I'm... not sure why they wouldn't? The Batarians are an ancient space-faring race, one that's been plying the stars nearly as long as the Salarians and the Asari. Even crippled by sanctions and with inferior tech it's basically like England trying to conquer all of Asia.
Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Because, sometimes, in a war time economy the factories are not completely free to decide what they produce.
- Location
- Somewhere near L1... I think
More often than anyone is comfortable with. No seriously, really expensive and really dangerous equipment grow legs and wander off all the time. Thankfully, they usually reappear after a few hours or days, especially the big ticket items, but it does happen.
HanEmpire
Delicious
There's something screwy going on with the sums here...
Previously, we had 3/4 of our forces deployed to Anhur. The winning vote was to leave 1/3 of them - which is 1/4, or 25% of our total forces - there, while sending 3/4 of our total forces (the other 2/3 of the Anhur group plus the 1/4 who never got deployed there at all) to guard some colonies.
Had something of an idea fall into my head and it won't let go until I've said it so I might as well. Thankfully it's not about tanks, but a supplemental part for our power armors or an outer armor if you will.
I'm pretty sure a good few of you guys here are familiar with the anime Infinite Stratos, never got around to watching the second season as I got bored of it, and I'm not advocating to invent one, but why not use the idea behind it? Add an outer armor layer with extra arc-reactors, more powerful and over sized repulsor-based thrusters specifically calibrated for speed add in a few vehicle based Kinetic Barriers, vehicle based Weapons and such to help protect its wearer, allowing the suit (dunno if ours are airtight yet and didn't feel like looking it up but I suspect they are) to essentially be used in space as (makeshift) fighters, for boarding actions or maybe even orbital re-entry with its vehicle based barriers. May even be quite easy for our people to boost up into orbit, run a sub orbital flight path and drop somewhere else on planet not long after, dunno the time scales but it would allow long distance (jumps, if you will) easy.
This part of outer armor would be easily detachable in cases of emergency or damage or if their is plainly not enough space for it. In case of detaching it, you still have the standard armor and weapons underneath it (might need to sacrifice any type of shoulder mounts though to use those connection points to the outer armor), yet would add a shit load of (fire and shield) power to each and every armor we can field along with the fact that each type of outer armor we make can be easily made modular to adapt its weapons to the mission, or just make several types (close-mid-long-artillery and even a medical support version carrying extra supplies could be done) for whatever setup you need.
Don't actually know if such an idea is even practical, but as I said the idea wouldn't leave me alone so just thought I'd post it here. As for the outer armor, somehow the voices in my head are calling it Over Armor, dunno where that came from, must have watched to many animes over the years.
Just something you may be able to use or not, couldn't remember if it was ever discussed so, feel free to dismiss it...
I'm pretty sure a good few of you guys here are familiar with the anime Infinite Stratos, never got around to watching the second season as I got bored of it, and I'm not advocating to invent one, but why not use the idea behind it? Add an outer armor layer with extra arc-reactors, more powerful and over sized repulsor-based thrusters specifically calibrated for speed add in a few vehicle based Kinetic Barriers, vehicle based Weapons and such to help protect its wearer, allowing the suit (dunno if ours are airtight yet and didn't feel like looking it up but I suspect they are) to essentially be used in space as (makeshift) fighters, for boarding actions or maybe even orbital re-entry with its vehicle based barriers. May even be quite easy for our people to boost up into orbit, run a sub orbital flight path and drop somewhere else on planet not long after, dunno the time scales but it would allow long distance (jumps, if you will) easy.
This part of outer armor would be easily detachable in cases of emergency or damage or if their is plainly not enough space for it. In case of detaching it, you still have the standard armor and weapons underneath it (might need to sacrifice any type of shoulder mounts though to use those connection points to the outer armor), yet would add a shit load of (fire and shield) power to each and every armor we can field along with the fact that each type of outer armor we make can be easily made modular to adapt its weapons to the mission, or just make several types (close-mid-long-artillery and even a medical support version carrying extra supplies could be done) for whatever setup you need.
Don't actually know if such an idea is even practical, but as I said the idea wouldn't leave me alone so just thought I'd post it here. As for the outer armor, somehow the voices in my head are calling it Over Armor, dunno where that came from, must have watched to many animes over the years.
Just something you may be able to use or not, couldn't remember if it was ever discussed so, feel free to dismiss it...
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No not really.
A planet is an awesome backstop, that grain of sand probably ends up exploding in the upper atmosphere.
England managed quite well with India though, and something like half of Africa.
