After rounding up a bunch of board guys from B Company, you got down to work testing the new fun wagons. Obviously, you needed to make sure they could in fact be driven. To do this, you planned a nice little two-day road march around your Garrison Area, and managed to snag a seat in one of the nice Kubachi trucks being used to tail the operation. Your route would go about ninety kilometers down a decent straightaway with only two or three big hills in it, hang a left down the last big hill and take a dirt road for about twenty kilometers, and then cross-country across a small section of the Cordon Sanitaire around the Cork Woods, before fording Damien's Creek and coming back home. Total trip length, about two hundred and thirty kilometers, and it covered most of the local terrains you'd be likely to fight in. After throwing in some sandbags to simulate the weight of the dudes being carried, you all got off to a rolling start at about ten AM.
Naturally, your first actual stoppage was at 10:15 when the Irizar broke down, with a quick examination being a blown breaker at the bus bar. A little quality time with a fan running, though, got it back rolling. After that, the macademized road didn't present you with any issues, until you got to the last hill.
Breakdown two was the GBA entrant at about noon, which wasn't so much a breakdown as a driver failure. Going up switchbacks at 13% grade wasn't very kind to it, causing one of the tracks to slip loose. What made the issue noteworthy, though, was the fact that driver error also resulted in him somehow managing to overgas the throttle in the preceding turn and start overrevving the engine, which naturally made issues when the engine was turned off in the track repair. This then resulted in issue three ten minutes later, where the radiator blew out due to overheating.
After repairs had been made and a covert offering to Saint MacAnnaly, Creator of hurricane tape and God's secret wingman, were completed, things went pretty well until about twelve thirty and you discovered during refueling the L'Osseau entrant's panier tanks took a positive pressure pump, which you didn't have in the back of the Gabriel you'd packed to the gills with jerry cans full of gasoline and diesel. As such, instead of filling all 120 liters of gas tank, you could only fill up the main 60 liter tank. It was quite frustrating, and you hoped things went well from there.
Things did not go well from there. While the trip up the hill was made over 13% grade switchbacks, the way down was a continuous 16% grade spiral slope with a hairpin turn at the bottom. Normally, not that bad. Normally, it also didn't have a six strong convoy going down it with an aggressive rookie driving the L'Osseau entry and a paranoid rookie in the Elizade, who was then passed by the rookey in the L'osseau as he went barreling down the hill. Giving credit where credit was due, he didn't roll the thing at the hairpin turn at the bottom either.
Taking out the front corner of the Elizade, though, and sending it plummeting down the side of the hill, though, was a much less forgivable crime. Instead, it barreled off the side of the road, down the much steeper slope for about ten meters, hit a tree, and then sorta sagged sideways until it came to a stop. The driver was safely recovered, and the vehicle was taken back up to the road with about an hour's time with the winch on the back of the Gabriel. Surprisingly, it still ran reasonably well with the bonnet completely broken, and the radiator damage was fixed with some spackle and more duct tape. Since it was, oh, about twelve-forty when the idiot tried passing, and the patch job was done by two, you'd say that was a pretty decent recovery time.
The rest of the hill wasn't bad, but things got harry when you hit the Cordon Sanitaire. Apparently, the burrowing beetles and rootworms had started trying to spread again, so the Sanitation Corps was out with the flamethrowers to beat it all back. On the downside, it added about ten kilometers to your trip, but you did get to drive through some better-than-average simulated battlefield!
Better than average simulated battlefield that apparently played havoc with your assault carriers, it seemed. Both the GBA and Irizar threw their tracks multiple times (three and five respectively) and the L'Osseau got stuck badly enough to need a winch out of a blasting ditch. The Elizade had it the worst, though, getting dug in badly and needing to use unditching logs to get out of the frequent scorch puddles it was trapped in. What should have taken, at most, three-quarters of an hour was dragged out to one and a half due to the intermittent jamming. You did make a friend with the Sanitation Corps commander, though, Postmaster-General Luiz Mordred de Montaña, who was curious about the topic of a vehicle-mounted bomb projector, though.
The last stretch home was rather mediocre, with no unexpected breakdowns, losses of vehicle control, or hilarious mishaps until the very end at about sixteen o'clock, in which the poor abused Elizade cracked a suspension arm going over a downed tree that had sunken into the trailbed. It could still limp home, though, as long as they didn't put power down that axle.
