6) No, Elcor can't live anywhere. Look up
effects of low gravity on human bodies. Difference between 3g and 1g is far greater than 1g and 0.3g. I do not envy Elcor ambassador's health, for example, unless they are using artificial gravity.
Artificial gravity seems pretty common in ME so odds are Elcor apartments are at 3g.
Question for everyone.
What is everyone views on creating improved versions of tanks and aircraft?
I know that a soldier equipped with powered armor and anti-tank missiles can easily destroy tanks as well as provide air support for at least three hours. But, it seems to me that an upgraded "tank" would be very effective against legionnaires. In the last war game, it was shown that the Tigers were very effective at killing legionnaires.
Odds are the whole tank paradigm is dead at this point. The fundamental assumption behind tanks is that trading speed/mobility for defense is a valid move and with the rise of high power and
common anti-armor weapons like Pilum and man portable lasers that just isn't the case. The Tiger works because during the wargame it's primary concern was
missiles (specifically Pilum) which it's advanced point defense system was explicitly built to combat. That combined with the high speed and maneuverability of the design made dealing enough damage to actually take it out of the fight hard, especially when it can always just fallback to recharge. Even then I suspect as our heavy weapons start becoming more common even the Tiger will begin to struggle.
Basically we've either hit, or rapidly approaching, a point similar to one warships did during WWII; offense has so completely outstripped defense that armor becomes not just pointless but actively harmful. No one builds armored warships today because you simply can't slap enough armor on one to tank modern day anti-ship missiles and still remain floating.
In addition, can anyone inform me just how effective a Legionnaire would be against a normal aircraft? In my mind, a legionnaire can provide ground support from the air, but a legionnaire stands no chance when attacked by military aircraft. Not to mention, a Legionnaire can only fly for about three hours thus a Legionnaire is actually very limited as a ground support weapon from the air when compared to a dedicated military aircraft that can fly for hours.
Well its worth noting that only the old Legionaries have the three hour limit. All Legionaries, including System Alliance ones, produced from
2174-Q2 onward are now Mark 1.75B which, among other things, includes Repulsors for
unlimited flight time. That being said Legionaries vs. Aircraft aren't really going to be a common occurrence.
For starters Legionaries really aren't intended to be used as a replacement for a good CAP. Remember we're not producing dozens or hundreds of the things. Hahne-Kedar is literally selling the Alliance
100,000 suits per quarter. If you are an SA soldier and your
not wearing a Legionary you are either aboard a starship, posted somewhere safe like Earth, or
really unlucky. The expectation should be that Legionaries are as common for Alliance troops as M4 carbines are today in the US army.
Aside from that a face off between a Legionary and a fighter would be fairly difficult for both since neither is really equipped to handle the other. ME Fighters fly at not simply supersonic but
hypersonic speeds while Legionaries are generally, outside of perhaps long distance travel, going to be not simply subsonic but probably only in the one or two hundred kilometer per hour range due to pilot reaction times. Engaging with that kind of speed difference is pretty nightmarish. The older Mark 1.5 Legionaries, which still make up the majority of Alliance but not ParSec forces, with their thrusters should generate enough heat for infrared targeting systems to be effective but the new Mark 1.75B Legionaries have Repulsors and Arc Reactors meaning they should have a tiny thermal signature, especially against the backdrop of a city or active warzone. So the fighters aren't going to be lock on their weapons. Meanwhile the Legionary should be able to lock it's sensors on but given the speeds and ranges involved odds are the pilot, even with mechanical assistance, simply can't move fast enough to score a hit.
So fights between fighters and Legionaries would basically boil down to throwing area effect weapons at each other and hoping for the best. Bombers aren't really worth discussing since I expect dedicated bombers to be very rare since anti-air systems are cheap enough and plentiful enough that slow but large payload bombers are obsolete in favor of boom and zoom bombing raids by fighters.
The real question is Legionaries vs. gunships. It is really hard to say how this fight would go. Canon gunships are capable of being taken out by Shepard but he/she is kinda exceptional.
Basically, my question is whether people think we should create improved versions of fighters and bombers? For air and space combat? As well as creating better versions of the Tiger.
I think aside from the Gladius further improvements to air and space combat will probably wait until we're read to design and build our own carriers. At that point would make sense to design both PI carriers and PI parasite craft simultaneously. We're a fair way away from that but my expectation is that we'd probably see an evolution of the drone swarms we've been using with ParSec. The various improvements we've made, and will make, to laser technology make point defense vastly more effective which in turn makes fighters a hell of a lot more dangerous to pilot. So transitioning over to cheap expendable drones over expensive
human piloted fighters makes sense.
