades.

[Simon_Jester]

Air rifles would be a very reasonable choice. The argument may be that they don't actually offer that much practical advantage over a crossbow, in that it's mechanically possible to build a high-tension crossbow whose arrows are comparable or superior to anything practical or safe from an air rifle. But I'm not sure that's even true, so I'm not advancing the claim- just thinking someone else might and wondering what to make of it.

Grenades are problematic because of the risk of a backfire. If the entire volume you're fighting over is suffused with zephyr particles, one explosion in one place can kill everyone, including the people who threw the grenade. Firing a gun inside a volume suffused with zephyr particles can kill everyone around the shooter, and may or may not (not sure) actually harm the target.

[Gunhead]

But this digression aside I am wondering why they are using crossbows instead of say, airguns or grenades.

It's never really explained beyond the Zephyr particles. Armor performance is inconsistent in the show too. In some cases it's shown to be impervious to their energy weapons but in other instances the armor can be penetrated by handheld energy weapons through weak points. Additionally, both sides field armor that has a transparent visor on the helmet which is covered by an armored shield. The unarmored visor is sometimes penetrated by weapons, both melee and firearms, but sometimes is not. All in all, it seems the axes and the arrows have some kind of special edge that allows them to pierce armor. There are few instances where an unarmored opponent takes on someone wearing armor and is not in a significant disadvantage in terms of strength. To convolute things even further, the spinoff series have both sides using energy weapons that can pierce armor and melee weapons are used as secondary weapons, if at all.
Grenades are not used because they would most likely ignite any Zephyr particles, they do posses grenade launchers so it's not like they don't have grenades. I don't remember ever seeing anyone use a handgrenade though in the series.

-Gunhead

[Batman]

In german, the term 'Rüstung' is used to refer to personal armour...as long as it means plate mail, chain mail, leather armour etc. It is never used for anything other than personal armour, armour on vehicles or buildings is always 'Panzerung' or 'Panzersomething' (i.e. the armour belt on a battleship would be called 'Panzergürtel') and modern day body armour is usually called 'Körperpanzer/Körperpanzerung'. 'Armoured Grenadiers' would likely be called 'Gepanzerte Grenadiere'.

As for airguns vs crossbows, I suspect it's a hell of a lot easier to make repeating air guns than repeating crossbows. All you need is a way to store enough compressed air for more than one shot, and I think we've had the technology to do this for quite a while in the real world.

[NecronLord]

I stand corrected (though these guys do look and act a lot like armoured knights, complete with crossbows and big axes), thank you.

Air Weapons (Military)

Ta da for a real military airgun, which certainly killed people (it was used by period snipers in european armies) some research into modern ones:

Air Weapons (Hypothetical/Modern)
Just for comparison for these things.

An M16 has a muzzle energy of 1.7 kJ (1,302 ft/lbs) and velocity of 990 m/s (3,250 fps) [source]

Big game hunting is done with air rifles in some places, and there are small craftsmen making rifles in the 500 foot pound (0.6 kilojoule) range, and air rifles have been used to shoot bears is one example with some pictures of its handiwork [here] (Potentially NSFW or offensive depending on taste - Folks posing with big game kills)

Comparatively here's a guy performing an experiment on a semiautomatic airgun which he finds to average 33 ft/lbs (44 joule) muzzle energy, but this is a lightly constructed thing, over 75 shots. Fully automatic models exist, but do not seem to be available for sale except as 'experimental' and 'prototypes' without warranty such as this one

Obviously you'd probably need something bigger than either to make a reliable semi-automatic weapon in a range comparable to a modern semi-automatic, but assuming you're willing to make a backpack-air cylinder, as with a scuba diver, I imagine it would be possible to get automatic performance.

Naturally this also omits the possibility of using it as a tripod gun - something like an EWeb with an externally mounted ground based bottle and fully auto, but any of these have the option of giving you something that will slaughter boarding LoGH parties like shooting fish in a barrel.

