User talk:MJ12 Commando

Outremonde War College Assault

Result: Victory

Magnate Commander: Cleric-Luminor Thomas Apollyon

Magnate Forces:

3rd Assault Reconaissance Group

Dogma Indoctrinated Irregulars

15th Hyperborean Covert Cyberwarfare Unit

League Forces:

Outremonde Metropolitan Police Force Armed Police Unit

Outremonde Metropolitan Police Force Special Armed Tactical Unit

Outremonde Home Guard, Kappa Galaxy

Initial Background

The League's industrial capability came as a rude shock to Magnate forces, as at least two critical League worlds, Minkowski and Outremonde, were effectively unassailable via distance outside of short raids, and as League combat veterans rotated back to the rear echelons, passed on their accumulated knowledge to the next generation of officers, who would be better prepared to fight evolving Magnate weapons. As Minkowski was a closed, theocratic, and heavily transgenic society, it would be harder to infiltrate-but the vulnerability of indefinite space habitation made the results of a successful attack more devastating. Outremonde was easier to infiltrate and successfully attack, but the damage would necessarily be more limited. Perhaps fortunately in hindsight, Outremonde was chosen for the raid. If the raid had taken place against Minkowski as planned, it was all too likely to fail-or in the slim chance that it did not, succeed too well, escalating the war even further into one of genocide and making peace entirely impossible.

The Third Assault Reconaissance Group were some of the most successful unconventional warfare specialists in the Magnate War, the majority of them insurgency veterans with nearly a decade of experience undertaking successful terror attacks on Chinese worlds in support of the exhuman insurgency. Many of them have become rich sources for entertainment, with thinly disguised fictional counterparts playing the antagonists of thousands of games, movies, and shows. A platoon of them, selected specifically because their psychological indicators suggested they would be most capable of accomplishing a suicide mission.

Insertion

At that time, Van der Teega had not been fully evacuated and there was still a trickle of refugee ships. A covert action by Magnate joint forces discreetly seized one of these refugee holdouts without allowing the others to know, and engineers painstakingly converted the vessel to disguise the assault team. When it launched, the hold was packed with Van der Teegans-all indoctrinated and equipped with various combat drugs, binary explosives, and small arms. Below them sat a dozen drop pods, stealthed and designed to look like the wreckage of a freighter. Explosives were wired throughout the hull, to make the pods look like authentic freighter wreckage.

When the freighter successfully docked, the "refugees" quickly assaulted the spaceport, wreaking chaos and disorder. When they started being repulsed by organized security forces, the refugee ship detonated, dealing significant damage to several other refugee ships as well as the spaceport, seeming as if the Magnate crew had chosen self-destruct rather than capture. The wreckage hurtled down towards the planet, concealing the drop pods and their true destination. Various electronic warfare worms had been infiltrated into civilian and low-security military networks to prolong the deception, allowing for the successful assault on Outremonde's war college.

League Response

"When dispatch realized what had just happened, they got all of us and sent them in. I was asleep when I got the call. By the time we got there, with payload rifles and attack suits, the initial response had been completely repulsed. There had been a couple of snipers taking out the perimeter, an armed police van and some squad cars burning, and there was occasional fire coming from railguns that kept us creeping slowly from cover to cover towards the entrance. Suddenly, one of our APCs blew up-a Magnate smart mine. Paramedics got busy trying to get to the guys inside the wreck, retrieving only mangled corpses, and we waited for EOD to clear our path, knowing that every second we spent more people died."

-10/24/2168: What Really Happened At The War College?

The initial cyberwarfare and the distraction of the spaceport attack had been successful enough that, initially, Outremonde's local police force thought what had happened was some sort of school shooting, done by handful of individuals with limited training, rather than most of a commando platoon. This disruption only lasted for an exceedingly short time, but the overwhelming of emergency lines via civilians and the directed attack on tactical lines kept the first wave of response from realizing the gravity of their situation.

Several squads of armed police went in, expecting at most a handful of lightly armored attackers with training weapons stolen from the armory or illegal light firearms. They met a fireteam of the 3rd Armed Reconaissance Group detachment taking up overwatch, armed with most of the unit's anti-armor weapons and with several deployed autoguns slaved to their neural interfaces and lasted for barely a minute against overwhelming fire. Lightly armed with only rifles and submachine guns, expecting similar weapons, their armor and armaments were both utterly inadequate. The commandos counterattacked, savaging the police roadblock.

On the part of the commandos, their destruction of the police roadblock was not out of a misguided sense of vengeance, but rather so that there would be wreckage there blocking sensors and entrances, making ideal areas to emplace anti-vehicular and anti-personnel spider mines for ambush. Although after the first set of casualties from these devices EOD would be called in and would be able to clear the area, the necessity of clearing routes would delay response further. The mine programming was varied, some intended to destroy incoming vehicles, others intended to kill personnel, yet others intended to only explode when someone was attempting to disarm them.