That said, I would expect that the SA would manage to isolate Hegemony systems from Kar'shan and then just grind away at them over time. There's implications that the Hegemony homeworld and home cluster are somewhat lacking in raw materials production, while the tyrannical regime of the Hegemony would try to keep colonies outside Kite's Nest highly dependent on Kar'shan's exports to maintain themselves. This would be a major logistical weakness that can be exploited through merchant raiding and occupying transition systems.
So you're saying that the key to shattering the Hegemony is to make the colonies less dependent on Kar'shan? I wonder if we could scout out Batarian systems willing to get an industrial stimulus in exchange for declaring independence from the Hegemony, causing the Batarian state to balkanize?
Not quite. The Hegenomy most likely concentrates most of the military and economic power into the hands of members of the top level caste, which would be housed nearly exclusively on Kar'shan itself due to a variety of factors, while the actual factories and military bases housing most of the power the Hegemony has would be in worlds close to Kar'shan in the Kite's Nest. That however does not mean that the batarians beyond Kar'shan are not loyal to the Hegemony, they are if for no other reason the Hegemony has no problem with murdering/disappearing any malcontents.
Right now the people who actually make the decisions are loyal to the Hegemony because the Hegemony is good to them and worse to those that would oppose it. However, if you break the Hegemony's ability to project power into the galaxy by locking down the Primary Relay they use to do so and trade their entire economy is likely to start failing. We'd be basically be running a trade interdiction in an attempt to starve an enemy into submission. However, if the war carries on the inability of the colonies to replace their losses (especially military and police) will make it harder and harder to keep control of the slave populations while the entire Hegemony economy tanks because the raw materials are no longer flowing to where they need to go. It will take a few years at minimum, but at that point we'll be able to start convincing Batarian colony worlds to surrender.
Kar'shan won't ever surrender, and the Kite's Nest most likely also, but at this point their economy would've sufficiently diminished that they're unlikely to be able to mount much of a threat while we grind away at their former colonies and break the slaving culture. If we can shut them down for a generation or two we should be able to toss abolitionist batarian formations at the Hegemony as part of our military, but actually breaking the Hegemony would most likely take at least that long anyway. The Hegemony is no doubt sufficiently prideful to attempt a revanchist war after a couple of decades of rebuilding if we don't either keep the pressure up or utterly break the upper levels of the Hegemony power structure.
Of course, this analysis presumes no Reaper War in a decade or so.
Why would farm equipment get militant?
How would you suggest we implement that? Park a Pydna hunter squadron near a Relay in Batarian space and have them check the manifests of all incoming ships?
...do we know how many Relays the Hegemony has in their systems? Primary and secondary, I mean.
Clusters are relatively isolated and Kite's Nest has only 1 (known) Primary Relay offering access. Park a Pynda hunter squadron with the publically stated mission to completely interdict all travel to and from Kite's Nest. Any ships attempting to run the blockade will be sunk, no matter the flag. We've found out that the Hegemony is capable of flinging ships out from the Alpha Relay, but we don't know if it's capable of receiving, and if they've figured that one out.
Presumably, yes, but we can still interdict their trade if we can't lock down the Kite's Nest Primary, it just means we need to start actively patrolling Kite's Nest. I'd prefer not to as it'd be more risky than just parking a fleet on a Relay.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
I see a couple problems with this, and it's similar to why super-versatile mechs are not worth it.
It basically boils down to the fact that specialized equipment is usually better at its assigned role than all-purpose equipment. Lot of reasons for that, ranging from optimization (e.g. pure fighters are far more optimized to their role than makeshift fighters) to training (e.g. you don't want infantry to try flying planes). AND if you need flexibility, well that's what the variety of units among fleets and armies and combined arms are for.
The only use case I can see is for units that do require maximum flexibility, that is, elite special forces.
Even then, there are other problems with this outer armor that limit this use case, and they have to do with the size and bulk of this "outer armor". The size of a "foot soldier" (infantry or special forces combatant) is useful because they can partake in combat in practically all habitable areas. If the outer armor is sufficiently large enough, it can limit the terrain the infantry can take action. Furthermore, where are they going to keep the outer armor, if they have to disconnect it in the battlefield? It's not like some handheld weaponry that you can just strap to your back, and this outer armor surely is expensive enough to not be expendable.
Also, power suits already include some of the capabilities you're describing, including flight (with mark 2+ and repulsors) and extensible mounts for whatever specific functionality you require, albeit not to the scale of your suggested outer armor. For ex, that "Kasa Guardian Angel" system that UberJJK just referenced in the previous page.
I'm all in favor of taking advantage of logistical weaknesses in Batarian territory, but even ignoring the Reapers, I doubt we'll have the time to drag on a war or occupation for decades, let alone trying to force Batarian society to change without occupation. At that time scale, political challenges will crop up, from the expected war weariness back at home, to skittishness from the Citadel Council and Terminus powers trying to preserve the delicate status quo.