Not that I'm sure most of our combatants are actually that smart, so let's look in their inventories:

Guns that will work in Zephyr Particle Zones

The Battletech guys, once they are alert to the danger, will take any boarding action in a walk, and shoot Panzergrenadiers down like dogs; their infantry possess gauss rifles, that is to say, electromagnetic guns that operate without laser or firearm.

The UNSC has several gauss guns and rail guns in its inventory [1] [2] [3] so will clean up.

Honorvese use magnetic-coil weapons called pulsers, so in any Seffle particle environment, will operate normally.

Mass Effect has this as a setting precept.

Weapons in the Mass Effect universe are micro-scaled mass accelerators, using mass-reducing fields and magnetic force to propel miniature slugs to lethal speeds.

So again, unless Seffle particles affect magnets, they'll work as normal.

Star Wars is mostly fucked, but Kaminoans could perhaps be persuaded to equip the Republic/Empire with their saber darts in the long run, though whether that's viable against an armoured opponent is dubious. Dugs produce large artillery rail guns, as shown in the Clone Wars cartoon, Mustafar Rifles are supposed to shoot compressed air but I don't know where visual guides and things stand in the new canon. Geonosian sonic weapons are probably viable, and can shatter rock as I recall, so should be effective.

Stargate's wraith stunners might work, though I doubt it; replicators are and remain the biggest problem here, though, and would still operate as normal.

Star Trek is not likely to do well, on the face of it, though we have seen that the UFP considered a firearm (the TR-118, non-teleport edition) and rejected it as by the time they'd completed development they'd introduced 'regenerative phasers' that operated in energy dampening fields. Perhaps they could manage something similar here.

[Batman]

Just a minor nitpick, Honorverse pulsers are gravitic, not magnetic.

[NecronLord]

Nitpick graciously accepted.

It should be noted that the LoGH Empire is much more normal on the ground (Potentially NSFW: anime violence, brains falling out etc) and has the full spectrum of weapons one might expect, from tripod guns to armoured cars, rifles (with bayonets!) and grenades, and here at least, is both tactically sensible (they throw smoke grenades into occupied rooms before storming them, so one up on stormtroopers!) and inventive ('remove your shoes, no armored vehicles') compared to most sci-fi opponents.

[Batman]

Except that very sequence had a number of if not armoured then at least armed vehicles convene on the spot of the raid so I seriously doubt the men taking off their boots would have made much of a difference (especially as they decided to open fire at a range where the target hearing their boots is debatable and all of their forces were in plain view anyway).

[NecronLord]

The armoured vehicles I see there are armoured cars; I assume it's a dubbing issue and he means 'no tanks' or something in the Japanese.

Cars with tyres would be hard to tell from the background noise (of more cars) in a town, as would trucks, while large numbers of booted men or catepillar track vehicles are distinguishable sounds.

And if you're opening fire from short range that is generally a mark of success in your 'sneak up' mission.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm highly unsure whether magnetic or gravitic mass-driver weapons (pulsers, gauss rifles, etc.) would work safely in a Zephyr particle environment. What sets them off seems to be just about any intense release of energy. I don't think it's very specific, and figuring out very clever ways to bypass the effect might just be an unnecessarily complicated way to blow yourself up.

Honorverse's real ground combat advantage is superior power armor (where guns can't be used) and just plain devastatingly greater ground firepower (where they can).

[Enigma]

What if some purposely ignites the seffle\zephyr particles onboard a starship. Let's say a suicide tactic from a desperate boarder?

[Batman]

Screw suicidal boarder. What about a robot/RPV? That tactic begs to be abused so you can cause maximum mayhem with minimum effort.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes.

Although in most scenarios where it even makes sense to bother sending boarding troops, having the whole place indiscriminately blown up by zephyr particles is... counterproductive. Usually they only send in the armored axe-marines or whatever if capturing an installation intact is desirable, so deliberately blowing things up remotely isn't an option. If they do want to blow things up, well, they have powerful shipboard weapons that can do that.

However, we do see offensive use of zephyr particles in large scale naval warfare, especially by the Empire after they develop the ability to project them in a directional stream and make only the enemy ships be surrounded by them.

[SAMAS]

You do realize that they're not gonna release enough particles to do more than blow up whoever is in the room, right?