Shields don't stop grenades very well. Concussion waves don't really care. Which means either they kill our people with their own or don't throw at all. Additionally, the 504s weapons have successfully countered grenades, the plasma heat bloom is cooking the nades off before they hit. In fact, for the whole of this fight, the 504s are the only ones who're effective at all on the enemy so far. Their equipment nullifies our ranged weapons, while also allowing them to advance on us while we set up the SAWs, and using grenades which can break the SAWs.

The 504s are basically crushing their way through the phalanx at the moment, those wooden shields aren't standing up to heavy woodworking equipment, but they need backup if they're going to do more than punch a hole in the phalanx.
 
Shields don't stop grenades very well. Concussion waves don't really care. Which means either they kill our people with their own or don't throw at all. Additionally, the 504s weapons have successfully countered grenades, the plasma heat bloom is cooking the nades off before they hit. In fact, for the whole of this fight, the 504s are the only ones who're effective at all on the enemy so far. Their equipment nullifies our ranged weapons, while also allowing them to advance on us while we set up the SAWs, and using grenades which can break the SAWs.

The 504s are basically crushing their way through the phalanx at the moment, those wooden shields aren't standing up to heavy woodworking equipment, but they need backup if they're going to do more than punch a hole in the phalanx.

These are shields capable of stopping .700 caliber rounds, grenades do the vast majority of their damage with fragments instead of concussion, and they are probably more concerned with ratios of effectiveness than absolute safety in any case.

Their equipment does not nullify our ranged weapons, it only degrades it, and we have not seen them advance with their extremely heavy new shields at all. Linear battle 1 explicitly describes our weapons as killing Imperators.

Do you really want your anti-heavy-weapons strategy to be "hope the enemy rolls another 3"?

By all indications the 504 are winning this all on their own without needing or even wanting help, and a broken shield wall typically spells doom for the wielders. They will either pull this off and not need us to do more than provide fire support against the broken enemy force, or enough of them will die that we can resume firing. Having our ranged troops lacking melee weapons charge into melee to support the berserk madmen with their bare hands does little to improve the situation and costs us precious soldiers.
 
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Going by the rolls their shields offer no advantage against our weapons. Our EM rifles can't gurantee a kill through the shields, but they still seem to do enough damage to reliably take those they hit out of the fight.

The only thing our troops have for close combat is the relatively heavy armour of our regular infantry, but without close combat weapons and training that doesn't help.
 
Do our riflemen and the Dragonflies have line of sight to the grenadiers? Or are they hunkered down behind the shield wall? Is there part of the shield wall on the flanks that we can target with our riflemen, to keep the shieldmen busy holding up the wall rather than attacking the 504s??
 
Can we just flank them? If they feel like going into melee with our allies, what keeps us from shooting into their sides?
[X] Hold the line
- [x] Flank them
 
[X] Hold the line - You're not going to abandon the 504s but you're not an assault force

Going forward is tactically stupid, and the grenades aren't that big of a threat. They will only have one or two more throws and they'll be distracted by the 504s. I have no problem letting the 504s take the bulk of the casualties.
 
[X] Charge! - You need to break those lines and eliminate their launchers
-[X] eliminate their grenadiers first then take their commander captive if possible
 
[X] Charge! - You need to break those lines and eliminate their launchers
-[X] eliminate their grenadiers first then take their commander captive if possible

Personal inclination is to have that taken care of immediately.
 
To clarify, the shield wall stretches along the entire breadth of the railway enclosure. If you could have seen the grenade launchers (because they are mechanical to get the grenades as far as they did) you would have ordered your men to fire on them right away. Actually, if you could have seen them your entire strategy would have been different. The only way to flank is to have your men run the stairs of the Empire State Building first, more or less.
 
Yep, that's not going to work. Changing my vote.

[X] Hold the line - You're not going to abandon the 504s but you're not an assault force.
 
...You guys realize Hold The Line is basically 'stand there and pray they don't have more grenades' because we can't shoot into them while the 504 are engaged right? Whereas they can pretty much arc grenades right up over their shield wall into our line?

I know people are still pissed at the 504s and think there's a big advantage in letting them get killed off. But the Imperators already threw two volleys of grenades and the one of them that was aimed at us gave us 19 casualties on a roll of 51. If their next grenade volley crits, we are going to lose a lot of men, and it's going to be increasingly hard to keep our morale and prevent our whole unit from being broken the more we're forced to sit and just eat grenades. Losing a battle to raiders like that could have political consequences.
 
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I can't decide whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of the majority plan of:

"Help the uncontrollable berserk madmen claw their way through vehicle-grade armor with hand tools while under constant bombardment, roll up and obliterate the broken enemy force using chainsaws and flamethrowers-

-but, oh yeah, make sure to use restraint and take prisoners to interrogate for information because we convinced ourselves that people using explosives on a world where explosives literally grow on trees must imply the existence of some shadowy, high-tech rival we need to root out."​



Can we just flank them? If they feel like going into melee with our allies, what keeps us from shooting into their sides?
[X] Hold the line
- [x] Flank them

The fact that they are in a reinforced tramway designed to indefinitely resist the periodic, atmosphere-igniting hellstorms of a 40K deathworld. The Imperators are smart, experienced, and well-organized. They have known that we were coming and been preparing for it for months. They chose this location to have the battle and had plenty of opportunity to set it up just right. Hell, they could have intimidated Amethyst Gardens into allowing them to hide troops there and be even now moving in to hammer us from behind or be raiding the supply caches we were depending on to get us home so that they can starve us to death and seize our weapons and armor without firing a shot.



To clarify, the shield wall stretches along the entire breadth of the railway enclosure. If you could have seen the grenade launchers (because they are mechanical to get the grenades as far as they did) you would have ordered your men to fire on them right away. Actually, if you could have seen them your entire strategy would have been different. The only way to flank is to have your men run the stairs of the Empire State Building first, more or less.

So, for the sake of clarity, we can't really observe anything about what is behind the shield wall, and for all we know they have another shield wall, and another, and another, manned by thousands of reserve troops anchored by dozens of fortified fallback positions stretching for miles. They could, in fact, have the positions they are pretending to be pushed back from rigged with mines and claymores to wreck advancing forces in a deliberate ruse, or even have the entire tramline rigged to blow out underneath and behind us, leaving the disoriented survivors to face an advancing vehicle-armor-grade shield wall forcing them over the edge of a quarter-kilometer drop? These experienced and professional raiders could, in fact, have troops already navigating the forest and climbing up to attack us from behind while our troops who are supposed to be anchoring our positions with automatic weapons are busy wailing on inch-thick-steel-equivalent shields with rifle butts and bare hands shoulder-to-shoulder with raging, flamethrower-wielding madmen in a deafening, disorientating, confined killbox where effective command and control is nigh impossible?



...You guys realize Hold The Line is basically 'stand there and pray they don't have more grenades' because we can't shoot into them while the 504 are engaged right? Whereas they can pretty much arc grenades right up over their shield wall into our line?

I know people are still pissed at the 504s and think there's a big advantage in letting them get killed off. But the Imperators already threw two volleys of grenades and the one of them that was aimed at us gave us 19 casualties on a roll of 51. If their next grenade volley crits, we are going to lose a lot of men, and it's going to increasingly hard to keep our morale and prevent our whole unit from being broken the more we're forced to sit and just eat grenades. Losing a battle to raiders like that could have political consequences.

Yes, so let's pull back out of grenade range.
 
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