I think the best strategy is to take advantage of the SA/PI's tech advantage and comparable industry and wage war with conventional strategies. Tactics might change due to the new tech, but the standard overarching strategy of defeating fleets, achieving orbital superiority, and
If Collectors or other Reaper influence interfere in the war, I have the confidence that either: a) SA/PI will be able to overcome it; and/or b) the Council and rest of the galaxy will realize the threat of...something at least very ominous (if Reapers haven't been identified yet).
When it comes to actually invading Batarian inner worlds and Khar'shan, that will be trickier. Again, because of political reasons rather than just military ones: what the hell are SA and the Council going to do with a defeated and occupied Batarian Hegemony? SA lacks the manpower for long-term occupation over the breadth of former Batarian territory, while the Council doesn't want the young SA to suddenly rival major powers in terms of territory (or at least claimed territory). Furthermore, a UN-style occupation force might not be an option, because the Terminus powers could raise a fuss.
In this case our best option would be in my estimation a strategic smash and grab operation, destroying enemy naval assets and infrastructure while running off with as many of the Hegemony's slaves as we can, gutting the enemy's industrial capabilities long term by orbital bombardment of manufacturing and transportation hubs while raiding things like mines to destroy access.
This is massively more destructive and liable to cause revanchist sentiment as well as planet wide riots as the batarians left behind are left without the labour that was needed to basically support their entire industry from food production to luxury cars. Starvation will likely be a widespread problem. To put it quite simply, either we accept we're in for the long haul, or we're going to have to deal with the Hegemony again, and again, and again and hope we can nibble away at the Hegemony's territory or internal politics so as to eventually eliminate them as a threat.
Evillevi
A Pikachu for everything - Shadow Pikachu,2015
Welll not quite true....
However the main use of any ground based forces will ultimately be for defending/attacking cities in order to capture it. Currently with the naval paradigm, there's functionally no place on a planet that a large enough fleet of ship will not be able to bombard to oblivion if gains space superiority. However if you want to capture a city you'll need ground forces to surgically remove enemy combatants from the equation. Similarly you can defend against such an attempt with ground forces. Which is where the tank will come in as it's a mobile bunker that shoot rockets because we can .
I'd advise watching some WWII documentaries on how tanks fared in cities. Spoiler: Not well.
Unless you are willing to accept civilian causalities and demolish all the buildings around the tank, at which point orbital bombardment is probably a better choice, a tank is confined to the city's roads and highly vulnerable to infantry armed with anti-tank weapons either sneaking up upon it or attacking from the windows of the surrounding buildings.
If anything this is actually the perfect case example of why a squadron if Legionaries is better then a single tank. The tank is a sitting duck that can only retaliate by causing massive collateral damage. Legionaries are far less vulnerable to sneak attacks, because they are unlikely to all be killed in a single strike, and are actually capable of entering buildings to eliminate enemy forces inside.
So what you're saying is that we need tanks that have Flamenwerfers so we can werf Flamen. /kidding
I would think reaction time for a VI controlled CIWS would be more than sufficient to deal with people dropping Molotovs out a window, and I would think onboard sensors for a tank could detect most explosive charges like mines.
The doctrinal feedback our pet super planner gave us requested some sort of warship-grade kinetic barriers to let our troops advance under cover. Even if we ignored offensive power, having a rolling medical support drone with "this is bullshit" level kinetic barriers seems reasonably safe, no? It could probably do double duty carrying different weapons mounts for the Legionaries (so if they know they're going to be facing a different threat paradigm they can swap out the bunker-busting missiles for the flamethrower, for instance) and carry a more sophisticated sensor suite to augment whatever is onboard the Legionaries.
How's that for a reasonable armored companion for Legionaries?
Chargone
Invisable operator
- Location
- New Zealand
Seems like a good idea.
Though from the sounds of it, you're looking at something closer to a Universal Carrier than a Tank, ideally. If everything can be made small enough. Keep it low profile (harder to see/hit), short/narrow (easy to maneuver into good spots to use it's weapons from) and able to engage infantry effectively. (for infantry scale direct fire heavy weapons, pintle mounts are probably your friend. Rockets are, of course, a different story.)
This is, admittedly, not a super well thought out thought. But thinking more along the lines of "universal carrier" than "tank" is probably going to produce more useful design ideas for this role, even if the end result is nothing like one.
Evillevi
A Pikachu for everything - Shadow Pikachu,2015
I'm not sure that's an issue???
I mean if you're loading precision weapons on the tank than collateral damage is not an issue (Lasers being literally pinpoint accurate has it's advantages if coupled with good VI ) so I don't see how a WW2 documentaries actually matter in regards to that. I mean depending of which documentaries you go by tanks have everything from being a worse tech to being sniped by other tanks to not having enough range to being dependant on not running out of fuel to etc as problems.
