We'll have three kinds of teams:
-Defense team: at least three of them. They’ll mostly be sods or other npc’s, but I’d like at least 1-3 player characters per defense point to watch over them and manage the defense. If you ever wanted to boss around some clones, now’s your chance. To make sure they can’t sneak some commandos into our weak points and take advantage from choke points.
-Assault team: main team, this will engage the enemy once they reach us to prevent them from digging in or lobbing nukes at the Sword or whatever. Basically, the main defense force. Will probably have the most player characters, but also npc’s if we can spare them. Will be divided into squads beforehand for if we need to quickly divide our manpower and easier logistics/chain of command.
-Mobile reserve: I called this the guerilla team before, but on second thought there might not be a whole lot of room for that, depending on what the enemy does. Still, this team will be only a few people with very good mobility (jetpack at least, though we could buy some with defense budget if some don’t have any on their own) who will operate quasi-independently from the main team. They can do what they see fit to disrupt the enemy, but must always be able to disengage and help out somewhere else should the need arise. For example, if the UWM splits up their assault and uses several approaches, and the main team can’t take them all, they can help out whatever defense team gets into trouble. Or if we see a chance at flanking the enemy, they get called. It’s basically to ensure we have something on hand to respond to emergencies. Will probably only be about 5 people, depending on who it is and whether we have some sort of ‘elite sods’ or something. Milno will probably lead this, if Caellath agrees to.
---Boarding team: once the brunt of the fighting is over, these people will be put into shuttles and will try to take over the enemy ships. This is not a separate team, we’ll pluck these from the other teams. Number of people depending on how many boarding pods we need to fill, which is up to Pw really. Will probably get some extra npc’s added to flesh out the assault.
So; I’d like everyone to post what team you’d prefer and if you wanna go play space pirate (aka boarding team or not). Even if you’d prefer to sit in the Sword and not participate, I’d like to know.
Can’t promise everybody will get to be on their preferred team, but I’ll do my best.
The things we really need to defend (in order of importance) are:
-Sword: because duh
-Ares command room: basically the core of many of the planet's functions. If they get access to this or destroy it, we're in for a world of pain.
-Admin control room: central command for the defense: if they take this it'll be a blow, but not as bad as losing ARES I think.
-wherever our main connection to the other automated defenses is (central computer hub, or the big bunch of wires running underground or satellite dishes or whatever): to ensure we don't lose half our combat capabilities because some sod trips over the main power cable.
-the various automated defenses and laser batteries
The doctor and the braindead players will defend the sword, so we don’t need to worry about that. Defense for batteries, remote artillery and such will be handled by robots and turrets, though if they focus on the batteries covering this area we’ll need to actively defend those, cause I don’t feel like having battlesuits dropped on my head no sir thank you.
We shouldn’t expect problems from escaped UE’s, but stay vigilant nonetheless.
Bigger picture of defense plan (some copypaste involved):
We have an idea of where they'll land, since there are certain zones where our laser cannon batteries don't have much overlap. We take down as many as we can before they land through laser batteries and remote nukes. Once they’re down we weaken them using remote artillery emplacements, turrets, mines, robots and other automatic defenses.
Once they reach this area, what we do depends on how they attack: in 1 big clump, surround us, …
Assault team takes on the brunt of their forces, tries to ambush them if possible. Defense team takes on anything that slips through and holds the most vital positions/chokepoints. Mobile reserve stays ready to be deployed where needed (response to the surprise the UWM will undoubtedly have in store for us) and tries to be a pain in the butt for the attackers in the meantime.
They have some orbital bombardment capabilities thanks to their lasers, but I think they'll hold off on bombing their own facilities. And if all goes well we'll be boarding their ships before they really realize they're in over their heads. Still, might wanna be careful with big deployments of troops outside our immediate area; lest they shoot us dead with spacelasers.
I'm wary of actively using anomalies in the defense because of their unpredictability, but using them for area denial seems doable and reliable. And it lessens the avenues we need to cover.
What I think we absolutely need to produce (up for debate):
-some way of having decent imaging capabilities which the enemy can’t take out and will reliably tell us what’s going on. Information is power after all. I’d say cloaked drones, since a satellite could get shot down anyways.
-automatic defenses: pop-up artillery, mines, robots, drones, turrets, the works
-Some sort of basic infantry trooper: regular sods or cybersods
-commanders for these forces, in case there aren’t any player characters available. Must be a bit more durable, more independent than a regular sod and with good tactical insight.
-elite sods: for when we can’t bring a lot of manpower, like the boarding shuttles. Synthflesh sod commanders seem like a handy option. Can be combined with above.
Some vehicles would also be nice, but are secondary to above things really. The Sword has a bunch of stuff I store after all. Open terrain like this is perfect for a heavy threaded vehicle (MBT GOOO).
Will try to add more info, but posting now so people can say what team they prefer.))
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette (Original Thread: Rules, Armory, Misson archive 1-11) (Read 3943364 times)