Endgame

"Smith ordered me and my team to go through the door, while tactical teams 4 and 6 would breach through the side walls and catch the two commandos in a crossfire. I was lucky, because I wasn't point or second. The guys had placed laminar mines on each wall and next to the doors, at groin level so if we crouched through they'd have gotten us anyways. Macgruder went in first and he got torn to shreds. Second guy went in, fell back out, multiple hits, dead. The fucking Magnates had perpared for this, were seeking to make it as painful as possible. Our weapons were capable of killing them, but they were fast, too fast. Some part of me was thinking that it was one of those bad action movies, where you see the supposedly elite commando team backing up the hero attack the villain's right-hand-man and get trashed just to show how amazing the hero is for beating him."

"But we were hitting from three directions at once, and they didn't have enough guns. We started getting hits in on them, and those payload rifles pack a punch. We only stopped firing when we hit something critical and one of the operatives exploded. When we came back to our senses, the scene was a charnelhouse. The other one was still moving, but damaged, and recovered faster than any of us. It got a few more of us before we took it out, and it, too, blew up and collapsed the ceiling on us. When we got dug out, the debriefers said that the charge was mostly to keep us from taking them apart to see what was in them. But I knew better, you don't need that much demo to ruin a corpse. The guys were suicide bombers, and they definitely knew it. They had positioned themselves both close to support pillars and rigged the others with mines to go when they did, just to do a little more damage with their own deaths, knowing that omnidirectional explosives don't hurt against someone in armor."

-10/24/2168: What Really Happened At The War College?

The end result of the raid was always inevitable. Without any form of extraction method, with surrender definitely not an option after a brazen attack on students, even if they were studying at a military college and thus valid military targets, and without any method of going to ground, the 3rd ARG's soldiers knew for certain they were likely to die there. In fact, they had been specifically chosen to be capable of accepting it. Some of them were old men and women, who had already been getting bored of life and wanted to go down in legend. Others were young and brash, believing that the impact their actions would have would allow them the sort of immortality that all too few achieve. Yet others were less-than-rational individuals who blamed the League's actions for the loss of friends, family, and others, and sought revenge by proxy by such a brazen assault.

When the Special Armed Tactical Unit responded, knowing fully what the enemy was, it had come time for the deaths of all involved. However, the 3rd ARG was also profiled so that they would not give up, and would instead seek to go out to deal as much damage to the place as possible. The indiscriminate use of heavy explosives and demolition tools in the attack had expended much of their heavy ordinance, and they were easily outnumbered hundreds to one, but they had three advantages.

1. Firstly, the SATU, although highly trained and well equipped, lacked the truly heavy weapons that the League frontline forces found most effective against Magnate supersoldiers. The Third ARG were to a man, extensively augmented, equipped with excellent casualty-producers, and very experienced with their augmentation.

2. Secondly, the Outremonde police sought to eliminate the threat with as little collateral damage as possible to save as many of the students as could be saved, whereas the 3rd ARG did not need to concern itself with collateral damage. They had been lavished with explosives and high-penetration munitions to maximize collateral damage.

3. Third, the terrain favored the 3rd Armed Reconaissance Group. Chokepoints and winding corridors minimized the advantage of numbers, while the tight quarters meant the bulky weapons the SATU needed to kill heavily enhanced cyborgs were unwieldy and gave the Dawn commandos a near-certainty of achieving the first shot. Similarly, the Outremonde police tactical units were equipped with breaching aids such as flashbangs and stun grenades, which were utterly ineffective against the shielded sensors of the ARG commandos.

The siege and clearing of the Outremonde War College took several hours and cost the police force two hundred dead and more wounded, but eliminated all 62 of the remaining Dawn commandos.

Men of More

Caste Thoughts:

Laborers x 2 (25%)

Physical + 1 (6), Hard Workers + 3 (12) = 18 x 2 = 36 pts total

Technicians x 2 (25%)

Reactions + 1 (7), High Precision + 3 (12) = 19 x 2 = 38 pts total

Leaders x 1 (10%)

Intellect + 2 (15), Improved Rationality (wealth bonus boost) + 2 (7) = 22 pts

Talkers x 1 (10%)

Socialization + 2 (13), Ingroup Socialization + 2 (7) = 20 pts

Protectors x 2 (25%)

Physical + 2 (13), Reactions + 2 (15), Intellect + 1 (7), Tough + 2 (7) = 42 x 2 = 84 pts

Control (Baselines): 5%

Go for primarily secondaries, 170 TG + ~30 TG TL = 200 pts (25 base per template)

Caste System Analysis

This uses two and four caste systems at varying transgenic levels for an analysis.

