Mobile Weapons of the League of Outer Stars

Osprey Mobile Attack Unit

[1]
The first League Mobile Weapons was constructed in the closing days of the System War to augment or replace the various domestic aerospace and orbital defence craft used by the League’s members. The Osprey proved popular with pilots, easy to maintain and responsive to fly. However it was not without its problems, primarily a small war load, limited delta-V, and the fact that League pilots, no matter how well trained had an extremely tough time handling the high level transhumans employed by both sides in the Solar War.

Post war, and with the lessons learned from the Osprey more advanced League units were developed, such as the Raptor and David series in an attempt to offset the advantages enjoyed by the forces of the mother system in the war the League suspected was coming.

Few Osprey remain in League service today, primarily in Category-C units, local militias and orbital guard forces. A few specialist models are also used as scouts; however they are being phased out in favour of more capable Raptor PI variants

MAU-1 Osprey
Melee 1
Speed 1
Fire Power 1
Defence 1
Special 0

Raptor Series

[2]
With the end of the system war and the birth of the Federation, the League of Outer Stars, the largest and most powerful association of rim worlds that had formed for self protection during the war found it self faced with a considerable tactical problem in (potentially) having to combat the extremely large and capable military produced by the Allies (and inherreted by Sol-Fed). Particularly, Sol-Fed had large numbers of veteran pilots, who due to there high transhuman status would not age, and could potentially stay in fighting condition for up to a century. Even though many League ideologues dismissed the advantages that transhumanism gave, simply the experience of Sol-Fed mobile suit units gave the League combined militaries pause.

This turned to alarm when more direct experience on the rim allowed the League to get a close look at exactly how advanced many Federation pilots and mecha were. A crash program to redress the balance was put into effect, and became one of the most widely produced mobile weapon varieties in history. The general design of the Raptor was a light, fast and cheap mobile suit that’s airframe could be produced even by relatively primitive League colonies, even if the AI and weapons had to be manufactured at the more advanced League core.

The Raptor proved extremely successful in engagements with pirates (many of them former space independence alliance units) even if its computer brain was still not able to match the ability of A or S class transhumans.

More recently however, the Raptor has begun to show its limitations. Several small skirmishes with INTACT and the Federation Navy have resulted in the destruction of the Raptor force even with a numbers advantage. Various programs and tactical studies have been initiated to cover this gap, however given the number of Raptors already produced, it seems likely that they will see considerable use in any confrontation between Sol-Fed and the League

Type-One
The definitive Raptor type, initially designated Type-D was redesignated as Type-One during the TS18 LOS combined military designation review. It has equivalent performance to most mass production Federation mobile weapons. Type-Ones in contemporary League service tend to be equipped with external devices such as ECM generators to overcome the League’s lack of a specialist ECM unit such as the Federation Odysseus or New Hong-Kongese Type 052.

Melee: 2
Firepower: 2
Defences: 1
Speed: 2
Special: 0 (AI operated)

Type-Two
A recent upgrade, the Type-2 Raptor is faster and more heavily armed than the Type-One, but still retains lower performance than the more advanced Federation models.

Melee: 2
Firepower: 2
Defences: 2
Speed: 3
Special: 0 (AI operated)

Raptor-Piloted (Pi)
The Raptor-Pi is the Piloted variant of the Raptor, for situations, such as peace keeping missions, police actions and the like when human supervision is desired or required. The Raptor PI is considerably heftier looking, and heavily armoured than the standard Raptors.

One proposal to even the odds against Sol-Fed units is to use modified Raptor-Pi as flight leaders for Raptors flights, adding advanced Limited Intelligence flight management systems to allow the human pilot to keep up with a raptor flight and give them direct tactical direction. This variant, the PiC, is still undergoing flight tests.

Melee: 2
Firepower: 2
Defences: 3
Speed: 2
Special: 0 (1 Raptor-Brain Control PiC only)

Eagle Fire Support Suit

[3]
Almost identical in role to the Sol-Fed Perseus the Eagle Series, which comes in both piloted and non-piloted variants was designed to augment the League’s Raptor forces by launching railgun-accelerated long range missile strikes at beyond visual range to thin and break up Federation formations before they were attacked by faster, more manoeuvrable Raptors.

Unfortunately, current generation jamming and decoy technology has reduced the utility of long range missiles drastically, relegating the Eagle to a pure fire support or ship strike roll. The Eagle is somewhat under armoured for direct attack on battleships, but it is hope that the addition of new weapons may give the suit a new lease of life.

Melee: 0
Firepower: 3
Defences: 2
Speed: 1
Special: 1 (Long targeting)

Second Generation Raptors

Recent skirmishes with INTACT, particularly certain black operations have shown the current Raptor Type-One’s and Type-Twos are not able to effectively compete with more advanced Federation army mecha and pilots. This has led to a rethink of tactics and the acceleration of several existing projects to compensate.

Raptor High Manoeuvre Attacker (Hi-MATs)

The obvious approach to boosting the Raptor’s performance was to create a better airframe. The Raptor-Hi-MAT is a much faster and more modern variant of the raptor, generally superior in most areas to even the type-2. While its brain is still inferior to that of an S-Class or A-Class transhuman it’s reflexes are quicked by having an individual control unit in each limb, allowing them to react incredibly quickly if necessary.

Melee: 3
Firepower: 2
Defences: 2
Speed: 4
Special: 1 (Reflex boost)

Raptor-SC (Smart Core)
One approach to improving the raptor is to improve the AI not the airframe. This has major advantages in that it would allow for the League’s entire fleet to potentially be cheaply retrofitted to the new design. The Raptor-SC employs advanced software and a rebuild computer core to provide considerably greater skill in piloting.

The SC usually operates in conjunction with a control station on a ship or heavy ground vehicle, which supplies it with even more computer power. There are rumours that some of the Raptor-SC’s combat moves are based on salvaged combat data and brain scans from System war era aces, a rumour which, if true, is likely to cause considerable political fall out within the LoS.

A proposal for a Hi-MAT variant is currently at the drawing board stage.

Melee: 2
Firepower: 2
Defences: 2
Speed: 3
Special: 2 (Smart Core AI)

Raptor-Pi Kitsune

Based on a version of the Raptor-Pi prototype built with modern technology, the Raptor-Pi Kitsune is an extremely fast, extremely heavily armed sniper suit. Equiped with very high end scanners and a Raptor control computer, the Kitsune is extremely deadly even in the hands of a baseline pilot.

Rumours of custom variants of the Kitsune also exist.

Melee: 2
Firepower: 4
Defences: 3
Speed: 3
Special: 2 (Raptor-Brain Control Long Range targeting)