Damage testing was next, and you sighed. Destructive testing was going to need to be used, which meant you'd be out four perfectly, or at least mostly, good vehicles. Using a good backstop, you arranged for a couple of weapons to be arranged at a hundred meter distance, which would then fire on the vehicles in question.
The Elizade was up first, with old corn sacks stuffed full of rags to serve as your test dummies inside for crew damage. A wooden board was stuck in to serve as a stiffener, and some old Taelexi helmets were scrounged up to accent the faces drawn up with grease pencils. Weapons-wise, you'd start with the Jackal SMGs, then move up to some captured gew.51 rifles or Arbetescus, since both were pretty common and in your (illegal) stockpile. After that would be an anti-armor rifle, and then you'd drag it out to the artillery range and do a few shrapnel tests.
As expected, the Elizade was totally impervious to the Jackal's 10x22mm SMG round, although to be fair this was entirely likely none of the soldiers tried to hit it. Nobody liked the Jackal, which was partially why the only reason anyone carried it was because it was the only thing the ammo trucks would carry. The gew.51 didn't really hurt it either, the 6.5mm rounds being deflected by the spaced armor or tumbling so much they couldn't get through the lower layer. The anti-armor rifle finally chosen was the Werser 14.5mm Arbetescu model, which is a bit of a pain to work with since you only have about forty rounds for it and need to keep some spare to hunt mimmoths with. You'll have to move down to a smaller one with worse penetration for the next test, but honestly speaking the 14.5 is the worst of the batch in terms of actual utility due to it's man-eating recoil. The oversized tank-hunting bullet makes short work of the armor, though, cutting clean through the armor, spacing, and underlayer to embed itself in the engine and radiator. After ten hits, though, the vehicle is still running strong, even though it's actively leaking oil and has a bullet fetched up on the inner cab firewall. The glass windows prove to be a weak point, though, with easily-destroyed vision blocks, and both driver and commander are killed in short order.
The Irizad was up next, and withstood the SMG blasting without any concerns. The older infantry rifles didn't do much either, and when the AT rifle came up the gun pulled was a crotchety old PzJGew.69 chambered in 13.2mm. This one, you had bullets for at least since you had a couple Slk.69s floating around. The armor penetration was a fair bit worse than the 14.5mm Arbetescu, but made up for it by being for most purposes a semi-automatic: once the clip was in and the full bolt motion was made, all the operator needed to do was slam the bolt handle cum charging lever down to lock the breach and cock the gun. The first two clips of three shots didn't have any appreciable effect on the bow of the assault carrier, but on the third clip the shooter managed to whip a shot through the armored bow grill that hit something in the engine, judging by the massive plume of black smoke that came from the hood. Since a fourth clip was sitting around loaded, he shot that off too, managing to get one through a vision block and another into the drive wheel, cracking it. At the end of the test, the vehicle had all its occupants alive, but the vehicle was immobile due to a hydraulic reservoir that had been hit by a bullet or by shrapnel leaking into the bus bar assembly, causing a fire.
The L'Osseau was up next, and after mandatory expenditure of old-ass Jackal rounds, you got on to the service rifles. For this test, someone had managed to dig a few Kubachi 11mm trapdoors and ammo out from the armory, and you jokingly let them join the firing line. This joke turned into a serious problem, though, when one of them managed to get a shot through the side of the wheel well, cracking one of the suspension's hydrosprings. For anti-tank testing, the PzJGew.69 was pulled up, and started blapping away. Unsurprisingly, the armor didn't do much for the front end: bullets went through the spaced armor without any real difficulty, into the engine compartment, and in two cases out the firewall and into the cockpit. The engine still ran fine, though, and when it came time to get it off the range the only minor fix needed was using a coat hanger to fix the clutch after it got hit by one of the shots.
Finally came the GBA entrant. With SMGs out of the picture since you were by now solidly convinced the things were even more useless against vehicles than they were against people, you got on to the rifle fire. As expected, it was totally ineffective, so you moved on to the AT rifle. Going with the PzJGew.69, you watched the gunner start sniping away with a bored stare, until he loaded a tracer round in the box mag and the resulting hiss caused the front glacis of the GBA to start smoking heavily. Inspection proved that there appeared to have been a partial penetration through the glacis, where the bullet collapsed behind a weld line, and then the phosphate tracer had done something to the backing material which most certainly wasn't steel. The standard slugs hadn't done much of note, though, but the last clip using steel-core armor penetrating rounds (usually saved for actual tanks) managed to dig through the front armor twice: one through the engine maintenance bolt-on panel, and once through the main glacis in front of the driver. Both actual penetrations were pretty traumatic, with destruction of the driving station on one and a complete engine stoppage on the other.