But if you're running a tank you're not going to be running a tank for the firepower. Our characters are in an age of minitaurization and tech development to the point of absurdity and the legionaires can be equiped with ridiculous amount of firepower relative to what they can physically carry because again our tech is advanced to the point of absurdity.
A tank occupies the niche of needing a fuckload of staying power for X reasons. Fire power and collateral is irrelevant when talking about the Tank in this case because just about any ground unit will be outclassed by precision bombardment from an air/spaceship. What you need a tank for is either is staying power,it's ability to be a mobile bunker/battering Ram, it's ability to safely transport something from point A to point B and or things that an infantry cannot do because they aren't physically capable of doing. A tank can be a mobile med bay, communication relay and so much more because our tech is again absurd and we can cram a fuck load of anything into a tank.
Also speed and defense of a tank aren't a big problem because we live in a world where we can make tanks fly if we want to. Unable to use a tank because of collateral damage of buildings. Fly up and precision shoot down into enemy units. Land again to effectively control any area that you can see. Fill up a city full of tanks and you can establish massive areas under you're control in conjunction with the legionaries.
This doesn't mean that I don't disagree with your claim of Legionairies being better than tanks for being able to simply divide up and spread their HP/DMG and the fact fo the matter is that the Infantry will always be the backbone and meat of any army since we need to be able to access and chase down place that people can go into. Tanks are too big in this regard. But there is a time and place for everything and Legionaries aren't the best answer to everything.
PS: In particular this only really applies if we somehow come accross a situation of force/tech paradigm. Prior to that Infantry are actually the solution to everything .
Chargone
Invisable operator
- Location
- New Zealand
@Evillevi Most of those uses... the result isn't a tank. The flying and precision shooting? That's a gunship. The mobile med bay? Well, if you're sticking that in an AFV chassis, you've actually just got an ambulance appropriately protected for it's environment. And so on.
Trying to make them Also be a tank just makes them worse at their jobs.
Trying to make them Also be a tank just makes them worse at their jobs.
All this multi-role stuff can be filled by our existing Tigers or by Repulsor-equipped Apias; they've got enough cargo space to haul stuff around for ancillary duties. If we do try for a tank, what we need is something that can take down defensive structures like Assault+ shields, heavy bunkers, and GARDIAN towers, especially the later. I can think of two ways to pull that off:
- Build what's basically an anti-laser bunker and put Repulsors on it, so the tank can close with the tower. Bonus points if the thing is built like a flying saucer and rotates so that the armor has some time to regenerate between pulses.
- Use miniaturized energy weapons and our superalloys to essentially make Prism Tanks, where 20-50 "feeder" tanks with 25-50 MW lasers stay under the horizon and pump up a "collector" tank that attacks the tower. Would let us out-laser the target tower.
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Evillevi
A Pikachu for everything - Shadow Pikachu,2015
Fair enough.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
I don't know about that, at least on the outer Batarian worlds that SA is likely to invade. Aren't the majority of slaves Batarians themselves? It's not like we'll be shipping those freed slaves elsewhere, and being the labor force, they should be fairly self-sufficient albeit poor. The upper class are screwed there, but that's fine.
I do agree that a crippled economy on Khar'shan could cause social upheaval and resentment there.
In any case, since long-term war or occupation is unlikely, we'll just have to bite that bullet.
...alternatively: genocide
IIRC, modern tanks (MBTs) are still useful in urban warfare, at least in the Iraq War, after compensating for IED weaknesses. I don't know the specifics, but I do know that MBTs were organized into units that incorporated infantry and IFVs. Obviously, the 2170s is nearly two centuries later, so this is kinda obsolete info, but the setting still does involve tanks.
In any case, our commander in Anhur would like at least some MBTs back in Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution | Page 363. Relevant quotes and discussion back then:
...and a lot more discussion and even specific tank design proposals around those pages.
In my estimation, MBTs are in that niche where you need some way to cost-effectively kill Tiger-equivalents (and Tiger killers) and fortifications like GARDIAN towers without requiring the expense (either direct or opportunity loss) or perhaps collateral damage of a frigate's orbital/overhead bombardment. Whether a flying MBT is considered a "gunship" or a "tank" is just semantics and thus mostly irrelevant.
I don't think MBTs are important at this early stage of the war, especially when Tigers can already cover the same roles well enough (if less efficiently) and Batarians don't have Tiger equivalents.
But still, I figure we might as well go ahead and design a MBT, and let the SA decide whether it wants them or not, perhaps building a handful for ParSec. Factories that currently produce Tigers should be able to produce similarly-sized MBTs with little modification.
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