Singular Exmaple: Alphas (ZOCU)

Alphas cost a total of 15 points with ZOCU baseline transgenic technology. In general such powers will have at least a +2 to transgene tech for a total of 14 points.

Alphas at 10% (x1) cost 14 points, but alphas at 50% (x3) cost 42 points. This means Caste System has saved roughly 8 transgenic points, or 4 SP.

Alphas at 25% (x2) cost 28 points, while Alphas at 100% (x4) cost 56 points. Caste system in this case saves 4 SP in this case as well since you can take "transgenes go back to transgeneland" for +morale -20 transgene or shuffle options.

Conclusion: There is literally no reason not to take caste system ever from an economic perspective.

Low End: Alpha+ vs Replicating Option

Alphas with Int are +1 phys/+1 rea/+1 int/+1 soc, vs 4xcastes with each one at +1.

Alpha+s cost 26*4 = 104, vs 4x castes costing 12 (for phys and soc) or 14 (for int and rea).

Total cost is 54 for option #2, for identical civilian bonuses, before transgenic tech index is factored in. Assuming the lowest possible transgenic tech index (of 2), the total cost is 96 for an Alpha+ versus 18 for four castes.

Conclusion: Caste system needs to be nerfed into the ground. Suggested penalty: -1 morale for each transgenic template in a caste system. This roughly equalizes a four-caste replicating spread with the actual transgenics via dot cost (the Alpha+ costs 5 transgene +s, the replicating spread costs 1).

Haraway: A Caste Analysis

One caste is +3 Phys/+3 Rea (for a total of 45). Another is +3 soc, another +3 int. The sum total of these is equivalent to the super template below, with 100% costing 360.

Haraway's three primary productive castes cost 90 + 48 + 42, or 180 points before discounts.

This means that before any technology, Haraway's World has gained an effective eight pluses, 160 transgene points, or ~80 SP, to fuck around with.

Conclusion: Even mixed castes are incredibly superior to non-mixed castes.

High End: Dawn+ vs Replicating Option

Super Dawnies are +3 in everything, vs 4x castes with each at +3.

Super Dawnies cost 90*4 = 360, vs 4x castes costing 42 (phys/soc) and 48 (int/rea).

Total cost for option #2 is 180, or a difference of 9 pluses. Factoring in Dawn transgenic technology (-10 cost break) the difference is 100 for the castes versus 320 for the unified template.

Conclusion: Caste system is probably more powerful than the low end suggests as transgenic benefits increase. As it stands, there is literally no reason to take a non-caste system due to the incredible benefit granted by caste system.

Remnants

A potential game that I probably won't ever run, using The Remnants RPG.

Background

The Broken Lands

Scarred by unrestricted warfare, the Broken Lands are a hostile wasteland that would kill any 20th-century human. Only the genetic engineering of environment-resistant, fast-adapting crops and the medichines and genetic enhancement that all remaining humans have allow people to even eke out an existence. The only lifeforms left are engineered. Nothing of the native ecosystem remains. Even the high-yield high-efficiency crops that were brought to the colony barely manage to keep mass starvation at bay.

The Ishin

These armored giants are the most common remnant fighting weapon in the arsenal of any city-state, carrying their own logistics tails, weapons, and armor. CBRN sealed, powered by technologies so lost that they might as well be magic, they are invincible avatars of war. Only remnant weapons are effective against them, and contemporary tools are useless. The mightiest cannons deflect off the thinnest Ishin armor plate leaving only a thick lead smear, and the lightest weapons on an Ishin can sweep through a block of armored men and leave only ground meat.

Rules Alterations

LosTech: Nothing that the early-Renaissance level technological base that passes for the most advanced of city-states can even remotely threaten an Ishin. The heaviest cannons would bounce off the most lightly armored designs-if they would even hit, at most staggering them. The weakest of Ishin weapons can devastate entire legions of men in the finest plate mail, cutting through the highest-quality steel as if it was little more than cloth.

Sending soldiers against Ishin is sending soldiers to die for no gain. However, there are still remnant weapons that allow poorer city-states to ward off these machines: Remnant firearms that kick like monstrosities and launch steel quarrels at speeds so high that they become streaks of fire, tubes that contain projectiles that are smart enough to seek their own targets and pack the firepower to shatter castle walls, and so on. Armies only exist because Ishin are rare-walls exist because each of these remnant weapons is valuable. Furthermore, it is more common than not that both sides will retreat damaged war machines rather than risk losing them to the enemy, letting armies decide more than a few battles.