For the artillery fragment testing, the assault carriers were put on the howitzer range, where they would be four meters away from the aim point of the gun battery of the two 85mm guns, which would fire three rounds apiece. Post-shoot examination would then happen, and depending on how the gunners were feeling you might do some shoots with the 60mm guns. Post-shoot inspection went fairly quickly, and you determined right off the bat that getting good information would be tricky, since the shell hit pattern had been terribly uneven. That was the point of the long fire, though, so it would average out.
The Elizade was first to get examined, and it did fairly well. The passenger compartment had suffered about twenty-odd penetrations, mostly on the lower slope of the bed armor, but rough inspection told you that none of the dummies was terribly hurt. More importantly, the engine was still operational, and none of the hits had caused spalling into the troop compartment.
The Irizad was up next, and somehow did worse. The passenger compartment didn't have any active punctures, but the fragments that did hit the armor spalled terribly, sending shrapnel into the compartment and resulting in one critically wounded sandbag and about half the rest with deliberating injuries. More importantly, some shrapnel from a ground blast managed to get under the chassis, cutting a fluid line, as shown by the giant pool of unknown fluid underneath.
The L'Osseau was the closest to being hit directly, so it wasn't suprising when the bed of the vehicle was littered with shrapnel penetrations. Surprisingly, most of the dummies were still combat-effective, if barely, and the provisioned first-aid box you hadn't noticed earlier would handle most of it. The vehicle commander was certainly dead, though, as a shell hit from about half a meter away had turned his side window into a crater and his head into a straw-filled meat patty. The gunner was probably a goner too, considering how little protection he had and the number of through-and-through shrapnel wounds he had.
Finally, there was the GBA, which dear god did it have problems. The entire left track assembly had ended up totaled, and since all the impacts were to the vehicle's left the armor there was pretty much shredded to pieces. The 8mm plate had done its job as long as it could, but in places it had been completely cored out by the shrapnel and the entire left side of the vehicle was ruled as being combat ineffective or dead- including its dismounts. A lot of the damage had also gotten to the engine compartment, which was pretty well ruined, and the fuel supply was leaking onto the floor from the moment the last shell landed.
Once the wrecks were hauled off, you had to do mounting and dismounting tests. For this, your chosen infantry would be told to mount up, the vehicle would drive about three hundred kilometers with the clock stopped, and then everyone would dismount.
The Elizade went first, and loading was done quickly in about eight seconds due to the double wide barn door back and large bumper that made a good step. Unloading took about ten seconds, mostly because everyone needed to take off their seatbelts and there was a little confusion about the door opening mechanism. The troopers liked it on the grounds there was plenty of room for their kit and guns, but didn't like the pitch blackness of the gas-poof back.
The Irizad was next, with fourteen seconds to load due to the single wide back door, and unloading took about sixteen seconds due to a traffic jam at the door. The troopers disliked the tighter internals, complaining about lack of maneuvering room for their rucksacks, and more importantly the fact they were bounced around on the open benches.
The L'Osseau managed to set the speed records in loading and unloading, with eight seconds to load and six to unload as soldiers used every part of the back as a step to get in and likewise jumped out the open top. The view and ability to use their weapons was deeply appreciated, but the bumpy ride and lack of handholds on the wooden benches was not.
The GBA's performance, meanwhile, was resoundingly mediocre. It was ten seconds to load due to the plus of a wide ramp and the minus of a incredibly low ceiling that made it hard to move around in. Unloading was also ten seconds, thanks to said ramp and a wide isle. The dark and cramped internals were universally reviled, but the ramp was considered a small plus.
With testing thus concluded, you went back to your office to ponder what you were going to do. This was going to be a tricky choice to make: they all had their pros and cons as vehicles, and your advisers were still backing their favored horses. That's why you were in charge, you suppose.
VOTES
Select one Assault Vehicle for purchase, and what unit to equip with them. You may choose three options in total: either one vehicle for two companies, or two vehicles for one company (and support roles in that case). No write-ins.
[] Elizade
[] Irizad
[] L'Osseau
[] Ghermain Brothers' Auto
[] B Company
[] C Company
[] D Company
